Rant: I found out HDMI cables have a 19 pin count and my cheap one only wired up 14 of them

Dakota Rivera · 2026-10-27T07:05:06.646537+00:00

I was poking around a teardown site last night and found a spec sheet that broke down the actual pin count inside a standard HDMI cable. Turns out a full HDMI connector has 19 pins, and the budget cable I grabbed from a bin at Micro Center only had 14 actually wired up. The other 5 were just there for show, no wire attached at all. That explains why my 4K signal kept dropping to black every 20 minutes while my buddy's cable ran clean on the same TV. I cut the old one open on my kitchen table just to see and sure enough, half the pins had nothing soldered to them. Now I'm wondering how many of the spares in my drawer are wired the same lazy way, has anyone else opened one up and counted?

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Rant: I found out HDMI cables have a 19 pin count and my cheap one only wired up 14 of them | Broken Cable Guys - HW Forums