Belkin's new "smart cables"
By Matt Burns 
posted Nov 7th 2005 11:13AM
posted Nov 7th 2005 11:13AM
Belkin has a new line of "cables" coming out called RazorVision. They utilize a microprocessor to improve the picture quality.
I have to confess that I had major doubts that these will do anything for the picture. But the more I read about these and consider Belkin is making them, the more I am intrigued in them. I am going to try to get a set of these for testing and post a review because they seem like they would work. To prove that they are doing something there is a button that switches on a split screen demo for a visual inspection of your expensive cables.
Wait to pass your judgment till you see a review. We will try to a review posted as soon as possible, but if you happen to see that someone beat us to the punch, drop us a tip so we can take a look at it.
Read [via Smarthouse]
Worthless. Worse than worthless, snake oil. HDMI and DVI are digital cables. Digital cables suffer zero signal degradation under normal, semi-normal, and all-but-totally-out-of-spec conditions. If you're running less than 12 meters you don't need special cables, you need any cables. Cheap is exactly as good as gold coated oxygen-free unobtanium-137 cables.
Now what we've got here is a claim that they're 'enhancing' the signal. The only thing they could be doing is amping it, since I doubt they're breaking the HDCP encryption, running a sharpening filter on the video data stream, and reencrypting it. And if they were you would not want the cables to do that you'd want your TV or your one of your expensive components to do that (maybe). So they're amping something which doesn't have any degradation anyway, so the stream of 1s and 0s arriving at your TV is BIGGER 1s and 0s, which decode into the EXACT SAME datastream as it wold have with a generic $10 Vaster cable.
Yup, all I see this cable doing is magically adding more contrast and sharpening to the stream.
I saw a demo of these at the Digital Life event. 9 out of 10 people were impressed. Unfortunately I was the tenth. It certainly appears to an untrained eye that the picture is sharper, however it introduces considerable noise as well as as blasts the contrast, and harms black level.
That being said, most people outside this forum won't know to look for this and it will be very easy for a salesman to sell these to your average lcd/plasma buyer.
I for one look forward to such a review. I see much speculation about these cables and whether they are "snake oil", etc. Many of the comments I am seeing demonstrate a lack of fundamental understanding of video, or are simply incorrect in their assumptions (ie., "I doubt they are breaking the HDCP encryption...").
Can't wait to see what you think.
I just hooked up the Razorvision DVI version to my Samsung DLP. If you looked at the split screen you quickly could see the seemingly amazing difference. Upon settling in to the full screen version the noise was unbearable and the contrast was way to extreme. Shadows on faces caused them to be too dark and with light areas too light. This device is very disappointing to say the least. I watched a replay of a recorded football game on my HD DVR and the grass looked way to unnaturally green and fake. I could not seem to get the colors to my liking. It really does increase black and white levels, but even on the lowest setting it is too extreme. Sorry Belkin, this is a good try ,but not worth the money or time hooking it up. It was back in the box and returned within 2 hours.