What HDMI lead do I need for an XBox 360 then? Man in Currys clearly on drugs when he said I *must* have a £70 one. I walked away.
Any advice welcome, *surely* they aren't that expensive?? There are some for less than a tenner online, are they just as good?
just get a cheap one
there's been a couple of very heated threads on here recently regarding similar
The the one that came with my £30 dvd player from lidl seems ok, on both the 360 and the dvd player. I cant believe what they try to charge for them!
Surly HDMI cables are all the same. Analogue cables are advertised as reducing signal degradation - the better the conductors the less loss. A digital signal will not suffer this - so all should transmit the signal as good as the next one
cheap one with a sky hd box is as good as a £70 one.
Right you are - thanks for the re-assurance!
Are they directional though? 😉
Are they directional though?
Don't know but the man did say not to have any bends in the cable. The zeros will go round the corners but the ones will get stuck...
This is a tricky subject. Depending on who you listen to, you could think that a metre or so of cable would be fine if it was made from OK copper strands. Or, you could be persuaded that you need virgin-spun oxygen free copper sintered in the fires of hell and purified with the blood of first borns.
Over time, I've tried a few different kinds of leads for analog from £2.99 TESCO specials (avoid) to £60 Monsters with a few in between. If you're connecting your speakers or analog linked equipment then a more expensive cable makes a difference...to a point. Your mileage may vary.
For digital, anyone who says you will get a noticeable quality difference for your 1080p xbox games over a metre or two of HDMI cable between an Amazon £5 lead and a fancy £100 lead probably also believes in homeopathy and other quaint things like santa and the easter bunny.
The Fisual cables, and no doubt similar ones, on Amazon work fine. I've tested several cables with my Sony TV and PS3 and these are OK. I noticed no difference between these and far more expensive cables.
£5 Fisual 1.5m cable duly ordered... Thank you, sir. 🙂
re: uplink. Love the Kimber link. 'a vast soundstage'. LOL.
Why didn't I like the TESCO specials? It's just that really cheap cables often have ropey soldering, thin (breakable) insulation and easily bent connectors. Take a step up (to a few quid) and the cable becomes a bit more robust and handles bending, tugging and 'robust handling' a little better. And it is still relatively cheap to replace. Totally practical reasons. I suspect that TESCO's copper is much like anyone else's.
re: munkster. Hope it works out OK for you. They delivered my cables faster than expected. I can't believe the Curry's salesperson didn't try & offer to 'align your chakras' at the same time. If it had been me I would have tried to interest you in additional games and a warranty. Ah, those were the days... I wonder what the bonuses are for warranty or store card deals these days.
Ha ha ha ha. I looked a little further at the Russ Andrews site and saw this: [url= http://www.russandrews.com/product.asp?src=google&lookup=1®ion=UK¤cy=GBP&pf_id=5750 ]Kimber 'focus rings'[/url] So, spend anything from £100 to £100,000 on speakers and be assured that a couple of felt rings will make up for the engineer's inadequacies. Let's think about that. Imagine the poor speaker engineer at home one night. Recent top rated speaker whizzing out of the factory and a quick look at the 'focus rings' and 'blimey! I forgot all about high frequency reflections from the tweeter. Darn!'.
Over a metre or so, no difference at all. If I was putting cable through a wall for a projector and going 10m or so I'd probably splash out a bit more just because there's more scope for degredation/interference and it's a ballache if the connectors go dodgy. But for something under your TV? If you pay double figures you're a mug.
The one I use for my PS3 was about £2.50 and does the job just fine.
The fisual ones on Amazon are great. Not the absolute cheapest, but are of good quality. I use their HDMI and also their optical cables on the PS3, DVD and Sky HD box.
Cheap Scart cables were notorious for not having all pins connected. No idea if this is the same for HDMI cables, but I guess it's possible.
Was in a John Lewis (?) in Manchester a few years back when we saw a pair of dinky Bose speakers that sounded absolutely fantastic, and even better, were only £50 each.
We duly snapped our fingers at the salesman and said we'd like the £50 speakers, at which point he coughed politely and explained that the wall brackets were £50, and the speakers were something insane like £300. Never lived that one down.
