When more than 80 TV experts come together to judge the picture quality of the best Ultra HD TVs on the market, the connecting HDMI® cables and accessories have to be top quality. After all, this isn’t your novice audience, it’s a panel full of TV experts, reviewers and calibrators from around the world, whose sole purpose is to judge the color accuracy, perceived contrast, black level, motion resolution and overall performance quality of the displays. The output requires flawlessly delivery from each component in the system in order to accurately provide a non-biased review of the TV displays. This was no small job and CE Week’s TV Shootout knew they needed the best professionals and products for this task. Metra Home Theater Group’s Velox Cables and Gigabit Accelerator were requested to deliver this high quality content by the professional custom integrators at Murideo / AVProConnect, along with their AVProConnect’s 18 GBP/Sec Switching and reference signal generator for distribution, Minolta’s cameras and Panasonic’s UHD players (currently unavailable in the USA).

The highly anticipated international event was held in conjunction with the New York City CE Week activities from June 22-23. In it’s 12th year, the Annual TV Shootout brings top TV experts, reviewers and calibrators from around the world for an unbiased review of four TV displays from top manufacturers. The event was moderated by Joel Silver, founder and president of the Imagine Science Foundation, and has earned a reputation as being a fair evaluation for the picture quality among top TV brands. The TVs were purchased off the shelf via open market channels the same way a consumer would purchase a TV. No samples are accepted from the manufacturer and the sets are checked to make sure they have not been altered.

The most challenging aspect for integrators was distributing the same signal to each TV in HD, UHD, and UHD with HDR. In addition, the signal distributed to each TV needed to be in the proper format, timing, bit depth, color space, with proper HDR signal and verification of the actual signal bandwidth in GBP/Sec. The requested setup was a tall tech order and quite frankly many in the industry thought it could not be done. This is where Metra Home Theater Group and AVProConnect delivered what they do best.

AVProConnect’s 8x8 matrix switching system has the ability to set Zone Out Resolution, EDID and HDR type. A huge WOW factor for the shoot-out attendees. AVProConnect knew the HDMI cables used with their matrix switcher had to support the full 18 GBP/Sec of the Matrix and recommended Metra Home Theater Group’s Velox and passive cables in addition to the new Gigabit Accelerator (HDM-GA1). These cables were tested by AVProConnect at both the 2016 CES and ISE shows, delivering a high level of confidence that these products were up to the distribution challenge for this event.

Before the event, Metra Home Theater Group’s cables were tested with all four displays and an interesting thing was learned. The Samsung display did not work well with the Velox cable. Samsung’s power supply from the display was insufficient to power both the active cable and the matrix. Having previous knowledge of this issue occurring in some of the new TV displays, Metra Home Theater Group’s CI Source recently wrote about a solution in the latest breaking tech tips, using the new Active Cable Voltage Stabilizer (HDM-ACVS). At the TV Shootout, a combination of the MHX Series HDMI Cables with the Gigabit Accelerator (HDM-GA1) resolved the insufficient power issue. The Gigabit Accelerator, used for passive cables, has its own power supply that will power both the cable and the matrix in incidences where the display’s power alone cannot. In the end, high quality content was delivered simultaneously to all four displays with no loss of quality.

The result? The event went off without a hitch and attendees were in awe that today’s TVs are the best we’ve ever seen. Over the course of four hours, judges reviewed and scored each display on several key performance attributes. In the end, the LG OLED65G6P was crowned the winner with solid 8s and 9s in each category, scored on a 10-point scale. This TV has a price tag of $7,999 and it’s overall picture quality beat the competing Samsung UN78KS9800, Sony XBR75X940D and Vizio RS65-B2 at this year’s Annual TV Shootout. See the final scores at CE Week’s website and learn more about the technology behind Metra Home Theater Group’s award-winning Velox Cables and accessories here.

Content contributed by Jeff Murray of AVPro and Brent McCall from the Tech Department at Metra Home Theater Group. Photos from ValueElectronics.com.