The age old HDMI quality myth...

I don't mind spending £20-£30 on a cable, I wouldn't buy from a highstreet shop as they're usually way overpriced.
I always buy good quality cabling though, I know digital signal is different to analog but I just don't wanna risk quality.

I would certainly never spending more than that though.
 
It's not a myth at longer lengths. Digital signals can indeed degrade to the point where the 0s and 1s end up more like 0.5s.

But at 0.5-3m or so, any old thing will probably do :)
 
I bought a £5 HDMI cable for my PS3 and my mate bought his for £20, his fell apart after a week or so later then went and bought another one for £20. Im not a picky person when it comes to the ultimate picture qualilty as i dont have an expensive setup but i can understand people buying one for £30 or so if they have just spent £1000+ on a new setup.
 
stockhausen said:
It's not just the cables; HDMI and BluRay seem to be a 100% con whose only purpose is to encourage consumerism and better facilitate DRM.
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So as to not come across as a complete troll, care to explain your logic? Bluray is quite noticeably better than DVD in terms of picture quality and resolution.
 
panthro said:
Im no digital expert, but how can you get degradation from a digital signal?
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I'm going to assume you know how analogue and digital signals send data, to avoid explaining that, but:

Analogue signals are affected more by interference because a slight change in the amplitude can mean that the whole output is different.

Digital signals however, can only have the two states for which the information is read from. A little bit of interference does not matter, because the signal can be reconstituted depending on whether the section of the wave is closer to 1 or 0. A lot of interference, though, can "blur" the signal until it is hard to reconstitute the signal because the "0" signal can change until it is closer to a 1.

Hard to describe without an image, but I can't seem to find any.
 
To be fair, if they can make money on it then fair enough. It is peoples own stupidity, if you are spending that much money on a TV etc. Then spend a quick hour or so reading up on what you are buying.

One of my mates, who is a ICT Tech, paid £35~ for a hdmi cable after even telling him they will try to sell you an expensive HDMI cable. Own stupidity sometimes.
 
panthro said:
Im no digital expert, but how can you get degradation from a digital signal?
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It works by sending varying voltages, if it's low when it should be high you'll get a 0 instead of a 1; which means you'll get artefacts.

There's error correcting but over long lengths of cable or with a lot of interference you could see an improvement from a better cable.

Of course they're very specific conditions that won't apply to 99% of people, I use ThatCable HDMI cables personally as they're nicely made and cheap.

sara said:
A digital signal is still carried by an analogue wave - over long distances the initially square wave will eventually round off and decrease in amplitude.

If it does this too much, the wave at the receiving end will struggle to hit the voltage boundaries that mark a 0 or a 1, and if it's very high frequency, the bits can blur together.

As said over short distances even with poor copper, this won't be a problem - but over longer distances or like the guy said - if you have a large amount of equipment all strung together, you /could/ be subject to a loss of information. Most digital equipment will use and then clean up the signal going onwards though, so it shouldn't be too bad.
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IIRC the signal is still encoded (TMDS) in order to try and stop signal degradation, it also sends an incerse copy of the signal over a second cable for error checking.

stockhausen said:
It's not just the cables; HDMI and BluRay seem to be a 100% con whose only purpose is to encourage consumerism and better facilitate DRM.
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What's wrong with Blu-Ray?
 
jamief said:
So as to not come across as a complete troll, care to explain your logic? Bluray is quite noticeably better than DVD in terms of picture quality and resolution.
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That is a matter of opinion. Using a Sony BluRay player and a good quality 40" Sony TV, I can't say that I or about a dozen people who have watched it can notice a significant difference between DVD & BluRay.

What I KNOW for a fact is that:
  • HDMI, BluRay players and BluRay disks emerged onto the marketplace some time after DVDs
  • BluRay disks cost more than the same film on DVD
  • BluRay & HDMI is currently harder to pirate than DVD
Some gullible saps can be conned into replacing / upgrading their systems - more fool them ;)
 
stockhausen said:
That is a matter of opinion. Using a Sony BluRay player and a good quality 40" Sony TV, I can't say that I or about a dozen people who have watched it can notice a significant difference between DVD & BluRay.

What I KNOW for a fact is that:
  • HDMI, BluRay players and BluRay disks emerged onto the marketplace some time after DVDs
  • BluRay disks cost more than the same film on DVD
  • BluRay & HDMI is currently harder to pirate than DVD
Some gullible saps can be conned into replacing / upgrading their systems - more fool them ;)
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Really?

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First example I could find, if I posted the 1920x1080 sized pics the differences would even more obvious.
 
I remember with those Coax cables, I bought a 1 meter long one for about 10 quid, at home we had this Red/White RCA cable that was 10 meters long, I compared both cables, I used the red side of the cable, plugged it into the coax output on my PC and the input on my speakers, there was no sound quality difference between the 1 meter and 10 meter cable!! The 10 meter RCA was something cheap from Aldi!

Raikiri said:
Really?





First example I could find, if I posted the 1920x1080 sized pics the differences would even more obvious.
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Is that DVD Vs Blue-ray?? The bottom shot looks well blurred I'm pretty sure movies I've seen with DVD are not blurred like that :confused:
 
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Some people cannot notice the difference if they don't have good eyesight, but throwing a general term around that Blu-Ray isn't better than DVD is simply ignorant.

I know it's Daily Fail but the basis is there: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1116683/Poor-eyesight-makes-HDTV-waste-money.html

Also, it can be dependant on screensize. I'd say a 40" TV is the lower end of the 1080p bracket, compare DVD vs. Blu-Ray on a 60" Plasma or projected image and the difference can be night and day.
 
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willhub said:
Is that DVD Vs Blue-ray?? The bottom shot looks well blurred I'm pretty sure movies I've seen with DVD are not blurred like that :confused:
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Upscaled over a HDMI DVD player they might look better, but yeah; DVDs aren't great.

Here's a best case scenario (animation) where you can clearly see the Blu-Ray has much, much better quality:

 
When I'm watching DVD's I'm sure I never see blurriness like that, looking at those images the blurry DVD makes my eyes go funny.
 
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