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Why all HDMI cables are the same C/net

frankxbe

frankxbe

Super Member
Banned
Expensive HDMI cables are a rip-off and offer no difference in picture quality over cheap ones. So when a salesman tries to up-sell, politely tell him he's wrong and move on with the sale.
Right now you can buy a 6-foot-long HDMI cable for $3.50. Or $19.99. Or $99.99. Or $699.99. Salespeople, retailers, and especially cable manufacturers want you to believe that you'll get better picture and sound quality with a more expensive HDMI cable.
They're lying. You see, there's lots of money in cables. Your money.
Dozens of reputable and disreputable companies market HDMI cables, and many outright lie to consumers about the "advantages" of their product.
read more : http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20056502-1/why-all-hdmi-cables-are-the-same/
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Long as they transmit data less expensive ones $20.00 ~ or less in my opinion are fine for me after all it's a dac's job to correct errors
if a data cable is causing a problem it should be clearly obvious signal will just drop out same for usb cables in my opinion .
of course YMMV.
Probably a good thing that at least some discussion is getting out to a more general audience .
 
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The only merit I can give to "higher quality" HDMI cables would be their failure rate. I've known cheap cables, if not manufactured very well, fail more than well manufactured ones. HDMI cables fail more often than you think, it's actually pretty surprising. Overall HDMI itself is just a very finicky technology.
 
Boy, I've never had an HDMI cable fail but then I've never had speaker wire fail or interconnects fail and I use basic stuff.

I don't buy into the whole voodoo cable thing save for decent manufacturing quality. At my level of gear, spending more than $1 a foot for speaker wire or about $20-30 for a short interconnect makes zero sense.
 
I was about to respond with the "it's a representation of a digital signal over an analog cable", but then I read the article and saw the ingenious mechanism used. Thanks for the heads-up!
 
CSG123 said:
Boy, I've never had an HDMI cable fail but then I've never had speaker wire fail or interconnects fail and I use basic stuff.

I don't buy into the whole voodoo cable thing save for decent manufacturing quality. At my level of gear, spending more than $1 a foot for speaker wire or about $20-30 for a short interconnect makes zero sense.
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It's strange, but when I sold electronics for a living my first question to a customer would be if there was something wrong with the picture would be to try a different HDMI cable. It surprised me how often that was the culprit. Not all the time, but enough to make it a problem. When you consider that inside the cable there are 9 very fine strands of wire being used, it's not that hard to see how it could fail.

The other problem with HDMI is distance. You can't go very far before you start getting problems. I think it's something like at 25 feet you have a 40% loss of data transfer. The better way to do long distance digital video is with ethernet, but that's a whole different ballgame.
 
I haven't used hdmi cables that much, but I'm surprised how much trouble I've had. Out of 8 cables I've used, 2 had problems - noise, or failure to connect at all. Are the connectors on these especially fussy?
 
CSG123 said:
Boy, I've never had an HDMI cable fail but then I've never had speaker wire fail or interconnects fail and I use basic stuff.

I don't buy into the whole voodoo cable thing save for decent manufacturing quality. At my level of gear, spending more than $1 a foot for speaker wire or about $20-30 for a short interconnect makes zero sense.
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I once believed that interconnects were interconnects and speaker wire was speaker wire until October of '95. Since I couldn't afford a receiver based system, I bought a Sony LBT-D560 book shelf system which ended up being replaced with a D570 while still under warranty. After setting up the D560 and giving the speakers break in time, I decided to watch "Return of the Jedi" through it. The first time a star destroyer flew accross the screen, the rumble became a rattle. ???? I played a CD, it sounded fine, tried the passage through the TV speakers, no problem. I went out, got a pair of the most expensive cables I could find, Monster, $75. I hooked them up and did some burn in with TV audio. Then, I watched that passage again and RUMBLE! Much more recently, with my current system, I replaced my 16 AWG speaker wire with 12 AWG. After a little burn in, I noticed a huge improvement in sound quality even during subtle passages at very low volumes.

