Do better quality HDMI cables make a difference?

I have a cheap £10 HDMI cable from comet and also a £70 cable (got it free with my TV)

I tested this and noticed that both are the same with hardly any difference at all. Its just a way of companies making more money.
 
Lowe said:
The only time it really makes a difference is on long runs
Click to expand...

Agreed. I wouldn't get a cheap cable for a run around 15 meters. I've had 10 and 15 meter hdmi cables that couldn't handle 1080p/24. Lesser resolutions worked fine. My current 15m cost 50 quid and works fine - the £80-100 jobbies are a con. For anything under 5m get the cheapest going :)
 
as stated above the only real gains to be had from expensive 24 carrat gold, silver solderd, platinum shielded, oxygen free, single cored hdmi leads is when you need to run a distance greater than say 7 to 10 meters.

more so at 1-3 meters the quality is of no consiquense other than weather its going to fall apart when you take it out of the packaging, grab any hdmi cable you like form the bay for pennys and you will be very satisfied with the picture you get.
i personly got a 5m 90 degree to 180 degree Hdmi cable for £6 inc and couldnt be happier with it.
 
I remember they did a test on the gadget show a few months back. Same blu-ray player, disk and TV with different HDMI cables, 1 mega cheap and 1 really expensive. The two images look exactly the same quality.
 
Good to get it across to the masses but Gadget show is ****.

Get over to avforums and watch the interview 'HDMI 1.4 explained'. Mr Man from the HDMI testing company puts it out there, so it isn't just us mere mortals saying it :D
 
Jonnybmac said:
ive recently thought the same thing and have been advised so long as they are 1.3 HDMI certified then theyre a winner. its mostly due interference as others have mentioned
Click to expand...

The cables themselves are identical, the Certification is simply a way of slapping a higher price tag on to the cables.

All that matters is that both devices either end are the same spec if you want the features of say HDMI 1.4.

A USB cable is a USB cable, 1 or 2, it's the same cable, the devices either end determine what version it runs at.

That's because USB cables simply have 2 data wires and 2 "power" wires which are a + and - 5v.

I'm pretty sure all current HDMI cables are single link, so the only time a new cable will be needed is when a certain spec of HDMI is actually dual link "DVI" and thus needs the right cable for that.

Also, on the thread's topic, HDMI cables DO NOT make ANY difference at all, a lot of people will try to ram it down your throat that it makes a huge amount of difference.

People can't definitely prove speaker cables make a difference to sound, I think it's a load of nonsense, if a run of speaker wire is of a sufficient gauge, then the sound will be as it should.

A good example that I've experience first had is having a headphone extension cable between my iPod and earphones, I was listening to some tracks, and I thought they must have been remixes or something as some instruments were simply missing.

What was there sounded perfectly, just that parts were missing. As soon as I took the headphone adapter off and rain it straight to my earphones, the lead instruments popped back in.

Turns out my headphone adapter had frayed inside and that was making parts go missing.

Which leads me to believe that audio coming out "perfectly" is dependant on the gauge of the wire, the only differences that will ever occur will be detrimental to the sound if the gauge isn't sufficient enough, once it hits the right gauge, the sound will never change from that.
 
http://audioholics.com/education/cables/long-hdmi-cable-bench-tests/evaluation-conclusion

When I finally got a result, sparkles abounded on the screen, even shooting horizontal lines across parts of the picture in frequent intervals. But this was only after traversing over 65 feet of HDMI cable. So far, my theory on longer-run HDMI cables was a near-bust. Sending 1080p content through this 25 meter juggernaut from an HDMI 1.3-capable player (the Playstation 3) yielded this:
Click to expand...
75795766.jpg


If you read the article, HDMI 1.0 is a busted flush when it comes to 1080p over long distances. The later versions of HDMI (1.2 / 1.3) produced the lower half of the above picture, accompanied with random frame drops and such.

Long story short, if you need a long cable, get a certified one. If you need a short cable, use some coat hangers :P
 
yeah, i think its hard to deny on an electronic level, and scientific level there are potentially vast differences between the good and bad. Whether that manifests itself in a visual improveent or not is up for debate, and the answer is probably not on short lengths.
 
Ignore worthless filth like What Hifi when it comes to HDMI cable reviews. They are simply absurd. In fact, ignoring anything What Hifi says isn't a bad thing to do.
 
You will see NO visual quality difference whatsoever.

If you do, then your picture will become unwatchable and you will know straight away.

In short, buy the cheapest cable you can find, try it. If it looks alright, it's the best possible picture you are going to get.
 
Even over distance, most if not all HDMI cables with solidly built plugs will be fine. I mean, I regularly run 50m of VGA cable in presentation installs and there is no loss in quality through that. So, even if loss in HDMI over distance was an issue, it would be a distance you are probably never going to worry about
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom