HDMI Cables explained

I love the smell of a good cable 'debate' in the morning 🙂

ton's your cheap cable guy………….. 8)

http://www.thatcable.com/%5B/url%5D

Agreed!

Even "cheap" HDMI cables are overpriced IMO.

That said, cables CAN make an audible difference for hifi, even if SFB says I'm tricking myself.

£1.50 for a 1mtr from me.

cables CAN make an audible difference for hifi, even if SFB says I'm tricking myself.

of course they can. As can taping silver paper over stuff as recommended by Peter Belt. Never underestimate the power of the mind.

What. Ever.

Where's woppit this morning?

Anyway – I tend to buy just over the budget range in order to get cables that have connectors that don't fall apart

Audioholics covered this a while back. Interesting reading if you're that way inclined…

http://www.audioholics.com/education/cables/long-hdmi-cable-bench-tests/hdmi-cable-testing-results%5D

Incindentally, Monster Cables have been ripping people off & sueing anyone who dares to look at them in a way they don't approve for years. Google "blue jeans monster cable" for some fun reading (again, if that way inclined).

I bought a few HDMI cables for £1.00 each on Amazon………. work perfectly 🙂

Yo.

Right, I spent the best part of last year installing HDMI-based systems, one of the jobs is a large residence with two cinema rooms. Cable distances are no more than 10m but not far off it. We had a BD player, Sky HD, PS3 and a media centre box with HDMI out.

A bit like an MOT which certifies your car to be road worth to a minimum standard, the same applies to making a HDMI cable, so tolerances, twist and consistency within the build of the cable and the connector *are* important factors to take into account. So, a cheapy cable will work for you with an 'off the shelf' tv and BD player…. to a point. 720 will look alright and i'm quite sure you'll be pretty pleased with it at 1080p/i. However, the moment you introduce more than one source involved in that same signal cable, you can occasionally get synch issues with the information (HDMI was invented to reduce piracy, so the BD and the TV 'talk' to each other to confirm all is) … so your tv doesn't always display quickly, if you have to run near other cables you can occasionally see what appears to be sparkles on the screen – this is interference. There are a whole wealth of other issues such as green/pink screens.

I appreciate this won't happen to everyone, but not everyone has a 50" Panasonic true 1080p screen, a host of HDMI-source equipment and a projector bolted to the ceiling.

1080 is the current standard, but we'll soon be moving to 1200 and greater. So if that cable you have plastered in the wall/across the room/in the ceiling needs replacing, the cost of doing that tends to be greater than the right cable first time round.

Monster charge a shed-load of money, and having been to their training courses and took along my own-sourced cables to have in effect a sweep test, its easy to see the signal degradation above 1080p.

So, buy low-cost cables by all means, but, don't expect huge results with increasing resolution – which is just grand for most of you. just don't dismiss it as snake oil.

hope this helps,
jt

what he said ———^

A PS3 pluged into an average telly at an average distance in an average house is fine with a 99p HDMI cable. Change one of the above for something else (say a 20m run, multiple cables or higher resolution) and you'll run into problems.

Agree. I bought cheap HDMI and optical cables

But, my speaker cables which are hardwired into the walls costs hundreds – and you can hear the difference over cheaper stuff.

That said, cables CAN make an audible difference for hifi, even if SFB says I'm tricking myself.

But not as much as having curtains up in the room you are listening in. Or by having something slightly obscuring a speaker such as the arm of a chair.

You really would have to be in perfect conditions in order to have the faintest possibility of potentially hearing the smallest difference in sound quality. If you have just had your ears syringed, have perfect hearing and are in perfect atmospheric conditions that is.

Possibly.

I wouldn't go bargain basement at 10m ish lengths, but there's no need to pay any more than what these guys[/url] charge in my experience, at least for runs up to 10m (which I use in my dedicated home cinema). I use one of their cables (9.5m actually) from processor to projector, and a freebie 1m hdmi from blu-ray player to processor. I definitely wouldn't spend more than a few quid for a 2m or shorter hdmi. Companies out there trying to charge mega bucks are quite simply fleecing the gullible.

Now, back in the days of analogue video transmission (scart, component etc) it was a different story. Massive difference between good & bad cables in my experience.

You really would have to be in perfect conditions in order to have the faintest possibility of potentially hearing the smallest difference in sound quality

That's not my experience (of course you need decent set-up) but I'm not going to argue with you about it.

This is heading in the inevitable direction of every cable thread in the history of mankind 😆

lol 😛

Excellent. We were just taking the piss out of a pillock at work for buying £100+ HDMI cables.
Lidls and Ebay for me 🙂

but I'm not going to argue with you about it.

is this you not arguing ?

simonfbarnes – Member

is this you not arguing ?
Yes.

