Audio Video News

The folks at Irish cable designers RedMere agree with us (and our longtime contributor Geoffrey Morrison) that there's no real call for avphile HDMI cables - a bit's a bit, and so long as a good portion of the same ones that came outta your gozoutas end up at your desired gozinatas, all will be well, oxygen-free windings and exotic coatings be damned. That said there are some design concerns (and convenience requirements) to keep on top of, and a new product line from RedMere tries to address those - with reasonable cost engineered right in.

Since heavy-duty HDMI interconnects create their own difficulties, RedMere (the company designs and market signal proceesing and cable technology to companies like Monster, Samsung, RadioShack, and PNY, among others) has gone in the other direction, focusing on a thinner-than-usual product (built around a 38- or 42-gauge wire, it's flexible and lightweight enough to coil up and stick in a pocket alongside a mobile device). RedMere CEO Peter Smyth envisions his 3 meter cables being carried along with an iPad (and the company has designed an iOS dock connector-to-HDMI cable, making it easy to make use of whatever TV you might come across in your travels without carrying around Apple's own dongle).

RedMere's signature technology is an active signal booster; the chip (there's one per cable, on the output) lets them get away with thinner cables while maintaining HDMI 1.4 (and thus 3D) compliance, and, according to Smyth, allows longer runs - up to 7x longer than traditional cable topologies - without using repeaters.

- Michael Berk