Cables Where From? Does it matter?

mrk · 22 Nov 2015 at 17:56

At work I get HDMI cables for 85p each. Consumers get fleeced in pound shops I tell you!

dowie · 22 Nov 2015 at 20:59

ThaReaperGuy said:
They were really good, they now sell them at a higher price due to that! Went in to buy 2 more and they were 4 quid each.

eh? Surely the point of pound land is that everything is £1?

Hyburnate · 22 Nov 2015 at 21:13

dowie said:
eh? Surely the point of pound land is that everything is £1?

Yeah they're modular now, you have to buy both jacks, the cable and then the disposable jointing tool

gothic_hobbit · 22 Nov 2015 at 23:59

mrk said:
At work I get HDMI cables for 85p each. Consumers get fleeced in pound shops I tell you!

I concur.

99p stores should be getting in on the act.

Monkeynut · 23 Nov 2015 at 00:50

asim18 said:
Thing is a bad quality HDMI cable WILL cause erroneous data transmission. It's not as simple as "it will either work or not". There's a million+ pixels to be fed continuously with data. Transmission errors in a continuous digital data stream can and do occur, and will manifest in the form of small and barely visible artefacts.

I've had a couple cheap cables and they cause very small errors/spots at the sub-pixel level, you have to put your face a couple inches from the screen to actually see it but bad cables do cause problems.

Before anyone says, no I'm not saying it's worth spending more than £15 on an HDMI cable, I'm just saying some really cheap ones do cause data loss.

I would reccommend OcUK though, the cable I purchased years ago is still going strong.

Depends on the resolution and length of cable too though!

Angilion · 23 Nov 2015 at 02:02

Wrathamon said:
I know that.

But if a potential customer says 'No' to a ridiculous cable, 'No' to accidental damage cover, 'No' to a TV stand... surely having to say it once is enough?

Why should I have to repeat myself about twenty times "I just want to buy the telly!" over the course of about 10 minutes of actually just trying to buy it!

Don't they want the sale? They very nearly lost it!

They will have been ordered to harass customers in order to extract more profit from them ("upselling"). It's SOP for low quality businesses and employees must follow it or be sacked. Few large businesses give a damn about their customers, who are just marks to be farmed for profit to the maximum possible extent, including deception and harassment. The people at a decision-making level don't have any interaction with customers and may well be psychopaths. They won't see customers as people. Employees in shops probably will, but they're not allowed to decide anything about anything, let alone company policy.

cu3ed · 23 Nov 2015 at 02:26

TBH first hand I did buy ultra cheap HDMI cables for my screen/ and PC.
Both of them resulted in having some kind of weird interference and snowy static over the images. I'm not saying you have to pay for expensive ones, just one up for the ultra super cheap ones you see about.

Greebo · 23 Nov 2015 at 07:15

I have always found it made no difference except when it came to DisplayPort leads. Bizarrely I had issues with the one which came with my 4K monitor and the one I bought from ocuk was even worse. Finally had to buy a branded name quality one for over a tenner

Cosimo · 23 Nov 2015 at 08:19

peterwalkley said:
Haribo !

... and the customer service!

Schlong&Stable · 23 Nov 2015 at 09:34

Well a cheap cable may be more prone to fault, but faults aside it shouldn't make a difference.

Werewolf · 23 Nov 2015 at 09:47

cu3ed said:
TBH first hand I did buy ultra cheap HDMI cables for my screen/ and PC.
Both of them resulted in having some kind of weird interference and snowy static over the images. I'm not saying you have to pay for expensive ones, just one up for the ultra super cheap ones you see about.

You shouldn't ever get static on any display using HDMI cables (or if you do it's not the cable at fault).

HDMI is digital with a fair amount of error correction, if you get a problem it will either be blocking (like a scratched DVD or poor digital TV signal), or a blank screen/no audio.

bbg404 · 23 Nov 2015 at 09:56

Thanks for all the reply's I think ill stick with OCUK cables..

seabiscuit · 23 Nov 2015 at 23:40

Nothing wrong with upselling *IF* it's done without being a complete (insert your own choice swear word here). For example, if people buy a hard drive from me, I'll ask if they need a SATA cable. 95% of people don't, which is perfectly fine, and I wouldn't push a sale like thatr But some people aren't sure and they'll buy one in case they need it, and some people need one and have forgotten that they need one, so it's better that they've been asked. It's a slightly better sale for OcUK and we make a few pence extra. I don't feel bad because our cables are not Monster Cable prices, and even if it's not needed at that point, spare cables are always good to have.

2StepSteve · 23 Nov 2015 at 23:42

Monster. Cable.

Believe the hype.

Monkeynut · 23 Nov 2015 at 23:47

Werewolf said:
You shouldn't ever get static on any display using HDMI cables (or if you do it's not the cable at fault).

HDMI is digital with a fair amount of error correction, if you get a problem it will either be blocking (like a scratched DVD or poor digital TV signal), or a blank screen/no audio.

You can get visual snow if there's too much interference! It's usually when it's right on the threshold between losing the signal and a perfect picture.

asim18 · 23 Nov 2015 at 23:59

Werewolf said:
You shouldn't ever get static on any display using HDMI cables (or if you do it's not the cable at fault).

HDMI is digital with a fair amount of error correction, if you get a problem it will either be blocking (like a scratched DVD or poor digital TV signal), or a blank screen/no audio.

Monkeynut's right. I've seen it myself.

I believe the blocking you see on DVDs is called macroblocking and only affects certain encoded formats. MPEG being one of them. It happens when the decoder sees a problem with the data stream and throws a fit.

HDMI is an uncompressed real-time signal travelling through copper, there's no encode or decode operation happening. I would be highly doubtful of macroblocking happening due to weak HDMI signal.

What can happen though and what I've seen happening myself, is you can see errors at the pixel level and it looks like snow (not blocking). That is, you might see some individual pixels randomly flashing red, some might randomly flash blue.