Terminator terminates my fibre optic hdmi cable - really!

techted

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So after some upgrades earlier this year I got everything working (issues with getting a Dolby Vision encoded signal to work on a projector & getting the 4K TV and 4K projector to play nice together). Set up has been working flawlessly for several months since the start of the year. One day, I decide to share a movie classic with my son on the projector - The Terminator (on Blu-ray, not 4K). But something weird happens - the picture is blank (the projector menu is visible so I know the projector is working but no movie) and the sound drops in and out till eventually even the sound goes dead. Movie night is cancelled :(

Lots of trouble shooting later and to make a long story short*, I determine it is the 15m Fibre optic HDMI cable that is the problem. To be absolutely sure that it is the fibre optic cable, my local AV shop was kind enough to lend me a replacement cable to troubleshoot. I plug in the replacement cable (exactly the same brand, make, model) and viola, everything is working again! Yey! Just bad luck with the first cable, which is under warranty still, so not so bad. I was able to watch a couple of movies on the projector and everything was fine. After a week or so, I again decide - ok son, get ready for a classic - The Terminator! I put in the disk and #@#!?!#@ same thing happened again!!! Why?!?!?!? Movie night is cancelled again :(

There is nothing new in my set-up. Nothing new in the house, no building going on, no new electronic equipment. The fact that it happened both times when I tried to play The Terminator is a weird coincidence right? I can't fathom what killed both cables. Can a video signal fry a fibre optic cable? It doesn't seem possible to me. The Terminator was just a blu-ray disk too, so it wasn't pumping out that much data.

The original cable is in the loft/walls so I can't inspect the entire cable but I physically inspected the replacement cable and cannot find anything physically wrong with it. I asked this forum on common points of failure of fibre optic cables and hot-plugging them was mentioned so I was very careful to have everything off when I installed the replacement cable. Plus everything was working initially for several days so the failure could not have occurred at the point where I plugged in the cables right? Any ideas of what is going on anyone???

At the moment, I am using my old copper HDMI cable to the 4k projector and I can play non-4k sources from the Oppo or from the Humax TV. Am planning to buy a different brand fibre optic cable to test. Looking at a Ruipro one - will it survive The Terminator test??? LOL. Any other brand recommendations?

Side question -- why would a failure in the hdmi cable that connects the projector to the AVR cause the sound to also fail? The sound travels from the source device>AVR>speaker so in my head the cable going out to the display device shouldn't affect the sound but it does (???)



* I tried isolating/swapping components and cables. I determined everything works when using the LG TV so all the video sources & cables are ok. I removed the Vertex2 box out of the equation and it didn't make a difference. I then used my old copper HDMI cable which was installed in the wall/loft and I can then get an image on the projector when playing non-4k disks on the Oppo or when using the Humax TV box. Playing 4k signals through the old copper HDMI not surprisingly does not work.

The hardware:
Video sources - Oppp 203 player, Humax TV box, Apple TV, Xbox One, Playstation 4, Nintendo WiiU
AVR - Arcam 850
Display - LG C9 OLED TV, Sony VPL-VW285 projector
Cables - Audioquest Pearl 4k HDMI cables mostly, except for the 15m Fibre optic cable that goes to the projector and the HDMI cables from the game consoles for which I use the cables that came with the consoles
Also use a Vertex2 box to be able to send and watch Dolby Vision video on the projector
 
There have been several reported issues with projectors and active cables, copper or hybrid fiber. The thought is that the current output at the pj HDMI port varies just enough that the active chipsets in the connector end of the cable can't handle it resulting in issues. You might want to consider trying a voltage inserter to see if that provides a more stable current output to the cable. It's not a guarantee but it has worked for some.
 
Have been using a Ruipro fibre optic cable and so far so good. It even passed the “Terminator test” LOL.

It has been a month so far. Time will tell ...
 
6 months later and the Ruipro optic HDMI cable is going strong! At a cheaper price than the optic HDMI cable I got from my dealer too. More expensive isn’t necessarily better ;)
 
Ruipro cables are not cheap so I can't imagine what your dealer charged you. Glad to hear that the Ruipro cables is still performing as expected.
 

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