His problem isn't his hardware. He's capable of watching the movie in 3D using his bluray drive, but when he takes the file and uses an image writer to put it onto his HDD he's not able to watch anything at all I believe is what he's trying to say. The issue now is probably conversion. When he converts the movie to store on his HDD, it can't be read.
As for HDMI cables, there's no such thing as an HDMI "1.4" cable. That's a hardware specification for the video device,
not the cable. HDMI cables only comes in 4 types: Standard, High Speed, Standard w/Ethernet, High Speed w/Ethernet. Standard only has a bandwidth capable of supporting displays up to 1280x720 @ 60 Hz (720p), or 1920x1080 @ 30Hz (1080i). High Speed has the bandwidth capable of supporting 3D, deep color, 1920x1080 @ 60 Hz (1080p), and up to 3840x2160 @ 30 Hz (4K Ultra HD). His cable is high speed because we know he's able to watch the movie on his bluray drive. Again, it's not his hardware that's the issue.