Question HDMI Cable being picky with input sources

[Chehab.Ibrahim]

Hello Tom's Hardware forum! I hope you're all doing great!

Recently I picked up a USB-C dongle from Anker (this one in particular) to hook up my laptop (Dell XPS 13 9310) to my TV. I have a nice media-cabinet setup with HDMI cables running through the walls, into the basement, under the floors, then back into the adjacent wall where my media cabinet is, allowing us to effectively have zero cable clutter under our TV and mount our TV directly on top of the fireplace. We made this setup almost 10 years ago so most of the details are a blur, but I'll try to remember as much as I can. I'm not sure of the generation of HDMI cables we have in the wall, but what I do know is that they are ~9 meters (~30ft) long, give-or-take. If I recall correctly, they were acquired from Monoprice. I'm unsure of their generation unfortunately

When I tried to hook up my laptop for the first time, everything on the computer seemed fine (Screen went black to adjust resolution to 1080p, Windows 11 did its little dance with the screen, and the computer seemed to detect the TV both in Settings and in Device Manager), but the TV insisted that there was No Signal. I found this odd, as I had my Chromecast hooked up to the same HDMI cable (with a coupler) moments prior and it was working flawlessly.

In an attempt to troubleshoot this, I tried to power the hub with the PD passthrough - Maybe it needed more power to transmit along the long cable? Unfortunately this wasn't the case. Fearing the worst (I've been sent a defective dongle), I tried to hook up my laptop to my HDMI monitor - Which worked fine. Going back to the TV, I used a different (shorter) cable and plugged it in directly into the TV - bypassing the media cabinet entirely. To my surprise, this also worked. The only thing I changed was the HDMI cable used. To make sure I wasn't going crazy, I tried using the dongle with my phone (Galaxy S10), yielding the same results.

This leads me to believe the antiquated HDMI cables of yester-year are somehow messing with the signal from my laptop and are the cause of my problem. Before spending time and money to get a newer HDMI cable and test it out that way, I figured I'd post here and see if anyone had any insight as to what else might be going wrong. What's odd is that none of my other appliances have any issue with the HDMI cables - Blu-ray player, Fibe TV receiver, heck! Even my Wii works fine!

Any insight or advice is greatly appreciated,
Thanks in Advance!

 

[thestryker]

There's absolutely no reason the generation of cable should cause what you're experiencing. The only time I can think of where this would matter is if you were trying to output a resolution it cannot support.

The only things I can think of would be related to HDMI-CEC or if you're using some sort of HDMI switch to go between connected devices. Either one could be problematic, but if it was HDMI-CEC you should be able to manually select the right input, and I would think you would know if you were using a HDMI switch.

 

[Chehab.Ibrahim]

There's absolutely no reason the generation of cable should cause what you're experiencing. The only time I can think of where this would matter is if you were trying to output a resolution it cannot support.

The only things I can think of would be related to HDMI-CEC or if you're using some sort of HDMI switch to go between connected devices. Either one could be problematic, but if it was HDMI-CEC you should be able to manually select the right input, and I would think you would know if you were using a HDMI switch.

Thanks so much for your reply!

That was actually the first thing I checked - Was Windows outputting a proper 1080p signal for the TV - Which it was.

Yep, definitely not using an HDMI switch here, there's four distinct HDMI cables (one for each of the TV's HDMI inputs) going to the media cabinet.

I don't think HDMI CEC is the issue here, but I'll do some further troubleshooting with that in mind tomorrow morning.

Not sure if this is relevant, but it looks like the HDMI cables in question are active (Labeled Display side, longer tip on the display side); Figured I'd throw that out there in case it's relevant.

 

[thestryker]

Yeah with everything hooked up directly HDMI-CEC shouldn't really come into play. I don't know of any issue active cables would cause and wasn't able to find anything other than failing connectors/cables.

Are you able to, or have you tried any of the other cables that are connected to the TV?

I'm not sure of any reason why this might do anything, but you could try changing the refresh rate when the display shows nothing just to see if that makes any difference.

 

[Chehab.Ibrahim]

Yeah with everything hooked up directly HDMI-CEC shouldn't really come into play. I don't know of any issue active cables would cause and wasn't able to find anything other than failing connectors/cables.

Are you able to, or have you tried any of the other cables that are connected to the TV?

I'm not sure of any reason why this might do anything, but you could try changing the refresh rate when the display shows nothing just to see if that makes any difference.

Yeah I tried all four cables running from the TV - Same result unfortunately. Specifically I wanted to try the HDMI input labeled "HDMI1/DVI" on the TV - Never really understood what the difference was from it and the other 3 HDMI inputs, but nonetheless still no change.

Tried messing with the refresh rate as well - no change

 

[thestryker]

I really can't think of any reasons why it shouldn't work, given that it works directly connected with a shorter run. I don't know why it would be the case but the only thing I can think of is the hub might not like the active cables for some reason. There's absolutely no reason this should be the case. If you do try another long cable just get a regular one rather than active.

 

[Chehab.Ibrahim]

I really can't think of any reasons why it shouldn't work, given that it works directly connected with a shorter run. I don't know why it would be the case but the only thing I can think of is the hub might not like the active cables for some reason. There's absolutely no reason this should be the case. If you do try another long cable just get a regular one rather than active.

Yeah this is a really weird issue. I guess I'll start trial-and-error with some new HDMI cables.

Thanks so much for your help on this thread!

 

[Misgar]

This web site mentions:-

The older generation passive HDMI cables, such as Standard HDMI (HDMI 1.0/1.1/1.2) and High Speed HDMI (HDMI 1.3/1.4), can be as long as 49 feet, whereas the relatively newer Premium High Speed HDMI cables (HDMI 2.0) are mostly limited to 25 feet.

Your 9m (30ft) cables are just over the 25ft recommendation for HDMI 2.0. Are your 9m cables passive or active?

https://www.howtogeek.com/812222/how-long-can-an-hdmi-cable-be/


HDMI standards have proliferated over the years so it's amazing anything works-

https://cie-group.com/how-to-av/videos-and-blogs/hdmi-standards

 

[Chehab.Ibrahim]

This web site mentions:-

The older generation passive HDMI cables, such as Standard HDMI (HDMI 1.0/1.1/1.2) and High Speed HDMI (HDMI 1.3/1.4), can be as long as 49 feet, whereas the relatively newer Premium High Speed HDMI cables (HDMI 2.0) are mostly limited to 25 feet.

Your 9m (30ft) cables are just over the 25ft recommendation for HDMI 2.0. Are your 9m cables passive or active?

https://www.howtogeek.com/812222/how-long-can-an-hdmi-cable-be/


HDMI standards have proliferated over the years so it's amazing anything works-

https://cie-group.com/how-to-av/videos-and-blogs/hdmi-standards

I believe they are active - I don't have the datasheet/invoice from when we bought them to confirm, but based on the labeled directions on the TVs side (and the TV's end being slightly longer than the other) I think it's a safe bet to assume they're active