When I have my cheap-o $5 amazon USB-HDMI video capture card plugged into my desktop with the HDMI cord, it tends to droop under the weight of the cable and cause intermittent issues. This slides on to the capture card and just gives a larger surface to hold itself up against a PC with. It doesn't fix the droop issue 100%, but by my estimation probably more than 50% of the way there, and it does fix my intermittent drop-out problem, so as far as I'm concerned, it does its job.