Now, there's a complicated sort of "kicker" here. The HDMI Adopter Agreement specifies that compliance testing is required only for a manufacturer's first product in a product category. So if one is a manufacturer of cable, all that has to be done is to meet compliance testing, once, for a single batch of cable. After that, no external compliance testing is required by the HDMI Adopter Agreement. One can build, for example, a 3-foot long 24 AWG cable with PE dielectric and bare copper conductors, have compliance testing done on it, and then go on to build a cable of a completely different length and design--say, a 25-foot long polyolefin dielectric cable with 28 AWG tinned copper conductors--and do no compliance testing at all. The HDMI Licensing organization has taken steps toward changing this situation, and has inserted into the Compliance Testing Specification some language indicating that a cable cannot be deemed "compliant" and therefore eligible to bear the HDMI trademarks unless it's been shown compliant up to the length being sold. However, these provisions presently are probably not enforceable because they squarely conflict with the Adopter Agreement, and they are routinely ignored.