Just use cheapies here have one good one and there is no difference at all in the quality, IIRC the only person who supported for them being better was the guy who sold them for living. Can't think why he'd suggest the expensive ones are better. 😀
A digital signal will not suffer this
Why not? All digital signals are analogue by nature anyway.
In perfect conditions with perfect equipment £70 leads will be a degree better than cheaper ones. But none of us ever have those conditions or (generally) any real way of making direct comparisons. I would never, ever spend that amount of money on cables.
occasionally the argument of 'its digital it won't make a difference' comes up. Well, it can. If there was no such thing as signal degredation on a digital link, sky wouldn't go funny when there's a storm, and there'd be no need for ECC in networking protocols. It doesn't make as much of a difference as on an analog cable, but it does make some. For my money, buy cheap but not the cheapest.
But none of us ever have those conditions or (generally) any real way of making direct comparisons.
I do 8) I have little or no interest in video though 😀 Actually, aren't there a few AV installers on here? They're the people most likely to have experience. Christ, This is another cable thread isn't it 🙄
Why not? All digital signals are analogue by nature anyway.
because the signal only has to be one or zero, and even if heavily attenuated it's easy to detect the difference.
with perfect equipment £70 leads will be a degree better than cheaper ones
a degree ? Celcius or Fahrenheit ??
. It doesn't make as much of a difference as on an analog cable, but it does make some.
the difference being that when too much signal is lost you get nothing at all. It either works perfectly, or it doesn't work, though right at the margin you may get rapid intermittance.
because the signal only has to be one or zero, and even if heavily attenuated it's easy to detect the difference.
Ohh how how wrong
a degree ? Celcius or Fahrenheit ??
no, he probably means a degree, you know like those things you measure angles with, and waves, you know, the wave that is waht a digital signal looks like when you hook an oscilascope upto a hdmi cable?
the difference being that when too much signal is lost you get nothing at all. It either works perfectly, or it doesn't work, though right at the margin you may get rapid intermittance.
which is precicely why you need expensive cables for long runs :p
you know like those things you measure angles with
ah, phase ? That doesn't really make sense for impulse signals which are synthesised from numerous different frequency sine waves
Digital transmission is either broken or it is not - i.e. if the signal gets through sufficiently to be detected 100% of the time, it doesnt matter if it was transmitted down strands of spider silk or solid gold ingots, it'll be reproduced the same at the other end. If your spider silk is SO bad that the highs and lows are indistinguishable the signal will come out as junk at the other end (and most systems counter this by ignoring the info altogether).
What SFB was saying is that as long as there is a noticable difference between the high and the low state and there are no stray spikes caused by noise sources, the quality of the cable matters not, the electronics will deal with it. A £5 cable with decent shielding will be fine. The signal will come out the same, it won't suffer degredation and you'll not know any difference. This isn't a case of "my directional cables are ace, you just can't hear the difference" - this is a measurable, scientifically establishable identicality in output. Analogue signals can be attenuated by poor cabling and suffer some odd changes, digital signals get those changes too, but the encoding of the data ensures that the content of the data is not changed by the quality of the signal.
A simple example is digital TV - watch your digital TVs signal strength bar on a channel - even on the ones that are right down to 25% the picture is identical to when it is 100%, it's only when it drops really really low that you get problems, and then you get corruption of the image.
I bought mine from here:
http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=777_5&products_id=105194
£3 inc delivery. 🙂
"A digital signal will not suffer this"
actually, capacitance on the cable will hack away at the trailing and leading edges of the waveform,(you're not actually sending 0's and 1's, it's a nominally square wave that represents 0's and 1's, being sent in an analogue format.) making it less square and eventually it will begin to look like an analogue wave if is enough capacitance is introduced, thus confusing the digital to analogue converter as to what is is actually receiving, whether or not you can tell the difference is a different issue all together though.
actually, capacitance on the cable will hack away at the trailing and leading edges of the waveform,(you're not actually sending 0's and 1's, it's a nominally square wave that represents 0's and 1's, being sent in an analogue format.) making it less square and eventually it will begin to look like an analogue wave if is enough capacitance is introduced,
Yeah, but I bet you'd need a blooming long cable before you got to a level where the edges were actually not clear enough so that you actually got data loss. We have 50m cable runs for gigabit ethernet, and I can tell you they don't use super-fancy gold plated connectors on the end of those, you chop the ends and crimp on plastic jobbies every time. Okay the data rate is about a 3rd or 4th of 1080p video, but I'm betting at least for 5 metres of so, you could use pretty much any old junk as long as the ends stay on.