You must remember that analog and digital each have their strengths and weaknesses. One of digital's strengths is that it's not very sensitive to wire quality. As long as there is a solid connection, digital is good to go. Analog on the other hand much more sensitive to wire quality. Now, I'm not suggesting that you should get the very most expensive interconnects and speaker wire out there. Nor am I suggesting the very cheapest interconnect for a digital signal. I would suggest a $30 cable for digital coax, $50 for optical, about $75 to a couple hundred for cables carrying an analog signal and about $40 12 guage speaker wire. I would also suggest trying different brands when able. That's just my 1¢ worth.
 
I reckon I'm lucky, I've been using HDMI cables for several years, have 7 in use now (2 cable boxes, 2 blu ray players, 1 DVD jukebox and 2 Apple TVs) and never had one fail. I use the ones Comcast brings and other inexpensive ones from Amazon and Parts Express.
 
I have 20$ hdmi 15 foot cables
40$ 15 foot cables

and

100 ft pro quality hdmi cables.
all at home set up simultaniously.

There is no difference, unless there's a problem with a cable.I have been hearing more and more about how certain TV's (SONY, I'm Looking At You) are particular and won't output the image correctly on 'cheaper' cables,

but In real world experiance, and I do set up HDMI cables all the time for work, and frequently long, long runs. They either work, or they don't. No difference. No ghosting problems, no contrast problems, no Hue problems, no nothing problems. They Just Work. (except when they don't)

Like the article says, they already do error correction, like balanced audio cables do.

some cheaper cables may not have robust enough terminations, or super thin gauge wire that breaks easier, but that's not the same thing.

jaz
 
SuperjazzyJa said:
I once believed that interconnects were interconnects and speaker wire was speaker wire until October of '95. Since I couldn't afford a receiver based system, I bought a Sony LBT-D560 book shelf system which ended up being replaced with a D570 while still under warranty. After setting up the D560 and giving the speakers break in time, I decided to watch "Return of the Jedi" through it. The first time a star destroyer flew accross the screen, the rumble became a rattle. ???? I played a CD, it sounded fine, tried the passage through the TV speakers, no problem. I went out, got a pair of the most expensive cables I could find, Monster, $75. I hooked them up and did some burn in with TV audio. Then, I watched that passage again and RUMBLE! Much more recently, with my current system, I replaced my 16 AWG speaker wire with 12 AWG. After a little burn in, I noticed a huge improvement in sound quality even during subtle passages at very low volumes.

You must remember that analog and digital each have their strengths and weaknesses. One of digital's strengths is that it's not very sensitive to wire quality. As long as there is a solid connection, digital is good to go. Analog on the other hand much more sensitive to wire quality. Now, I'm not suggesting that you should get the very most expensive interconnects and speaker wire out there. Nor am I suggesting the very cheapest interconnect for a digital signal. I would suggest a $30 cable for digital coax, $50 for optical, about $75 to a couple hundred for cables carrying an analog signal and about $40 12 guage speaker wire. I would also suggest trying different brands when able. That's just my 1¢ worth.
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If that's your belief, I won't argue with you but other than speakers, I feel the same way about the nonsense of "burn in" as I do about overpriced wire and connects. I've been doing this for about 40 years now and I don't buy into half the nonsense I read about audio replication. But what you hear is what you hear so if you want to spend a couple hundred for interconnects on your system, be my guest.
 
Loved that article and oh so true! LOL! Since the beginning of HDMI I knew there would inevitably be the carnies out for marks to exploit. Fortunately this is one standard that can't be magiced away but as usual it's amazing the number of them out there. The biggest problem I've seen personally is poor connectors. Tore apart a few cheaper ones that didn't work and you could see the wires were never terminated correctly to begin with inside the connector.

Frankxbe thanks for a great post and an informative read. You'd be surprised by who were the most resistant to the development of the HDMI spec. But then again maybe you wouldn't. Care to guess?
 
