HDMI cable protects your Xbox 360 from noisy viruses!

Filed Under: Featured, Malware

Do you find that computer viruses are too noisy? Do they interfere with the quality of images when you're playing games on your Xbox 360?

Well, fear not!

It appears that the 3rd Earth Xbox 360 Elite HDMI Swivel Cable is just what you need!

Marketing blurb on back of Xbox 360 Elite HDMI Swivel Cable packaging

"100% Mylar" double shield 1.3c grade cable with anti-virus protection to reduce virus noises and to obtain perfect image transmission.

Err.. right..

Computer viruses making too much noise has, of course, been a problem for over twenty years. Who can forget the old Anticad DOS virus which could play the "Blue Danube" through your PC speaker, or the W32/Music worm that spread in 2000 playing the first few bars of "We Wish You A Merry Christmas"?

More recently there was something of an internet scare when ragtime jazz music began being played from many people's computers, making some believe they had become infected. Fortunately it just turned out to be a cack-handed promotion by Google.

If anyone has tried one of these cables we'd love to hear what your experience was. Did it really quieten your viruses?

Hat-tip: Reddit via Joe Wass.

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48 Responses to HDMI cable protects your Xbox 360 from noisy viruses!

  1. John says:

    Graham - any idea how you can do updates? Is it signature based or heuristic?

  2. Clim says:

    Perhaps, they consider biological viruses. Some antiseptic things or so ))

  3. Robert Gracie says:

    To quote James Bond from Goldfinger "You must be joking" a cable to protect against viruses cannot be true!

  4. Jim Goltz says:

    "Quieten"?

  5. Kyle says:

    Probably chinglish for electromagnetic noise.

  6. Pete Gibson says:

    But will it quieten the voices in my head???

  7. Shckwish says:

    Only XBOXs get viruses. Sony just gets hacked :D

  8. Mick says:

    Some marketing guy is reading this and wondering where they can get certified.

  9. Anonymous P Body says:

    It also promises a "perfect image transmission" too? If it does all that they should be FLYING off the shelves because there are people who are gullible enough to buy that thing....that is most certainly a scam, availablle at all local wal-marts, wal-greens, and K-mart? Or is it available at all of our local service stations? I was just wondering, lol....

  10. Mike says:

    Virus noises are of course those noises that spread from host to host and propagate themselves.

    Epidemics of Noise Viruses have caused great harm to conversation over the years. The "Whaasssuupp!!" epidemic that marked the start of the millennium damaged reputations worldwide for 3 to 4 years.

    Noise viruses that have caused great harm such as "Are we there yet?", "That's what she said...", and imitations of Cartman.

    If more people installed their media equipment with 1.3c cables protected by 100% Mylar we would suffer less from these terrible noise viruses and may even be protected from other damaging noises such as Fran Drescher.

  11. Moeez says:

    Doesn't matter. Had LOL.

  12. Robert P says:

    I think the word they were reaching for was "parasite".

  13. Logosia says:

    You are all idiots. - Jim, Kyle, Pete. Try looking up words before you make fun of them. Quieten is in the British vocabulary. Queen's english, which by the way, was here before the American English.

  14. soshimo says:

    That's what happens when you outsource your translations to South East Asia. It's the next meme. Remember, all your base are belong to us!

  15. bart bral says:

    Is this your photo?... Because besides the red circles and arrows it is Photoshopped to the max... Just asking...

  16. Sarky bugger says:

    It will, Pete, IF you tie it tight enough around your neck!

  17. ME says:

    So is it 100% mylar or is it coated in 24 karat gold? or is it 24 karat gold mylar??

  18. Shawn Clarady says:

    SHHHHHHH........ Did you hear that? It sounds like a Trojan Horse. LOL

  19. vampaerus says:

    signals induced into a cable by another parallel cable is sometimes referred to as "parasitic" noise. Bad translation of that concept?

  20. Absolute crap!!

    I'm against regulating too much, but doesn't this fall under some regulatory departments area here?

  21. Tim says:

    In built AV protection?
    connections plated in 24 karat gold?
    This must be the cable of the gods.

  22. Mark says:

    The W32/Beiber-J has to be one of the worst in this category

  23. Shiny317 says:

    I hope they don't do updates that find false positives or I'd not be able to listen to music on my PC as it may falsely think it's a noisy virus. I've not been unlucky too often to get malware and viruses, but when I had, musical viruses would have been very handy. It'd be the perfect way to know if you got malicious software on your PC if it played a little tune everytime it run. Far easier to detect than those pesky silent ones that run in the background unnoticed..... as they say, it's the quiet ones you have to look out for :p

  24. Disappointed says:

    Erm, am I missing something? Look at the image folks. Wrong font, wrong font size (it's perfectly straight, the others bend), wrong colour, poorly blended. Massively faked, and badly at that !!! Is this what Sophos resorts to for publicity these days?