I like Denon's $500 Cat-5:

A mate of mine has company that gets all sorts of cables made abroad and he supplies them to the sky box, telly, etc manufacturers in this country……. he uses cheap cables.

Cheap cables are fine.. Just make sure you use them the right way round..

😉

What happens if you tie a knot in a cable? Does the signal get jammed up?

I had a quick Google about this when I got my new TV. Apparently it is technically possible for HDMI cable quality to affect picture quality. This is due to an HDMI cable not transmitting one stream of digital data, but several. Over long distances (30+ metres I think the test said) the signals can get out of sync or start to suffer from interference. For shorter distances the test couldn't find any differences between cables.

I might market a cable cleaner – a high pitched frequency recorded onto disk designed to be played through the DVD player/CD player/Bluray player that resonates through the cables and 'cleans' them.

I bet there will be idiots that would buy it.

mastiles_fanylion

I want one, how much ?

Lots – the costs for the R&D into creating the correct pitches and frequencies to clean different types of cables will be astronomical. Then we will need to pay the performers to create the suite of sounds.

Must be a good £5 per disk for standard cables, but that rises to £200 per disk for the specialist sounds needed to *clean* high-end cables.

What is the number for Dragon's Den? I am going to market with this one 🙂

My problem has been getting HDMI cables short enough. I only want 500mm but not found any 🙁

Cheap cables are fine.. Just make sure you use them the right way round..

LOL!

I must confess I was taken in by 'directional cables' when I bought my first bits of half-decent stereo gear. Then, it dawned on me that there was no possible way having a bit of copper wire round one way or the other could make any difference! 😆

I do know that there is a difference between 5m of cheap thin telephone wire, and some thick 315 strand speaker wire. Couple of mates and I did a 'test' to see if all the hype was bollocks or not. The thin wire produced a noticeably lower sound volume, and the frequency range was reduced by a fair bit. Fair enough; the physics of that seems to make sense. As for £1-2 a metre speaker wire V £££s stuff, I'm not having it. I don't have good enough hearing, or the sort of set-up that warrants such expense. TBH, even if I had the money, I doubt I'd bother anyway.

Better quality cables do have superior metals/soldering/sheilding etc, and will last longer before corroding and that, maybe, but then, a £10 interconnect is as good as a £100, for ordinary home use.

At the end of the day, it's the enjoyment of the music, not the sound, that's important, surely?

a £10 interconnect

wow, are you made of money ??

I do know that there is a difference between 5m of cheap thin telephone wire, and some thick 315 strand speaker wire.

If you're that bothered – just use cheap stranded mains cable for the speakers

I know, even that is probably an extravagance. But they are more robust than the cheapo ones.

If you're that bothered – just use cheap stranded mains cable for the speakers

You're right of course- I've seen sound engineers wiring stuff up with electrical flex! 😆

I've always had a few metres of speaker cable thrown in for free/peanuts when buying bits from Richer sounds, so I'm not bothered. A mate spent £80 on some big chunky cables once, then on closer inspection discovered them to be made of stuff from Maplins which would have cost about £10 tops! 😐

At the end of the day, it's the enjoyment of the music, not the sound, that's important, surely?

Indeed – and you can hear it better and enjoy it more when the sound is cleaner.

At the end of the day, I can see why there is a market for this stuff – if you have just spent £5k on a home theatre system, you wouldn't wire it all up with cheap cables, even if any sound/vision quality difference is smaller than negligible.

I guess a similarity could be drawn to bikers – having just spent £3k on a new bike, you wouldn't then buy all new cheap kit – you would want shorts, tops, windproofs, gloves that match the quality of the bike. Or new car buyers – a bloke in his new BMW isn't going to put in a set of cheap floor mats – he'll spend a bit more because he feels the car is worth it.

The general rule of thumb i seem to remember is spend 10-20% of the value of your kit but no more on cables, sounds fine to me. Spend £100 on an amp and £100 on a CD player and spend a max of £40 on cables.

Indeed – and you can hear it better and enjoy it more when the sound is cleaner.

Really? See, a tune I like can have the same emotional impact on me wether it's on a nice stereo, or a little radio. I can 'enjoy' it just as much. It's nice to have a decent stereo to listen to stuff, and yes, the sound quality is better, but considering the physical acoustic properties of most homes, it's not worth spending thousands and thousands. Just a waste of money. Like having a Bugatti Veyron and only ever driving to the shops. The kudos of ownership is more important than the thing itself. Bollocks to that.

I like listening to stuff late at night. Everything's quieter, and there's less distraction.

Whats the crossover between those that believe in magic cables that speak only unto them and those that believe in a supreme being.