If you’ve got a high-end home theater with high-performance electronics and displays, you want to be sure the connections are top-level performers, too, right?

Ethereal Home Theater wants to make sure its connectors are up to snuff in your theater room, so it’s become a participant in the Digital Performance Level Certification Program of independent testing laboratory DPL Laboratories.

DPL evaluates and scores cables so they can be best matched to consumers, with final ratings on a 1 to 5 scale—your home-theater-in-a-box owners may be perfectly happy with connections that score a 1 or 2, perhaps, which meet the minimum and standard levels of performance, respectively.

If you’re toward the higher end of things, you may lean toward a 4 or 5—and Ethereal’s Platinum Series PL-HDMI 1-meter cable was the first one longer than .5 meters to garner a top score of 5.

On DPL’s scale, the score represents:

• maximum throughput
• best conformity to other peripherals
• recommended for longterm environmental variations
• multi-cable applications
• highly recommended permanent applications without electronic correction

We would expect that an $897 HDMI cable has the highest quality performance and construction, but it’s nice to see that a company can back it up after stringent independent testing.

Arlen Schweiger - Editor of Electronic House Magazine

Arlen writes about home technology installations and product news and reviews for electronichouse.com and Electronic House magazine.