HDMI to HDMI

[kojak]

I need a couple of 5m HDMI to HDMI cables. I dont want crap but I also dont want expensive. What do you recommend and where from. Cheers.

[mackie1]

I got some of these:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130511

in 1m and 2m lengths and they've been fine, noticeably better constructed than cheapo Tesco ones.

[kojak]

Cheers.

They seem a bit on the cheap side. Was expecting to pay £20/£30 for one.

[kojak]

Anymore ideas for decent leads around the £20/£30 mark.

[JustinP1]

Are they being installed in a wall or right next to other cables or something like that?

If not, those ebuyer ones say they so up to 1080p.

Above those, even the difference between a £10 and a £200 cable is at best going to be marginal - even if you can see a difference at all.

[kojak]

JustinP1 said:

Are they being installed in a wall or right next to other cables or something like that?

If not, those ebuyer ones say they so up to 1080p.

Above those, even the difference between a £10 and a £200 cable is at best going to be marginal - even if you can see a difference at all.

They will be next to other cables.

I didnt fancy paying £70 upwards which is what i;ve been quoted, even though its a quality plasma I bought, hence the question. I'll look for some cheaper ones then around the £20/£30 mark.

[declasm]

buy the cheapest you can find - it's a digital cable!!!!!
http://www.theps3faq.com/?q=node/10

[JustinP1]

declasm said:

buy the cheapest you can find - it's a digital cable!!!!!
http://www.theps3faq.com/?q=node/10

Shall I be the first to wade in...

Can you really trust a serious technical discussion which includes the content:

"If they SEE the signal, they work. If they DON'T, they DON'T. LOL"

(The LOL wasn't added for effect - that was really there.)


What he says would be completely true if you are going to invest in your cheap cable and wrap it in lead before freezing the whole thing to absolute zero so it would be a perfect conductor.

But his discussion has missed the fact that cables are not perfect conductors, and they don't transfer signal over an unlimited distance. That is why firstly your digital device will have what is known as 'error correction' in order to make a best guess of what the signal is rather than just showing you nothing. Over distance you need better cable in order to transmit that signal. This is why many cables advertise a limit in metres to what they can transmit 1080p over. Over that distance, the signal is poor enough that not even the error correction can keep up and you get signal dropout.

I hope he says 'LOL' when one day he buys the cheapest cable he can lay his hands on for a broadcast and it ends up with signal loss...

[WZC1]

The very cheap cables can cause a lot of problems and I would advise against them. Picture quality and signal integrity can both be seriously hampered and a great deal of cables advertised as v1.3 are not. The main thing we find is the connector itself is not made properly/of good enough quality and it in turn will not fit into your products correctly.

Nick

[kojak]

Cheers.

[cjs]

Nothing wrong with the Plexus cables from Ebuyer. I have used dozens. I'll sell you some for £30 .

[rossjlee]

I appreciate some people are happy with the eBuyer cables. I have no reason to doubt that they would be some improvement to the freebies that are thrown in with your DVD player.

The stance that HDMI is a digital signal so it doesn't make a difference is incorrect.

HDMI works by sending the signal down one set of wires and then an inverse copy down another set. The picture you see on screen is an 'average' of the two. The cheaper the cable, the more interference there will be and more room for differences between the two signals.

Boring part aside...I have a high performance blu ray and 1080P projector-based system and had a play around with different cables. I can recommend the QED Performance Qunex HDMI-P 1mtr Hdmi Lead which I purchased at £24.50 for your price range.

[garycat]

Kenable are good suppliers

http://www.kenable.co.uk/product_info.php/cPath/23...

and also Cable Universe

http://www.cableuniverse.co.uk/catalog/cable/hdmi-...

[Mr2Mike]

rossjlee said:

I appreciate some people are happy with the eBuyer cables. I have no reason to doubt that they would be some improvement to the freebies that are thrown in with your DVD player.