  25. MikeP says:

    As an electronics engineer I am always amused by these stories. The only element that may (?) be of some value is gold plating of contacts - but only if both plug and socket are plated - as it reduces contact resistance and hence noise. But as HDMI carries digital signals that are subjected to error correction at the receiving end there is absolutely no need for any of this, just ensure you buy a good quality cable without wasting your hard earned cash. Remember the falacy of gold-plated mains leads for HiFi buffs? Doesn't work that way at all! Stop believing anything 'marketing' say as they don't understand and don't care about that little word 'truth'.

  26. Lona says:

    Innovative Apple iPhone5 Testers Wanted IS THIS BOGUS?

  27. In recent years my Xbox 360 has become riddled with viruses which I suspect were being spread via HDMI. In my house we share the same HDMI cable between the Xbox, PS3 and satellite receiver and upon consulting numerous IT security experts the only logical reason for these viruses is due to the extensive plugging of the cable into multiple HDMI sockets. The viruses have been ruining my life, they are just too loud and really interfere with everyday life. My housemates and I have suffered many sleepless nights at the hands of these loud HDMI viruses (literally because of all the noise!).

    That is, until I purchased this cable..

    Since buying this brand of cable our lives have been turned around. My Xbox 360 has never been healthier and this is evident by the improved image transitions. This marvellous cable contraception had eliminated all those viruses and now we rarely hear them at all, if ever! I can finally get a good nights sleep and focus more on the important things in life. It has changed my life for the better.

  28. Sean says:

    Looks like it's fake, sounds like it's fake, but probably isn't ...

    Here's the link, complete with the same text, where you can spend $19.84 to get one :
    http://www.bigw.com.au/entertainment/video-games-...

    Unfortunately there are no reviews :(

  29. Bub says:

    Looks like something they could have copied word-for-word from Monster Cable press release.

  30. Sharp says:

    What kind of AntiVirus does it use?

    Some of these other comments are way off base as they didn't seem to read the product discription, and attempted to make a stupid joke like the author. The cable is 100% mylar shielding, which is a polyester, which protects against noise interference, and supposedly it has an Antivirus protection. This should have been two comments and not incorporated into 1.

    Seems some people just don't deal with Networking Cables that much. There is a difference between Shielded and Unshielded cables.

    Graham Cluley I expected better from you than this stupid article. You make yourself look r*****ed with this type of article.

  31. VA_IT_Guy says:

    Let's hear it for those awesome Chinese to English translators over in China where this cable was undoubtedly manufactured and packaged.

    Whee rite engrish well!

  32. DavidHeath says:

    @Disappointed... If you look closely you'll see it's a sticker that's been added to the printed card.

    Presumably it replaces something that made even less sense!

  33. lemonsucker says:

    Joke all you want, my picture improved dramatically when I switched out my $150 Monster HDMI cable for one of these babies... it's like I was blind and now I can see. You'll see.

  34. OmniTeK says:

    Haha - it also protects your "Blue-Ray" !!

  35. Jawdropped says:

    Wow,

    I need one of these for my PC.

    No more virus on my noisy porn pics.... I cant believe this..

    Almost as bad as "write a GUI using VB to track an IP", and "DNA results in one hour" ..

  36. @RRambau says:

    well, at the price of spoiling the fun: what they originally means is that the cable reduces the transmission noise emergingn from "parasitic capacitances"

  37. Graue Eminenz says:

    Mylar is a trade name for PET, means plastic, the stuff of which plastic bottles with water, cola etc. are made of.
    And we all the force of plastic bottles against noises of viruses,

    This is the most outrageous lie I ever saw printed on any technical product.

  38. Jill Do says:

    a .....must have

    LOL

  39. Phil says:

    It doesn't say it has anti-virus. It has anti-virus PROTECTION. It apparently protects against those pesky anti-viruses. You know what trouble THEY can cause.

  40. Rachel says:

    it dosnt mean NOISE you can HEAR it means INTERFERENCE with your signal - noise as in RFI - causing a less than desirable result or display in your graphics - GEEZ- dont all jump on the gravy train and act smart when u arnt thinking in ELECTRONICS terms-

    on the authority that I have a degree in Comp and Electronics Engineering

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About the author

Graham Cluley has worked in the computer security industry for more than 20 years, developing anti-virus software and doing quite a lot of talking about internet threats. He's won awards for his blogging, but is proudest of the text adventure games he wrote when he was still wearing short trousers. You can learn more about those (the games, not the trousers) at grahamcluley.com. Send Graham an email, subscribe to his updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and App.net, and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.