You'd also know if you had interference - error correction in video generally is pretty poor.
Joe
thus confusing the digital to analogue converter as to what is is actually receiving, whether or not you can tell the difference is a different issue all together though.
It's much more [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI ]complicated than that[/url]. The data is transferred in packets with error correction, and will never get the the D/A's unless received correctly
oh yeah, we used to run up to .5 kilometer before we expected to see any problems, and that was using un-screened alarm cable, my point is simply that digital signals can degrade but that it's rarely an issue
for short distances there will be no noticeable (or indeed measurable) difference in quality.
more money will get you better build quality up to a point
longer distances are where cable capacitance becomes an issue.
Digital signals are not some infallible magic form of transmission, it's all very well saying it's just 0s and 1s but it is an awful lot of them, very close together.
Personally I have no experience of how HDMI (or DVI) transmits it's data but i'd imagine there will be several forms of error correction which will allow for 'x' amount of data loss, probably making up for the lost data by averaging of some kind. There will be a defined point where the error correction gives up and you lose picture all together.
If we have to send DVI more than 3 meters we use fibre optic, nothing else will cope although DVI over CAT5 is starting to appear. HDMI is able to cope with slightly longer distances.
as an aside, are all HDMI cables the same in terms of connector interfaces?
My mum wants to buy an "HDMI" DVD player for her Sony HD TV, then get some HDMI cables for it (as they dont come with the player).
If I get, say, those 7dayshop ones, there's no chance I could accidentally end up with one that wont fit is there?
actually, capacitance on the cable will hack away at the trailing and leading edges of the waveform,(you're not actually sending 0's and 1's, it's a nominally square wave that represents 0's and 1's, being sent in an analogue format.)
Yes, but in digital signals the communication is "clocked" - the period during which each bit should be found is known, meaning you can identify a bit as a 0 or a 1 within that given timeframe, even if there is ringing and serious ramping on the signals at both ends. Add to that the fact that there is error correction transmitted too, you're looking at an all-or-nothing solution, distortion does not come into it with digital.
"Yes, but in digital signals the communication is "clocked" - the period during which each bit should be found is known, meaning you can identify a bit as a 0 or a 1 within that given timeframe, even if there is ringing and serious ramping on the signals at both ends. "
yup, I agree completely, that's exactly why I said "whether or not you can tell the difference is a different issue all together though. "
It's much more complicated than that. The data is transferred in packets with error correction, and will never get the the D/A's unless received correctly
Yeah but when an error is detected then the packet may need to be re-sent. You can only re-send a certain number of packets in any given time frame so there is a point where even with error correction, not every tile will have complete information.
To me it seems that digital cables either work or they don't, but my mate bought a pricey cable for his HD projector and he swears it gives him 'deeper blacks' 😕
The hifi mags seem to agree with him.
Yes all HDMI cables are the same in terms of connectors - it is a standard socket.
cheers m_f
yup, I agree completely, that's exactly why I said "whether or not you can tell the difference is a different issue all together though. "
Ah, now I read it as you meant it 🙂
Yeah but when an error is detected then the packet may need to be re-sent.
Nope, it uses error correction, not error detection and resend - the data is encoded with extra "redundant" data that allows the receiver to recreate the correct info even if the packet appears to be damaged (to a fairly high degree). In this case the BCH form IIRC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_detection_and_correction#Error_correction
and he swears it gives him 'deeper blacks'
So what IS black when coming from a projector? It is simply no light being projected. The only way a better cable would give 'deeper' black is if a cheaper one somehow lets the projector continue to project light.
The hifi mags seem to agree with him.
