HDMI to HDMI cable?

This debate always swings too far the other way :(

If any old cable will do to carry a signal, then we wouldn't have needed to rip out CAT3 cable and install cat6/5e cable.
Similarly, getting a 340Mhz signal down any old bit of copper without reflections or skew isn't a trivial task.

People seem to go out of their way to get the cheapest cable possible, when really most viewers wouldn't notice the degradation from overloaded error correction circuits, any more than they noticed jitter on CD's.
Just because you can't casually see/hear it, doesn't mean the effect isn't there.

Don't buy a cable from Monster, but don't rush to buy the two quid cable either.
 
orderoftheflame said:
Gold plated? Results in straighter ones and rounder zeros doesn't it?
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It probably does in fact result in a more tidy square wave, remember the signal carried by an HDMI cable is an analogue waveform, not a digital one. People need to actually explain this instead of just saying "It's digital so it's either on or off", it's not correct.

I'd go with a cheap one though :p
 
i got 0.15p a cable from china, gold plated and does everything like a normal cable would, takes 1080p and 5.1 audio. People these days get ripped off by monster cables.
 
Zefan said:
It probably does in fact result in a more tidy square wave
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The actual effects of a poor contact are a bit vague,
you can actually get a diode effect from a rusty contact (see Colditz radios),
but since this is actually an RF signal, then any resistance into a capacitive cable load isn't going to be pretty.
I'd be more worried about the quality of the cable sheathing than the contact plating.
 
vonhelmet said:
As said, I'd be more worried about the cable falling to bits than it delivering a poor signal.
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umm, if you were referring to my post, I wasn't really talking about the ruggardness of the cable, but the electrical properties of the cable sheathing :o
Just like you can use mains cable for an aerial downlead, but it won't work very well because the cable isn't designed for RF signals.
 
In a home enviroment you won't notice much if any difference from using a tesco HDMi to a Monster one. I did a test on a cheap HDMi cable and a Monster cable a while back when I worked in an electronics bay. Over 2 metres the cables were almost identical in signal quality until you added outside interference. With low levels of interference the cheap cable signal fell to bits and could not maintain the signal, the Monster cable managed to maintain the signal up to much higher levels of interference almost 8x what the cheap cable could take..Even so both were subjected to much higher levels than you would experience in your home.

So in summary if you need to run your HDMi lead next to some nice big expensive Raf test equipment then buy a monster otherwise the tesco special will be fine...:D
 
My brother works for a major electronics broker and they often get to see manufacturing plants for all kinds of stuff. It wouldn't surprise you to find that you can buy identical cables to Monster without the branding and bright colours for under a fiver. They perform exactly the same, because they come off the same production line. No I am not talking about the 99p HDMI cables, but the 'slightly better quality ones' normally a little fatter, and a touch better made than the Chinese 99p ones
 
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