Signs Your HDMI Cable Has Gone Bad

We tend to panic, and jump right to the worst possible conclusion whenever our favorite shows and movies suddenly go kaput right before our eyes. When the sound starts to act funny, we blame the receiver and the stereo. When the picture falters, we curse the skies and start smacking the side of the console. We moan about the expense it will cost to replace those valuable electronics. But more often than not, sudden technical difficulties can be traced down to something more simpler, something infinitely easier to deal with than a stereo or projector breakdown. More often than not, a bad HDMI cable is the culprit. In this post we're going to teach you how to tell if your problem lies with one of your cables, or if it's truly time to panic.

Common Problems

Although HDMI cables are capable of providing your home theater or your outdoor cinema set-up with some pretty flawless picture and sound, they are not without their own troubles. Familiarizing yourself with some of the common problems caused by HDMI cables will help you when it's time to troubleshoot. After all, it's important to know if your problem is even relatable to the cables before you start checking them more thoroughly. Common problems include:

• No picture

• Fuzzy or blurry picture

• Discolored picture

• Intermittent picture

• Poor screen resolution

• No sound

While it is true that all of these problems can have much more serious sources, it is important to note that even some seemingly dire issues - such as having no picture at all - might be a simple matter of the cable. Before you get into any kind of complicated troubleshooting, have a look at your HDMI cable.

Easy Fixes

A quick glance at your HDMI cables might reveal the solution to your issue. For example, if a large chunk of the cable is still very tightly coiled or bent in anyway, simply uncoiling or unkinking the cable can be the solution. The electronics in these cables are a lot more delicate than you might think. If unbending or uncoiling doesn't seem to be the answer, have a look at the pins inside both the cable and the device that's acting up. If one of the pins is bent back, it won't make a proper connection with its counterpart and your picture will suffer as a result. It's also important to remember that while HDMI connections are fairly ubiquitous in today's devices, not every single HDMI port is a perfect fit for every HDMI cable. If the hood on your cable is too large for your device's port, even slightly, it can result in a faulty or incomplete connection via the pins. Check all of these things first before you continue troubleshooting.

Testing the Cable Thoroughly

Once you've found evidence that the HDMI cable may be the issue, it's time to test out your theory. Find a different HDMI cable В - one from a set-up that has been operating smoothly. Now all you have to do is remove the cable В you suspect to be faulty, and replace it with the cable you know to be functional. If you don't have an extra cable lying around, new HDMI cables aren't that expensive, overall. You can buy a new one, save the receipt, and use it for troubleshooting. If the cable was the problem, then the problem is thoroughly solved now. If not, returning the cable is easy enough - or you can have an extra one lying around for when replacement time does come around.