Box crashed, HDMI switch killed

Beware non-scientists and non-engineers talking out of their arses. Typical forum discussions have at least equal contributions from the uninformed who should keep their traps shut, but who instead muddy the waters and contribute to Internet misinformation because the equally uninformed readers treat the misinformation with equal weight (or often even more, because the misinformation tends to get repeated more than the real information).

(I try to counteract this trend, but it's an uphill battle. Only the other day I got shouted down for correcting misinformation about car batteries - the popular misperception is that if a car is fitted with a "calcium" battery as standard, replacing with a traditional non-calcium lead-acid battery will either fry the battery or fry the electrics. What a load of utter garbage.)

If an electrical connection between two points is so close to error that the occasional bit is corrupted, it is also extremely close to corrupting too many bits for the data link integrity to be maintained. Regardless of error detection/correction, there are still synchronising patterns within the data packet. Considering the data rate required, it's a wonder anything gets to the other end at all.
 
But OP changed the cable and fixed his problem. Other than a bit of a dodgy connection/cable, can you suggest a better idea. I wonder if OP just tried re-seating the cable which usually 'cleans up' dodgy connections which is the usual cause (other than continual flexing causing conductor failure) unless it was caused by poor screening and HDMI radiation 'leak'.
 
Trev said:
Other than a bit of a dodgy connection/cable, can you suggest a better idea.
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I would much rather blame some kind of bad contact or break (impedance mismatch) than cable resistance, particularly if the cable is short. What does not make sense is the idea the OP had to swap out the switch and the cable to cure the problem.
 
First switch died. All good points about the cabling, I'm an engineer at an electronics manufacturer and spend a lot of time fixing test systems, I always check the cable connections to test instruments to begin with. I'm not familiar with HDMI though.
 
smoo said:
I'm not familiar with HDMI though.
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Serial digital data at several hundred megabits per second, with some handshaking. That sets a timing limit on how long the point-to-point cable can be, and the cable quality sets a limit on the length for reception of a signal at the other end. Specified maximum is 10m, but that can be pushed a little. Hence a 1m cable can be almost any crap you like (but may obliterate UHF reception in the process).
 
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