Love-Vinyl said:
Loved that article and oh so true! LOL! Since the beginning of HDMI I knew there would inevitably be the carnies out for marks to exploit. Fortunately this is one standard that can't be magiced away but as usual it's amazing the number of them out there. The biggest problem I've seen personally is poor connectors. Tore apart a few cheaper ones that didn't work and you could see the wires were never terminated correctly to begin with inside the connector.

Frankxbe thanks for a great post and an informative read. You'd be surprised by who were the most resistant to the development of the HDMI spec. But then again maybe you wouldn't. Care to guess?
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Don't know, who?

As for cables, interesting to see how all these cables (network, etc) have all these very tiny connections and connectors contacts. I'd much rather have a substantial connector, no matter what the signal. But I guess digital is a much different animal.
 
Frankxbe thanks for a great post and an informative read. You'd be surprised by who were the most resistant to the development of the HDMI spec. But then again maybe you wouldn't. Care to guess?[/QUOTE]

Actually I don't know shot in the dark MPAA ?
 
With my Apple TV half the time it says "retrieving data". So frikin' annoyin'.


Ben aka MacKat
 
I have a 25 foot Monoprice HDMI cable running from my receiver to my projector. I don't have any problems. If I was in an environment where I constantly plugged and unplugged a cable and a more expensive HDMI was demonstrated to have more robust connectors, I would think the added expense to be worth it. Fortunately, that's not the case.
 
Digital and reeor correction.

In any system using digital signals and error correction, there is only limited "head room" for the error correction ability to work without being noticeable (the signal looks clean).

If you put in place a poor quality cable in the signal path, you may still get a "clean" signal" and claim the cable "has no effect", but what you don't see happening (without test equipment) is that the error correction is now "cleaning up the mess" and the result is still a "clean" signal" to your eye and ear.

The harder the error correction system has to work, the less it is able to handle any ADDITIONAL errors that may creep in to the signal path.

Having a (digital) signal path free as possible of KNOWN problems (wrong\poor quality\damaged cables) will "free up" the error correction "head room" that the system can provide, and help to correct for "other things" that may not be under your control (errors in transmission\multipath\noise etc.)

Unfortunately your ears and eyes can't tell how "hard" the error correction system is working, and you don't know if it is just "loafing" or almost ready to "drop out" due to overload (the reconstructed signal may be UN-affected).

The process is somewhat like in an analog signal chain, the component that has the most noise\distortion will effect the sound regardless of the other components used, remove the "bad" component and the others will benefit.

Mark T.:music:
 
Testing Digital

markn2wae said:
If you put in place a poor quality cable in the signal path, you may still get a "clean" signal" and claim the cable "has no effect", but what you don't see happening (without test equipment) is that the error correction is now "cleaning up the mess" and the result is still a "clean" signal" to your eye and ear.
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It would seem that testing would be straightforward. Insert a testing device just before the cable and count the number of errors reaching it. Place another testing device at the output of the cable and compare the error counts. Any difference in counts could be attributed to the cable. I wonder if anyone has done an objective (can I use that word?) test along these lines.

The nice thing about digital is that some of the electrical characteristics of a cable that could degrade analog signals don't necessarily have the same effect on digital. It's like digital TV, which is both a blessing and a curse. I'm on the fringe of a TV channel's broadcast signal. In the analog days, heavy rain would introduce more and more snow until there was more noise than signal and you couldn't see a picture or hear the sound. Now that the station is digital, I get a perfect picture up until the very end, then I get pixellation followed by signal loss. I might have gotten a signal a little longer in the analog days, but it would have been very noisy and really not worth watching.
 
RichPA said:
I haven't used hdmi cables that much, but I'm surprised how much trouble I've had. Out of 8 cables I've used, 2 had problems - noise, or failure to connect at all. Are the connectors on these especially fussy?
Click to expand...

I have a Western Digital media player in the bedroom that kept failing on me- no picture or sound. I kept futzing with it until I realized the problem- Yep, the HDMI cable. Weird thing is, I just disconnected and reconnected from both ends- and it worked again. It still goes out once in a while, but I just reconnect it again and it works...:scratch2:
 
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