HDMI Cables

I proudly use a rather heavy-duty-looking cable from my PC to my amp because it's about 7m long, and then have a free, cheap cable going from my amp to my TV and guess what...it's absolutely superb :cool:
 
I like how people have ignored the comprehensive (and considerably more scientific) review that I posted on the first page. I swear people on here just like arguing for the sake of it.

Most cables will operate beyond their designed specifications in the real world.
 
Yamahahahahaha said:
I like how people have ignored the comprehensive (and considerably more scientific) review that I posted on the first page. I swear people on here just like arguing for the sake of it.

Most cables will operate beyond their designed specifications in the real world.
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Not ignored, read and understood a while ago. But thanks again as I hadn't been over to audioholics for a while for a nice read.

But the article is very good :D
 
The best example of audiophiles being stupid people is the fact that Denon sell standard cat5e cables for ridiculous amounts of money! You can guarantee somewhere someone thinks they sound better than the cables I made myself for pence.
 
magick said:
I never bookmarked the webpage and have tried several times to find it again to no avail. If you want to try and search yourself the test was with 4 hdmi ables using Spiderman 2 as the screenshot.
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Ok, thanks. Maybe it's been deleted or something then.
 
Point is, you can't get 'higher quality' 1s and 0s, they're either their in tact, broken up, or not there at all, there aren't half measures in quality when it's digital.

I cringe when I hear people recommend the purchasing of stupidly overpriced cables and I can't understand where the manufactuer's head is when they produce and price said cables.

When I bought my TV from richersounds, one of the staff was trying to force a 'premium' HDMI cable on me, saying that he'll give it to me at a discounted rate, something like £80 down to £50.

I said to him that I'm not interested as there can't be any difference between cheapo HDMI cables and premium ones, binary is binary. Naturally he said I was talking rubish.

What I don't get is how they get away with it though, it's a con and it should be highlighted as one.

When you're talking about analogue, I totally understand how cheap cables have an inferior picture, just compare composite to svideo to scart, to VGA, and it's obvious the type of cable and connection can have an effect on quality.
 
photoshop said:
Theres got to be some difference! Even if its like 0.0000000000000000001
I've seen speaker cables for £0.75p/m and some for £1,080p/m. There must be something in the technology that makes a difference.

I cant really see people paying thousands and thousand pounds on AV hardware and then buying cheap0 cables to link it all together.

Its like buying a veyron and then feeding it on RON95......
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Speaker wire isn't passing a digital signal though, so higher quality components will result in better quallity, but there's a point of diminishing returns and I think £1,080p/m is way way past that point.

The most I'd pay for speaker cable is £50 MAXIMUM for all my speaker cabling, so that's about £2.50 per meter at around 20 meters.
 
kylew said:
When you're talking about analogue, I totally understand how cheap cables have an inferior picture, just compare composite to svideo to scart, to VGA, and it's obvious the type of cable and connection can have an effect on quality.
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Comparing composite to SCART is not the same as comparing cable that costs different amounts of money. For a start SCART can carry a composite signal anyways.

To be honest, it's all down to the end user, if you can't tell a difference between mains cable and speaker cable costing £2/m then why pay £2/m for speaker cable? Same goes for any cabling.
 
kylew said:
Point is, you can't get 'higher quality' 1s and 0s, they're either their in tact, broken up, or not there at all, there aren't half measures in quality when it's digital.

When you're talking about analogue, I totally understand how cheap cables have an inferior picture, just compare composite to svideo to scart, to VGA, and it's obvious the type of cable and connection can have an effect on quality.
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There are no 1s and 0s travelling down a cable it is a voltage usually 5v. An analogue cable uses a varying voltage. Binary 1,s and 0,s was developed as a language to make programming computers easier, there are no 1s and 0s travelling in computers or cables just voltages.
Which means just like an analogue cable digital cables are subject to interference, caused by other devices.
 
MOOGLEYS said:
There are no 1s and 0s travelling down a cable it is a voltage usually 5v. An analogue cable uses a varying voltage. Binary 1,s and 0,s was developed as a language to make programming computers easier, there are no 1s and 0s travelling in computers or cables just voltages.
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It's been awhile since I studied this stuff properly but I thought that voltage was meant to differentiate between 1s and 0s in digital systems? It's the reason why we have to bump the voltage at higher frequencies when overclocking.

MOOGLEYS said:
Which means just like an analogue cable digital cables are subject to interference, caused by other devices.
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Yeah but under what circumstances are you actually going to get the sort of inference that could screw up a digital signal?
 
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MOOGLEYS said:
There are no 1s and 0s travelling down a cable it is a voltage usually 5v. An analogue cable uses a varying voltage. Binary 1,s and 0,s was developed as a language to make programming computers easier, there are no 1s and 0s travelling in computers or cables just voltages.
Which means just like an analogue cable digital cables are subject to interference, caused by other devices.
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Yeah, but in digital cables the voltage is just recorded as high or low, signalling a 1 or 0, it would have to be a lot of interference to make a low voltage be read as the higher voltage or vice versa.
 
As far as i can remember Hdmi cables use tmds to transmit data. This is that each signal has an inverse transmitted down a seperate line. At the recieving end both signals are analised and the comparative difference between the two is what is used as the signal.. This is from my rather useless memory so could be a bit jumbled..

Anway all cables that display the HDMi logo on the packaging have to conform to a set of guidelines and all these cable manufacturers have to send away samples of their cables to be tested. So in theory the £100 monster and the £3 tesco special have all passed the same testing.

You will never generate enough interference in your home to effect the signal being transmitted. Even without any shielding at all the cable would still perform perfectly. In my work we shield digital cables from the effects of high power radar and radio transmissions as a precaution more than a necessity.

My point was just that hdmi cables still rely on a voltage being transmitted down a cable as does an analogue cable. The only true pure digital cable is optical.
 
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makes no difference, at work we sell 1 HDMI at 1.5 metres for £11.99 and another companies for £40+ same length. i use a cheap 1metre cable from major retailer with same name as shaving company and blu-ray look awsome. it's a huge gimmik, and a way to make a huge profit. question that should be asked is how much does it cost the companies to make the cables and how much profit do they make when it's sold.
 
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