Well they would, they have advertisers to please, they have a readership that wants to hear how good the latest gadgets are.
S'quite alright, I do it all the time 🙂
Right... the HDMI interface is designed to allow a certain error rate to occur and still work perfectly. There is enough error correction data supplied in the rest of the data that the erroneous bits can be corrected or ignored.
However, once you go over a certain error rate then the error correction cannot handle it and the whole thing grinds to a halt and you get a very distorted picture, or no picture at all. This is called the Cliff Effect.
The difference that a better quality cable will make is to allow you to use longer cable lengths before the error rate gets such that the picture dies entirely.
So yes, there will be less errors on a better quality cable, but this won't make any difference until you reach the threshold that stops a picture being shown at all!
So, if you use a cheap cable and get a picture, an expensive cable won't do anything different.
If you have a longer cable run, and a cheap cable gives you garbage, an expensive one might be able to give you a picture.
Simples...
Well done funkynick - only 10 minutes behind the thread 😉 but at least putting it into a normal-person-friendly package!
Hey... I'm also trying to work here!!
Nope, it uses error correction, not error detection and resend
Okay. However error correction can NEVER be 100% perfect (even if you send a second exact copy of the data then they could both still be wrong) so if you need to send a digital signal in a particular time frame then it is still [i]possible[/i] for the transport medium to corrupt it to such an extent that a correct packet is not available in time.
But going back to the OP: nah as long as you don't go for the absolutely cheapest cable (which will probably be poorly made meaning the connections will break) then it will make **** all difference to the digital signals.
Don't underestimate the placebo effect. Just because there is no scientifically measurable improvement, doesn't preclude the owner of said "uber" cables from perceiving an improvement.
http://boingboing.net/2009/10/07/hd-tv-and-the-placeb.html
Interesting article here
http://www.audioholics.com/education/cables/long-hdmi-cable-bench-tests
At lengths less than 4 meters you can just about use silly string (OK, not really) and get HDMI to pass at any current resolution. At less than 3 meters you'll even extend that to 12-bit color and possibly the next crazy idea HDMI Licensing decides to throw at consumers. Don't spend a lot on these cables and if you want to save money you won't let anyone at a big box store talk you into buying from them.
12 bit?! Never heard of that before but obviously something new to worry about in a few years.
I was in a branch of Currys at the weekend and they had the same 1.5m HDMI cable - identical part number and all - for £25, £35, £40, £80 and £100.
We figured they were hoping that people who went in to buy a cable would find the "cheap" one and think they've got a bargain, and people who were buying a hugely expensive telly would just pick up the first one they saw and wouldn't care if it was expensive.
Or that Currys are just a bit rubbish.
but at least putting it into a normal-person-friendly package!
There are no normal people on this thread...
[i]If I get, say, those 7dayshop ones, there's no chance I could accidentally end up with one that wont fit is there? [/i]
As mentioned, it's a standard connector.
My TV and Blu-Ray DVD combination make great play of the fact that the cable must be "something or other compliant" (read: expensive) in order for the two devices to talk to each other and be operated from one remote control. They work fine with the £3 cable. 🙂
I was in a TV shop the other day and asked about HDMI cables and the guy launched into the full sales spiel "they start at £25 but really you're best off with these at £60 because...."
but really you're best off with these at £60 because...."
I am on commission?
I think you look like a mug?
I think you have money to spunk up a tree?
I think you weren't born with a functioning brain?
>so if you need to send a digital signal in a particular time frame
Statically that was correct, but if the whole lot's in spec then it's so statistically low as to be insignificant.
Tho' that's not how hdmi operates. Looking at the spec (I've a pdf of it here) it uses BCH for error correction on audio and control channels, and there's an additional level of coding for error reduction at the transmit/receive level.
There's some encoding done on the video stream data, but that doesn't appear to be for error reduction.
There *are* two categories of cable performance specified, called (funnily enough) Category 1 (data clock up to 340MHz) and Category 2(data clock up to 74.25MHz) - without looking further I'm guessing the latter relates more to NTSC/PAL (ie standard definition video) than anything else. That may be worth checking for on any cable you buy - tho' I don't know how/if they're marked up as that.
