Thin cable with redmere signal boost is best combo ;D
Thicker HDMI cables tend to short alot in my experience because HDMI cables have such terrible bend radius, and get worse the thicker they get; higher gauge is more likely to get detached from the connector from twisting/turning the cable. I'd say 80% of the monoprice 24awg cables I've bought (which is like 12 of them) have gone bad after 1-2 years just from occasional reseating of the cable or adjusting position once every few months. Whereas only one of my 8 or so 28awg el cheapo amazon cables have gone bad.
Thin cable with redmere signal boost is best combo ;D
Is the signal boost built into the remere cable? In otherwords, do I have to buy anything besides the cable?
The signal booster is built into the cable. However, it is built into just one end. Therefore, this is one of very few situations in which a connector cable is unidirectional. I didn't realize this at first and caught my mistake just before I was about to hit "SEND" on a very intemperate email to Monoprice. However, after I corrected the direction, the cable works perfectly (a 35 foot long cable if I recall correctly). Just look closely at the cable ends. One will have a marking with something like "Display" and the other something like "Source." If not (and the cable doesn't appear to work at all), just switch the direction.
he is not using a long run as far as I know.
I haven't had a single hdmi cable go bad on me from Monoprice. But then I make sure cable are stress relieved.
I haven't had ANY HDMI cable go bad, no matter where I bought it from.