If your looking at this cable odds are good your trying to do a long run from your HDMI source to either a remote TV or projector. Having gone through this over the past couple of months and spending a bunch of money in my quest I figured I would give you my insights into what I learned
First off I have this very cable and it does work the housing around the connectors is a cheap plastic but as long as your gentle it’s fine.
You really have two choices if you want to do a long HDMI run, a fiber cable like this or HDMI over CAT6
Right now woot also is offering a Tripp Lite HDMI via CAT6 product which I also have as well and it’s a lot cheaper even if you have to buy a CAT6 cable.
Tripp Lite HDMI Over Cat6 Extender Kit - $80.96 - Free shipping for Prime members Tripp Lite HDMI Over Cat6 Extender Kit
If your doing a brand new run and have clear and open access to where the cable will be running, ie you have a conduit and open space then the Fiber Cable is the way to go if your looking to max out the signal 4K/60 4:4:4 HDR, the Tripp Light Product will do this too but my experience with HDMI over Cat6 regardless of the brand (I tried many) is that when you are sending this much data the Cat6 products start to struggle leading you to signal cut off or HDCP handshake failures which gives you a snowy screen. You will have no such problems with the Fiber HDMI cables because they have plenty of bandwidth for the data.
If your extending a 1080p signal or even a 4K/60 HDR but with 4:4:2 then you would be well served with an HDMI over Cat6 product like the Tripp Lite.
If your like me and live in an older home with tons narrow channels to run the cable and a bunch of sharp turns the Fiber Cable is going to give you a hard time. The cable is durable but it’s still a fiber cable so you shouldn’t bend it more than 45 degrees and you can’t pull on it very hard. If you have any type of resistance when snaking the wire and try to force it through you will break some of the fiber stands and the cable won’t work. I know because I trashed two of these expensive cables trying to pull them through my walls. Here the Cat6 solution works better because you can make sharp turns and the cables are much more forgiving in terms of pulling on them to get them through a tight space. The connector being the smaller RJ-45 connector of Cat6 also makes things a lot easier compared to the chunky HDMI connectors of this monoprice cable.
The Tripp Lite product on offer also has two inputs and two outputs which is handy if your want to avoid having to use an HDMI switch if you want more than one HDMI source feeding to your device as well as IR relay if you have a remote that doesn’t have RF transmission.
So if you have money to burn and want the comfort of having a trouble free HDMI experience with all settings at MAX and have a clear and open run from the source to the HDMI display then the Fiber Cable is the way to go. If you want to save some money and have an installation that has to go through old work and tight spaces and are good with a slightly lower quality HDMI experience (assuming you have a display that can even take advantage of 4K at max) then the HDMI over Cat6 is significantly better.
For me I wish I would have just stayed with the HDMI over Cat6, yes the Fiber cable allows me to do 4K/60 HDR 4:4:4 but on my 4K Laser Projector I don’t see a difference between that and 4K/60 HDR 4:4:2 that my Tripp Lite had no problem with. I got hyped on specs instead of experience and found that 99% of the stuff I watch isn’t even 4:4:4 especially the streaming stuff. It’s only on Blu-ray disks that 4:4:4 is even offered and on my equipment these is no noticible difference between 4:4:4 and 4:4:2. Certainly not like the difference between SDR and HDR.