HDMI cable?

[Guest j92]

Has anyone used one for their hudl yet? I'm thinking of getting the tesco one for £15 would that be alright?

[Guest Rocket]

Do yourself a favour and get one off eBay for circa £1.95. Mine works perfectly well and the little Hudl turns a dumb TV into a smart TV for catch up etc. Remember to set the resolution and refresh rate to match at both ends after enabling the HDMI output.

[Guest j92]

Do yourself a favour and get one off eBay for circa £1.95. Mine works perfectly well and the little Hudl turns a dumb TV into a smart TV for catch up etc. Remember to set the resolution and refresh rate to match at both ends after enabling the HDMI output.

cheers mate I want it for tonight though so I'll just buy a cheaper one lol thanks for the help!

[Guest glossywhite]

I bought one and it works well, but the aspect ratio and res do not seem settable... :S

[Guest paultr2]

Could someone who has a decent HD TV comment on what the quality is like compared to HD broadcast TV ?

[Guest greyrider]

Depends on the quality of the source material. HD playback of a HD vid is excellent.

[Guest j92]

I bought one and it works well, but the aspect ratio and res do not seem settable... :S

I ended up getting the actual hudl one but I struggled setting it up properly, I managed to get the screen nearly the right size but the quality wasn't great. I could watch a film on it though lol

Could someone who has a decent HD TV comment on what the quality is like compared to HD broadcast TV ?

If you can set it up properly you'll be fine mate

[Guest Matt Bodell]

I used this one, the Tesco's one ruined the colour balance.

Edited November 14, 2013 by Matt Bodell

[Guest glossywhite]

I used this one, the Tesco's one ruined the colour balance.

£7 for a micro HDMI cable? Lol... I think not (and I have owned and used the one below):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00B3H4YM4/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[Guest Briggers]

I got this one, cheaper and longer

[Guest j92]

I think one of you brain boxes on here can answer this; is it possible to get an app that automatically sets the screen ratio for you? I'm quite happy with the quality of the picture but I have black lines on each side of the screen lol.

[Guest stoolzo]

HI, didnt see this thread, i've just opened another regarding this. The home screen aspect ration cannot be set as it mirrors the devices resolution and aspect ratio, if it didnt the picture would be skewed so thats ok. However the problem is that movies are also playing at this setting and should be sending a full screen 1080px1920 output but the device isnt, its sending the same as the home screen. This cannot be fixed by changing any of the settings on your TV or HUDL without dropping down to 720x840 res and doing a lot of zoom faffing. Even if you get it looking roughly correct on screen you will find it is skewed veritcall still. I am starting to thing this is a bug with either this device or 4.2, i havent got another device with a HDMI out to test it though.

[Guest stoolzo]

workaround for black bars.

 

Workaround (some tv's only)

 

1. Set the hudl hdmi to 720x480 x60 hz (60 hz as most films will sync to this frame rate better than 50hz

2. in the same HDMI settings zoom until the picture to the right until you blacks have gone.

3. Install BS player free, awesome app, it can hardware decode just about anything these days, just remember to turn hardware decode in settings.

4. Load the movie, you should now see that it should touch both edges but will be stretched slightly on the horizontal plane. 

5. My tv has various picture sizing options, one allows you to increase the vertical height, set this to put the picture back in its correct aspect ratio.

 

This pretty much give you a decent 720p output, we would do this with the 1080p option of there was a little more room on the zoom option, although TESCO / GOOGLE really need to fix this bug,

[Guest Droibles]

I used this one, the Tesco's one ruined the colour balance.

Methinks that maybe your eyes were tired or you were comparing colours between daylight and house light viewing... or of course the cable was faulty.

 

There is an incredibly small, personally I'd say non-existent, variation of colour between the cheapest and most expensive HDMI cables and many tests have been done to show it.

 

See this one for example... http://www.tested.com/tech/3329-the-difference-between-cheap-and-expensive-hdmi-cables/

 

or this

 

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/home-entertainment/1292371/expensive-hdmi-cables-make-no-difference-the-absolute-proof/3

 

The above is particularly interesting as they created and compared MD5 hashes of files/frame and they were all identical between cables.

 

The only thing that can affect video quality - loss of pixels, sparkles, dropped frames, no video at all, would appear to be cables made that don't meet the HDMI spec - overly long, incorrectly wired etc.

