There is no shortage of sources—including TechHive—that will tell you one HDMI cable is pretty much as good as any other HDMI cable. Well, here’s the exception to that rule: the $100 Marseille mCable Cinema Edition 

What makes this HDMI cable special? It has an embedded microprocessor that upscales and enhances 1080p or lower-resolution video to take full advantage of a 4K UHD display. It doesn’t do anything for 4K UHD  (2160p) video, though, which is something I’ll go into more detail later. The mCable is available in 3-foot ($119), 6-foot ($129), and 9-foot ($139), though you’ll find it street-priced for less (Amazon sells the 6-foot version reviewed here for $99).

Marseilles Inc

You’ll find a captive USB cable at one end of the cable that will provide power for the microprocessor. Plug the type A connector into any standard USB port on your TV and you’ll be up and running. If your TV doesn’t have an available USB port, a USB AC power adapter will do. The HDMI cable ends are not interchangeable, so pay attention to the labels: The one labeled source connects to the output from your source device (DVR, set-top box, DVD or Blu-ray player, and so on), and the one labeled TV goes to the HDMI input on your TV. That’s it.

Marseilles Inc

Everything else is auto-magical, or smart, or automatic. Take your pick. There’s no app or remote, so if you don’t like the effect on any particular material, you’ll need to use a different cable. That proved to be a non-issue for me—mostly. I’ll get to that later.

The mCable’s raison d’être is to process 1080P and lower-resolution video with various upscaling techniques to make it look better on 1080p and 2160p (4K UHD) televisions. Left on their own, some TVs upscale wonderfully, but some don’t. Some handle some material great, but other material… not so great. 

Performance

To test the mCable Cinema Edition, I broke out a variety of older format DVDs and 1080p Blu-ray discs, and I also played back the variety of files that I use for TV testing using both a Samsung UBD-9500 and a UBD-8500. UBD stands for Ultra Blu-ray Disc. I used several 4K UHD TVs to compare the results with and without the mCable Cinema Edition in the loop. I didn’t do any gaming, as Marseille offers a separate Gaming Edition cable that’s optimized for the higher refresh rates that type of content often features.

I was largely impressed with the results with the majority of discs and files, though with a few files—mostly older 1930s movies—I noticed no improvement at all. As I was playing these from a USB stick in an outboard player, it might have been format related. Otherwise, 1080p, 720p, and just about everything below that looked noticeably sharper, more vivid, and with less noise. Noise removal actually somewhat undid the deliberate graininess in the first scene of the most recent version of Casino Royale. I guess you can’t have everything.

The mCable didn’t do anything for the 2160p files I played; in fact, video streams at that resolution are passed straight through from the source to the display. But video at that resolution hardly needs improvement. Rather than relay how every single file and resolution is processed or enhanced, I’ve included the charts found on the Marseille, Inc. website below:

Marseille Inc.

Above is the table for what the mCable does with various resolutions of video output to a 4K UHD TV. Below is what happens when output to a 1080p TV.

Marseille Inc.

Ultra HD Blu-ray bummer

I was all set to simply leave the mCable in place when I finally tossed in a copy-protected Ultra Blu-ray disc to further test the claim that 4K UHD (2160p) was simply passed through. Drat. Darn. Phooey. If I’d read the info carefully, (I don’t as part of usability testing), then I’d have known that the mCable with its processor is a link in the HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) scheme that’s intended to foil pirates, and that it’s limited to HDCP 1.4. The current version that 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray discs use is HDCP 2.2. By design, if any link in the signal chain doesn’t support HDCP 2.2, the delivery device will automatically reduce a 2160p video stream to 1080p.

If you’re using a Blu-ray or DVD player, or if you’re playing a Blu-ray disc or DVD on an Ultra HD Blu-ray player, this is a complete non-issue. Likewise when you’re playing Ultra HD Blu-ray discs on an Ultra HD Blu-ray player with two HDMI video outputs: You’ll connect the mCable to one output, connect an HDCP 2.2-compatible cable to the second, and switch HDMI inputs on your TV accordingly.

If your Ultra HD Blu-ray player is a more common model with just one HDMI output, or it has two HDMI outputs, but the second one is for audio only, you’ll also want to buy an HDCP 2.2-compatible HDMI splitter that has one input and two or more outputs. The alternative would be a cable-swapping nightmare every time you change disc type. 

It’s worth the cash

The mCable Cinema Edition does a bang-up job of upscaling and processing 1080p and lower-resolution video. Buy one for your favorite DVD or Blu-ray player or set-top box. If you intend to use it with a single-output Ultra HD Blu-ray player, know that the absence of HDCP 2.2 support will dictate that you also buy an HDMI splitter.

FastestVPN in brief:

• P2P allowed: Yes
• Business location: Cayman Islands
• Number of servers: 150+
• Number of country locations: 23
• Cost: $30 per year
• VPN protocol: IKEv2
• Data encryption: AES-256-GCM
• Data authentication: MS-Chap v2 and TLS
• Handshake: SHA-II

Every VPN service out there says it’s the fastest, but few are so bold as to make that claim right upfront, in the company name. Yet here we have FastestVPN, a Cayman Islands-based service that offers VPN connections in 23 countries and has more than 150 servers. Is it actually the fastest service around? We’ll get to that, but first let’s take a look at the desktop app.

Note: This review is part of our best VPNs roundup. Go there for details about competing products and how we tested them.

