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Originally Posted by Canada 02
^slightly off topic, but on the Monoprice link, what does Category 2 Certified Cable mean?
is this some new standard?
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Good question. I didn't know the answer myself!
This article covers the topic extremely well. I'll quote the most relevant parts:
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To fully understand exactly what the different compliance testing standards mean, it's necessary to stop and talk briefly about some changes that have been made to those testing standards along the way. Before HDMI 1.3, an HDMI Adopter submitting cables for testing had the option of specifying a restricted cable bandwidth; he could say that the testing should be run at 480p rather than at high-def resolutions, and his compliance with the spec would be judged at that lower resolution. This makes an enormous difference to the test result; it is very easy to get a compliant "eye-pattern" result if one can run the signal at 270Mbps (480p) rather than 742.5Mbps (720p or 1080i). Accordingly, it's not always possible to be sure what an HDMI 1.2 certification means; it may mean that the cable is compliant up to 720p and 1080i at the tested length, but it may not.
Under HDMI 1.3, a couple of things changed. There are now two layers of compliance testing possible, one called "Category 1," equivalent to 720p or 1080i, and the other called "Category 2," a higher-bandwidth spec; a cable vendor can designate a cable as Category 1 or 2, but cannot specify a lower bandwidth, and consequently, all HDMI 1.3 compliance testing is done at at least 720p/1080i frequencies. The "Category 2" criterion doesn't correspond neatly to any commonly-used resolution or color depth, but instead runs the eye-pattern tests at 1.65Gbps and 3.4Gbps, with the latter rate run through a reference "equalizer" formula which corrects some of the signal degradation. The Category 2 test's 1.65Gbps rate exceeds the 1.485Gbps rate of 1080p/60/8 bit color, so although it isn't really a 1080p test, it's a bit more stringent and is fairly close.
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In other words, if a cable is Category 2 certified, it has to work consistently well under normal conditions at it's stated length at near-1080p resolution.