In my house, our audio/video systems sport neatly bundled and organized cables, but not because of me. Although I do know quite a few cable management tricks, I'm just not someone who's that bothered by clutter. My fiancé, however, is a different story. Thanks to him, what would otherwise be an impenetrable jungle of black and grey cable jackets is a reasonably streamlined, neatly organized network. It's pretty amazing.

 But even when most of our connections only use a single cable (such as HDMI, optical digital audio, or power) it can get bulky. That's why I thought of him when I saw OWLink, a clever system that lets you send 1080p video and stereo audio over a clear strand of wire as thin as fishing line. Seriously.

I took an OWLink system home to try it out. The kit I had included 98' of fiber optic wire (bottom left in the picture above). It also provided a transmitter, a receiver, and two short HDMI cables to connect them to the source component and TV. Setup was simple — I connected the fiber optic, HDMI, and power cables to the small transmitter and receiver on either end, and I was in business.

This worked wonderfully in a setup like ours. Our component rack is in the corner, while our TV is about five feet away on the wall. Using a receiver that offers analog-to-HDMI upconversion, we'd just need OWLink's single virtually invisible cable carrying full 1080p video to our HDTV.

I could also see this being used in a multi-room video system. OWLink offers longer lengths of fiber optic cable — up to 300 feet — that are fully protected and shielded for safe in-wall installation. And these longer lengths are still thin enough to hide under a baseboard if you're not keen on cutting into your walls.

OWLink's cables can also carry remote control signals back to your gear. How many times have I wished I could watch my high-def DVR recordings from our satellite box on our TV upstairs? An OWLink system could let me do that.

But how will a high-def signal look after traveling hundreds of feet? With any other audio/video connection, including HDMI, that can be a real problem with a costly solution; you'd be lucky to get any kind of watchable signal to your TV on the other end. But fiber optic cable is different. It can easily handle as much A/V info as HDMI. And it can stand up to interference, so the signals don't degrade over those longer runs.

To try this out, I ran my high-def signals through a 150' fiberoptic OWLink cable, and was very pleased with the results. I couldn't see any noise, pixelation, or other signs of signal degradation. The image remained clean and accurate.

So OWLink's come up with something that pleased us both. I liked its high-def multi-room video potential, and the flexibility that gave us. And my fiancé was definitely a fan of the clean, uncluttered look of that single transparent wire running out of the component rack.