Features and services

When you start up the FastestVPN application it has a typical single-pane design with a bit of a Shazam feel thanks to the big yellow lightning bolt in the middle of the connect button. The top of the window shows the current location you’re connected to (or can connect to), and the bottom of the window shows your bandwidth usage in MB for both upload and download.

IDG

Click the hamburger menu icon in the upper-left corner, and you can choose the Locations screen to select from the service’s 23 countries and multiple U.S. options.

The Settings panel (also under the hamburger menu) doesn’t have much in terms of options. There’s an internet kill switch, which is off by default, and you can also choose your preferred VPN protocol: PPTP, L2TP, IKEv2, or OpenVPN via TCP or UDP. If you do mess with these settings either IKEv2 or the OpenVPN options are your best choices.

That’s all there is to the FastestVPN app, though the company has also built malware protection and ad blocking into the service. The app is pretty good, but one thing I don’t like about it is how it behaves on the taskbar.

When the app is open it sits on the taskbar with no presence in the system tray. Then when you close the app window it minimizes to the system tray. So far so good, but what is unusual is that I couldn’t open the app up again by clicking on the system tray icon. Right-click the system tray icon and you have two options: Connect/Disconnect and Exit. The latter worked just fine, but I could never use the Connect/Disconnect option, and if I wanted to see the app again I had to quit and restart it. Not great.

FastestVPN charges $30 per year, or you can buy three years for $40, and until late February the company is offering five years of service for $50. One year for $30 is an amazing price and that covers 10 simultaneous connections instead of the usual five. FastestVPN offers apps for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and Fire Stick. There are also tutorials for setting up on Linux, routers, and the Kodi VPN.

Performance

IDG

As for the company’s privacy promises, they are quite good. FastestVPN’s privacy policy is written in the style of a FAQ. It says the company does not store logs in any way. “Any information or logs related to your browsing history—the websites you visit, the content you download or stream, your traffic destinations, or your DNS queries—stays with you and you alone,” the page says.

In just about a week, it’s basically guaranteed that Samsung will take the stage at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco and unveil four new products: three Galaxy S10 models, including a new “budget” model, and the Galaxy F, better known as the company’s first real-world, non-concept, you-can-touch-it folding phone.

In case there was any doubt about that last one, Samsung sent out a teaser vid Monday with a thinly veiled reference to the fabled handset with curved, flowing text punctuated by the tagline, “The Future Unfolds.” Unless Samsung is engaging in some pretty epic trolling, that’s a pretty big clue.

Technically, the February 20 Unpacked event won’t be the first unveiling of Samsung’s folding-screen technology. At its developer’s conference in November, Samsung showed off something resembling a phone as part of its Infinity Flex display announcement. The blink-and-you-missed-it reveal didn’t show much—and what it did show was heavily obscured by a chunky case—but it was proof that Samsung was far enough along with folding OLED technology to create a working prototype. It touched off the folding phone hype and has led to this moment, the long-awaited folding phone reveal.

Since that glimpse of Samsung’s folding screen, little-known phone maker Royole has actually beat everyone to market with its FlexPai folding phone. Available on a limited basis, it showcases the issues with folding phones more than anything else. Mark Hachman / IDG

For one, the FlexPai doesn’t close tight like a laptop. The center hinge leaves a gap larger enough for a pen. And because it folds outwardly with the screen always showing, there’s a high likelihood for breakage, battery drain, and orientation confusion. Numerous videos on YouTube show the FlexPai getting confused when switching into tablet mode, or showing random flashes and stutters when bent. Whatever Samsung is working on will need to raise the bar considerably. And when the Galaxy F makes its debut, it will instantly become the gold standard for folding phones.

But the question remains: What will Samsung actually show us during Unpacked? Here are three possibilities:

A full working prototype of the final design

A fully working foldable phone is the Holy Grail, of course. If Samsung shows off the Galaxy F in all its glory, the audience will go wild. It’s been years since the Galaxy-loving crowd has had anything truly exciting to cheer about. A lengthy demo showcasing the design, features, and, of course, foldability, of its new phone would put Samsung back on the map and show why it’s still ahead of its competitors.
Odds: 10 to 1. I don’t expect Samsung is quite ready to show off its folding phone yet, so I suspect we’ll get more teases, some additional specs, and a vague shipping date of the second half of 2019.

Samsung

A full demo of the new UI

More important than how the Galaxy F looks is how it works. We already got the smallest of glimpses of the new One UI during the original teaser vid, but to get people really amped up, we’re going to need a demo of it in action: smartphone mode, tablet mode, and, of course, a whole lot of folding. What happens when you’re working on the large screen and fold it to the smaller one? What if you get a phone call while on the tablet and want to put it to your ear? There are a ton of questions about the Galaxy F, and how it works is at the top of the list.  
Odds: 4 to 1. It’s a pretty safe bet that Samsung will demo something about the folding phone, but I’m not convinced that it will be an original-iPhone-style demo of everything.

Samsung

A longer sneak peak

Remember that Samsung will already be unveiling three Galaxy S10 models during Unpacked, plus maybe new Galaxy Watches, so there might not be a whole lot of time left for a lengthy demo of a brand-new product as important as this one. Plus, the Galaxy F could very well still be going through design changes, with Samsung planning a dedicated folding phone event later in the year. So it’s possible, even likely, that Unpacked will bring a longer look at Samsung’s foldable display tech; maybe show off a few apps switching from the smaller to the larger screens; and provide a peek at a non-final phone design that will give an idea of the size and functionality of the shipping product—but leave lots of room for improvement.
Odds: Even. My money’s on Samsung keeping the Galaxy F close to the vest, but leaving us wanting more.