No, there would almost certainly be no improvement unless the freebie was absolutely dire. Over a short length of cable (and the ones bundled with HDMI compatible equipment tend to be 1-2meters), HDMI signals are very robust due to differential signalling. It would take something with the electrical qualities of a bit of damp string to cause problems in this case. At longer cable lengths were loss and reflections have more impact, the design of the cable becomes of more importance. At around 10 meters with a 1080p signal you are approaching the point at which a really poor cable could cause enough degradation to cause picture artifacts.

At 5 meters even a really cheap cable is most unlikely to cause problems, but I can understand the reluctance to buy the cheapest. However, you can get something like a Vivanco Prowire cable for £27, which is a very decent quality cable with fully shielded connectors.

If it makes you feel better to waste money, then go for a QED or Ixos cable, but I guarantee there will be no difference in picture or sound quality.

[FlossyThePig]

I put a link on a previous thread to a site that had conducted both objective and subjective tests on long HDMI cables. I had come across the link on an earlier thread but I'm not sure who posted it originally.

It is very rare in the HiFi world to come across objective testing. Nearly all are highly subjective.

O/T: Have any of the High End manufacturers taken part in double blind testing?

[rossjlee]

Mr2Mike said:

rossjlee said:

I appreciate some people are happy with the eBuyer cables. I have no reason to doubt that they would be some improvement to the freebies that are thrown in with your DVD player.

No, there would almost certainly be no improvement unless the freebie was absolutely dire. Over a short length of cable (and the ones bundled with HDMI compatible equipment tend to be 1-2meters), HDMI signals are very robust due to differential signalling. It would take something with the electrical qualities of a bit of damp string to cause problems in this case. At longer cable lengths were loss and reflections have more impact, the design of the cable becomes of more importance. At around 10 meters with a 1080p signal you are approaching the point at which a really poor cable could cause enough degradation to cause picture artifacts.

At 5 meters even a really cheap cable is most unlikely to cause problems, but I can understand the reluctance to buy the cheapest. However, you can get something like a Vivanco Prowire cable for £27, which is a very decent quality cable with fully shielded connectors.

If it makes you feel better to waste money, then go for a QED or Ixos cable, but I guarantee there will be no difference in picture or sound quality.

I was just trying to be polite with reference to the people recommending the cables from eBuyer etc. I have not tested them myself so will take your word that they are no better than the ones included for free.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on the part where you say that you won't notice any difference in picture quality by upgrading to a branded HDMI cable.

I one of my rooms I use a few QED cables to connect a Denon 2500BT through a Denon AVR430 to a SIM 2 D80E projector. Upgrading the free Denon cables gave a noticable difference to both blu ray and Sky and Sky HD pictures.

[strudel]

bks.

It's transmitting a digital picture - the end result will look the same on any cable provided the signal gets there. If it doesn't you'll get sparkles and then picture breakup. It won't look any "Warmer" or have deeper colours or such ste.

[JustinP1]

strudel said:

bks.

It's transmitting a digital picture - the end result will look the same on any cable provided the signal gets there. If it doesn't you'll get sparkles and then picture breakup. It won't look any "Warmer" or have deeper colours or such ste.

I don't want to be picky but it is specifically things like the 12 bit 'Deep Colour' functionality of the HDMI 1.3 standard which will probably make the difference between a cheap and a more expensive cable as the bandwidth of the signal is much greater.

That said, if you just want a short cable to get your TV to just work, then to be frank you are not going to mess about with stuff like that.

Buy a cheapo cable if that is what you want to do, you won't tell the difference.

However, if you are a going to be putting a 5, 7 or 10m cable in your wall for a permanent installation, then there *is* a difference in the cable technologies and it is worth worrying about if you want to make sure it is going to have full functionality when you buy a blueray player in 6 months or a years time.

[skinny]

i got mine from here http://ukhdmi.com/

well recommended on the av forums, decent price and no probs

[thehawk]

Ahem.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/digital-life/home-en...