It sounds almost too good to be true. Marseille's mCable Gaming Edition is an HDMI cable that promises to improve image quality in your games, adding anti-aliasing and enhanced colour detail to anything that's thrown at it - at a price. In a world where you can pick up an HDMI cable from a poundshop, the mCable will set you back between $120 to $150, depending on the length you choose. It's also a North America-only release for now, but Amazon and others can import it for you. Now, we've all seen video cables go for ludicrous prices, claiming to give a better picture than the bargain basement equivalents, but the mCable is different, it does indeed do the job. The question is to what extent it is effective and how well it processes different types of content.
So what makes this product different? It's all down to the ASIC processor at the TV end of the cable. This is an integrated chip dedicated to processing each frame it receives. Edge detection, artifact removal and colour management are some of the main bullet-points on the box, and this requires power, provided via an integrated USB cable. Most modern TVs have a USB slot located within short proximity of the HDMI ports, so this isn't really a problem, but you need to make sure that one is available before you consider buying in.
There are few frills otherwise; on the surface it's just a thick HDMI lead with an extra line attached. There are no options menus to tweak, and there's no on/off button to override its post-processing - it's plug and play with whatever passes through it. Compatibility-wise, the mCable works with several resolutions up to 1080p outputting from the source, so if it receives a 480p, 720p, or 1080p signal, the ASIC automatically kicks in and carries out its processing.
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