For compliant, read 'guaranteed to work as specified'. The spec specifies cable, connecter, transmit and receive performance, if everything is in spec it should work as intended
It doesn't mean non-compliant cables *won't* work, but a short run will probably work, but the same quality may be utter pants in a long cable length. I can't see a specied length in the spec, but it does specify attenuation and the two go hand-in-hand to a degree (the spec also covers cable equalisation where used). (Ah - funkynick's covered that bit...)
As a generalisation, there's lots of different error correction methods or ways to provide more robust transmission, they may work better in some circumstances than others.
Eg a cd - a scratch *along* an arc it will handly very badly, whereas a radial scratch it'll handle fine bacuse of the way the error correction's done.
>ah, phase ? That doesn't really make sense for impulse signals which are synthesised from numerous
Actually it does. What looks like a nice rising edge at the source may look really grotty at the receiving end depending on what the cable's attenuation/frequency and phase/frequency characteristics are.
There's an article/paper in scientific ammerican/new scientist/other publication on this.
Basicaly they created a synthetic (for want of a better word) signal and measured the output at the other end. The explanation as to why cheep cables don't work over long distances was quite in-depth, but was to do with the fact that the switching rate/frequency was so high that you no longer had a current flowing down the wire in the conventional sense, and it was in fact perfectly reasonoble to be sending the next bit of information down the wire before the previous one had reached the end.
They tested 3 manufacturers at three lengths, All 3 worked at <2m, although looking at the readings it was easy to spot the cheep one, the middling one was still pretty close to perfect.
At <5m the cheep cable was just sending jibberish, the middling cable would have been perfectly OK in most situations and the expensive cable was still good.
At 15m+ the expensive cable was the only one that worked, the signal looking comparable to the cheep one at <2m.
[i]The hifi mags seem to agree with him.[/i]
Most on the ones I read tend to say there is no difference that can be noticed by human eye.
>ah, phase ? That doesn't really make sense for impulse signals which are synthesised from numerous
Actually it does. What looks like a nice rising edge at the source may look really grotty at the receiving end depending on what the cable's attenuation/frequency and phase/frequency characteristics are.
yes, but you don't measure rounding or delay in degrees. Phase only has a meaning at a fixed frequency.
I have a question. If you connect the x-box/blueray player to the tv with a good set of component leads then presumably the signal is D/A converted in the player, sent via the component as Analogue and then displayed? In which case, if the player is good, and has a better D/A converter than the TV then you could get a noticeably better picture this way than by connecting the player using HDMI, sending a digital signal and having it coverted to analgue by the cheaper D/A in the TV? Or have I got something wrong? (quite possible)
answer: flat panel TVs are digital all the way to the pixels :o)
Ah, so no D/A necessary. but...hang on....I don't see ones and zeros at each pixel so something converts the D to a colour and brigthness (or to a value for 3 clours) at each pixel surely!....that sounds like a D/A converter and I can't beleive the TV has 1680x1080 of them!
Am I being dense?
it appears I was wrong, it's only digital to the edge connector :o)
But 8 bit resolution isn't very demanding...
I bought expensive HDMI cables, because I am a mug. They're only useful over long distances.
Apparently analogue cables make little difference in most useages as well.
I was in a TV shop the other day and asked about HDMI cables and the guy launched into the full sales spiel "they start at £25 but really you're best off with these at £60 because...."
"....I get more money for it."
My brother works in Comet and his best commissions come from extra bits like cables. He could sell you a telly for £700 and a hdmi cable for £70 and still 'earn' far more in commission for the cable than the telly.
He could sell you a telly for £700 and a hdmi cable for £70 and still 'earn' far more in commission for the cable than the telly.
That doesn't surprise me - R&D, manufacturing, transportation costs etc of a 286'' flatscreen widescreen LCD plasma LED Emotiocontrol against a generic cable.
Mugs are those that spend that money on the stuff.
He could sell you a telly for £700 and a hdmi cable for £70 and still 'earn' far more in commission for the cable than the telly.
Its the rip off extended guarantee they try and sell you that they make the most on 😉