 

Luckily there are still people prepared to objectively test things instead of relying on their own ropey human body with lashings of subjectivity. ;)

 

I bought the Tesco one - which to balanc things a bit, is absolutely fine and displays colours perfectly on my Hitachi HD TV (much better than the colours on the rather poor Hudl display  :blink: ) - because it was in the store in front of me and I could take it home there and then.

[Guest]

Completely agree HDMI cables are just TV versions of Cat5/6 network cables for example - the signals are digital 1's and 0's, they're either received or not on short cable runs. As long as the connectors are not incorrectly wired there's no difference between £1.99 and £39.99 'gold' contact cables.

People continue to get sucked into this myth due to the relentless advertising and indoctrination lead by the respective cabling industry.

[Guest stoolzo]

cable quality only comes into play over 5 meters when resistance starts to become an issue, even then it wont degrade your picture it will likely still work but become more unstable, i.e mine which turn off and on at the slightest power surge to kettle, fridge etc. I replaced it with a cheap 1.99 cable which was under 5 metres and I no longer had any problems.

 

There will never ever be any discoloration which different models of HDMI cables, never, nada, none, is'nt going to happen, as the chap above says, its 1's and 0's, light doesn't even come into it. Any cable under 5 meters that costs more than £5 is a rip off plain and simple.

[Guest greybot]

Issue 1. HDMI cable not working properly

 

I have tried three different HDMI cables of different sizes (5m, 3m, 1m). The 1m works well in most resolutions on my 32" samsung tv. I have a smaller HD Ready tv and when I plug the hudl into it, the screen flickers blue literally every 10 seconds with any of the cables. I know it's not the cable or tv, as it works fine with other HDMI peripherals I have. 

 

According to tesco it's software related and they will be releasing an update to fix this issue which they said is coming sometime in February, so I'm holding onto the hudl till then because everything else I am happy with but really could do with the HDMI working better. 

 

Issue 2. Aspect ratio/Vertical black bars on TV Display

 

They really need to fix the black bars on either side of the tv screen. I've read it's a problem with all tablets running 4.2.2 and google aren't fixing it. Am yet to find a workaround other than using a lower resolution and zooming in, as stoolzo recommends. It's a real shame because the hudl is advertised has having "1080p HDMI output" and it's nothing like it as it just mirrors the display as small as you see it on the hudl itself and you have to use the zoom feature to make it bigger (and even then it doesn't fill up the tv screen). I am yet to find a workaround for the aspect ratio in a higher resolution and hope the software update in February addresses it.

Edited January 24, 2014 by greybot

[Guest]

Issue 1. HDMI cable not working properly

 

I have tried three different HDMI cables of different sizes (5m, 3m, 1m). The 1m works well in most resolutions on my 32" samsung tv. I have a smaller HD Ready tv and when I plug the hudl into it, the screen flickers blue literally every 10 seconds with any of the cables. I know it's not the cable or tv, as it works fine with other HDMI peripherals I have. 

 

According to tesco it's software related and they will be releasing an update to fix this issue which they said is coming sometime in February, so I'm holding onto the hudl till then because everything else I am happy with but really could do with the HDMI working better. 

 

 

 

My father-in-law experienced a similar issue. He connected his Hudl (unrooted, stock Tesco ROM) to an LG TV with an HDMI cable and every few seconds (at random) the signal to tv would drop and the TV screen would go black.

 

I tried my Hudl (rooted, running Helios ROM) with the same cable/same TV and everything worked perfectly. He has since swapped his Hudl 4 times (all had HDMI problems and a couple had touchscreen issues) and I think he's got one that finally works properly on his TV. Go figure that one!?!?!

[Guest Frederick_99]

well i bought an inexpensive hdmi cable off ebay and it dosent work on either of my TV's :(

[Guest greybot]

Update: Got hudl replaced (fresh one from the factory apparently) and I now have no issues with any TV's and/or HDMI cables. So it was hardware related. Although they still need to release a software update for true 1080p output*

 

*no black bars on either side of the tv

Edited February 18, 2014 by greybot

[Guest quixers]

.... hudl hdmi to 720x480 x60 hz (60 hz as most films will sync to this frame rate better than 50hz

...This pretty much give you a decent 720p output,,,

 

Note this solution is NOT 720p resolution, which is defined as 1280x720 so the resolution you are setting is SD.

 

Agree the black bars suck.. :(

[Guest greybot]

Has the update fixed the back bars on TV output??