Header banner
Revain logoHome Page
Eric Ramen photo
1 Level
798 Review
39 Karma

Review on ๐ŸŽฎ Marseille Inc. mCable Gaming Edition HDMI Cable - 3-foot Length by Eric Ramen

Revainrating 4 out of 5

It works, but I still have a hard time justifying the price.

I'm using a cable for 1080p, not 4K. The cable definitely offers an optical upgrade for games, especially older games on PS3, Wii U and Xbox 360 I suspect (I don't have it so I can't confirm). Also, I have a Wii with an HDMI converter and I seem to have gotten a decent upgrade too, but since the Wii converter scales first it doesn't seem to offer much anti-aliasing (AA) for Wii games. currently, but the textures seem to be sharper and more contrasting. I ordered a converter that doesn't scale as others seem lucky enough to play Wii through Wii U at 480p, but I haven't found anyone who has converted HDMI to 480p and tried it on the original Wii. I will update the results once I get the converter. I see a very small upgrade for PS4 if you buy this cable specifically for PS4 I would say to save you money. The visual update is barely noticeable in most games when you're within feet of the TV. Most PS4 games already have good anti-aliasing and crisp textures, so despite the slight visual improvement, it doesn't seem to justify the price. Some people claim that the cable has a waxy appearance. From what I can tell they do appear to look waxy under certain gaming light conditions, but the games I've played so far seem to benefit mostly from the cable. Cable works best when playing native-level content. Resolution. This works very well on PS3 as PS3 does not upconvert content. I can keep the PS3 at 1080p and know that 720p games will stream at 720p over the cable. That's an idea. However, Wii U and Xbox 360 upconvert content. Most Xbox 360 and Wii U games run at 720p, but some games, mostly remakes, run at 1080p. That means you'll need to match your video settings to the content to get the best results with cable. When playing The Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild on Wii U, I definitely noticed a difference between 720p and 1080p settings. The cable up still converts content to 1080p, but offers better anti-aliasing when BOTW is sent to it in 720p, although there's still plenty of help at 1080p. I docked two stars for the following reasons. 1. The cable is too expensive. I understand that this is the only cable that will give games a boost in AA, but still it's very expensive - $120. I think $60 is the right price for this cable. 2. The price difference between 9ft cable and 3ft cable is too big. I actually wish I had a longer cord, but I went with a 3ft cord to save money. I have a 5 to 1 HDMI switch to get the most out of the cable when all my gaming systems are connected to it. 3. Due to the cable, the screen would black out for a second or two several times. Looks like it's some sort of internal reboot. This happened after I changed the output resolution on the Wii U, but there was a delay of over a minute before it seemingly reset. I love this product, don't get me wrong. But I'm wondering if I should have waited for the 2nd gen cable to fix some bugs and maybe cost a little less. Either way, the cable will work, although if you're using it for 1080p it's much better suited to old gaming content than new ones. The improvements aren't exactly consistent, some games looked significantly better like Wii U LZ_BOTW, but other games like Star Fox Zero had very modest improvements. I've seen the same inconsistency in the PS3.Wii update: (For those of you who want to upscale the Wii, buy a Wii HDMI converter that only outputs 480p, this is very important, otherwise you'll only see a small visual update, Wii games and GC that support progressive scan got a big upgrade, it's not as good as what Dolphin can achieve, but you'll be pleasantly surprised by the quality improvement, it almost lets Wii games in HD look.) I converted a Wii HDMI that outputs 480p at versus the one that boosts the output. Visually there is a huge improvement. However, for some reason I have no sound. When I connected the new HDMI converter directly to the TV I had sound, but when I connected it via mCable there was no sound. The sound worked with the previous converter. The converter has a separate audio jack so I still get sound but I'm disappointed that my TV is good at detecting the sound but not when it goes through the mCable. I haven't experienced this with any other system, only with the Wii's converted HDMI signal, so I can't get too excited. In terms of visual enhancement, Cord now gives Wii games some much-needed AA. While there are still plenty of bumps (I wasn't expecting perfection), there are far fewer of them, and the ones that do appear are far less ugly. There's a really nice texture enhancement there. As bad as Wii games look at 1080p, this cable does a lot. Skyward Sword might be one of the ugliest Wii games due to its lack of anti-aliasing, but it actually looks pretty good at the moment, although distant objects are still pretty blurry. This appears to be due to my HDMI switch not getting power and having issues with the PS4 so mCable didn't cause this issue. I have never connected my PS4 to this switch. I powered the switch and no longer had the problem. As that was one of the reasons I gave it a star, I've upped my rating to 4 stars.

Pros
  • Less than 1 millisecond lag-free processing for ultra high framerates and VR gaming up to 1080p at 120 fps
Cons
  • Minor issues