I was skeptical about 50 feet for hdmi without the new chipset that comes with some of the cables of that length and longer. But all the reviews were positive, and at about $35 or so the price had come way down and seemed very affordable. The cable seems somewhat thick, which is good. I think it's good build quality. We run a 46" 1080p samsung tv as a PC monitor, extending the PC desktop. We run power dvd 13 on the PC, and display videos on the tv, or YouTube videos with chrome. It works perfectly with no signs of signal degradation. I pulled an expensive nvidia 285 graphics card out, and bought the inexpensive AMD 6450 card for about $39 which provides hdmi, dvi, and vga. We run a dvi lead to a dell 20" 1600×1200 desktop monitor, then the hdmi to the tv. My motherboard allows switching the sound from the on-board realtek sound chips running the PC satellite speakers and woofer, to the AMD Hdmi sound, which goes out the hdmi cable and plays through the TV's own speakers. But some motherboards won't allow you to do this, and the only sound option you'll get is through the hdmi. We have two 6450s on two different pcs, so I know what I'm talking about. Here's an extended desktop tip. Instead of turning around and trying to look across the room at the tv, about 25 feet away, to adjust full-screen, or pause the video, etc., just put a windows 7 magnifier window on your desktop, about 2" by 2" in size. Set magnifier zoom to 100% meaning no zoom. The magnifier window will follow your cursor. When you move off screen onto the extended screen of the second display, the TV, you can see everything in the magnifier window – no need to try to look across the room or use binoculars, lol. Setting up the magnifier window is slightly tricky. First of all, put the magnifier shortcut on your desktop. Then start magnifier – it will jump into full-screen mode, but try to access the magnifier settings, and get it into the DOCK mode (NOT full-screen) which will put a magnifier window across the entire top of the screen. Then reach into the middle of that window and pull it down – it will turn into a normal sized small window that you can adjust for your taste. NOTE: If you can't get to the settings when you first start the magnifier, which happened to me, go to the task bar and that might work, otherwise close the magnifier from the task bar and then open it again, and keep trying. It might take 3 or 4 attempts. Tip#2. Bring your browser window, or your power dvd window, back to your PC desktop, before you close everything up – which means, take it out of full screen mode, and grab the window and bring it back to your desktop. Using the small magnifier window to do this will make it so easy. The reason to bring everything back, is that later on when you turn on your pc, and then you open chrome, if you left chrome on your TV, that's where it will stay. You will wonder why you have no chrome window – well it's on the TV which is currently turned off, or maybe is now set to a different source other than the PC hdmi input. Same thing with a video player like power dvd with software upscaling – true theater enriched saturation and detailing – worth the $100 retail we paid for it – it makes even 1080p files look better – if you don't believe that just ask the player to show you side by side, software enhanced video, vs raw video. So again, bring that player back to your pc desktop before turning off your pc, or you will wonder where power dvd went. 🙂 Enjoy!!
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