Redmere Ultra-Slim HDMI 2.0 - a 70% speed increase! (UPDATE - installed and reviewed!)

A few months ago, I wrote about the Redmere High Speed HDMI cables that are available at Monoprice.

They're unbelievably thin... about the same size and flexibility as your iPhone charging cable.

Last week, I finally got around to ordering four 15-foot cables.

And literally the next day, I got an email about the NEW and IMPROVED Redmere HDMI cables!

Good thing I hadn't opened the old ones.

Here's a brief article about the HDMI 2.0 spec.

It's definitely a significant bump in speed - the old high speed HDMI could handle 10 Mbps, and the new cables can theoretically handle 18 Mbps. (In practice, it will be 14.4 Mbps.)

If you already have high-speed HDMI, you don't need to upgrade your HDMI cables. The current high-speed HDMI can handle 30 fps 4K television, and 3D, and every other feature that the new 2.0 cables can.

Just not all at once.

(And the 2.0 cables can do 60 fps 4K television, while the old cables can only do 30 fps. Not that I have a 4K TV, or really like 60 frames per second anyway - it makes everything look like behind-the-scenes video. But still, more bandwidth!)

As Monoprice put it:

While existing High Speed HDMI Cables can handle each individual feature in the new spec, real-world video usage usually employs more than one HDMI feature at the same time. For example, your resolution at 1080p is one feature, 36-bit Deep Color is another, and DTS-HD Master Audio™ is another, all of which have significant bandwidth requirements. The difference between the older 10.2Gbps cables and these newer 18Gbps cables is the need to compromise in your choices versus no need for compromise.

So, I packaged my cables up and returned them to Monoprice, and ordered 4 new 15' HDMI 2.0 cables. They were $3 more apiece.

The new cables are just as thin, but they have a fabric mesh jacket now... which I'm not exactly sure about. In the past, I've noticed that jacketed cables have been far less flexible.

Bottom line - I don't have a 4K TV and I'm unlikely to get one in the next year.

But I can't bear the thought of looking at my new home theater and knowing that there were somewhat inferior cables lurking behind those walls.

Saturday Update - The cables arrived last night!

The fabric mesh was no problem - they're just as flexible (and only about as thick) as your iPhone charging cable.

Some notes about Redmere HDMI -

• They're unidirectional - that is, one side of each cable is marked "SOURCE" and the other is marked "TV", and data flows in only one direction. 

• That said, data presumably flows the opposite direction in the Audio Return Channel HDMI cable  -- which functioned normally - you don't have to reverse the cable and plug the "SOURCE" side into your TV. 

• Once installed, they functioned exactly like every other HDMI cable I've ever used.

• Which makes this, I guess, a 10/10 review. These cables are TINY: literally a quarter of the circumference of my prior HDMI cables - and they're LONG: 15 feet - and there are no issues whatsoever. 

Just looking forward to getting a 4K television to really put them to the test. In the meantime - I'm a happy Monoprice customer.