Discussion
Nothing. The 0s and 1s can't tell what kind of cable they are passing along. Expensive cables are snake oil and nothing more especially in the digital domain. In the analogue world if the cable is capable of carrying the necessary voltage and current without significant heating (hence increasing resistance and affecting capacitance too) then cable makes no difference there either. It helps relieve people of excess cash though.
AndyT77 said:
So i take it expensive HDMI cables are purely expensive because of marketing BS and the manufacturers wanted to con their customer base?
Sort of. If the signal is getting through in enough strength to display on the screen with no artifacts on a £1 cable, spending another £100 will make absolutely no difference to the image quality. However, more expensive cables will generally have better quality insulation and connectors, making them a bit more durable. Also, for a very long cable run you might want a better cable to avoid any chance of interference.
I use one that I picked up in Lidl.
+1 to the above.
My short 1 metre runs are all ebay specials, the 10M run I have between the AV reciever and the TV is a £40 quality item - Key factors in the quality are the solidity of the connectors i.e they plug in securely (less likely to come out), and the actual quality of the connections themselves.
HDMI will either work or not, and dont fall for the needing a HDMI version X cable either...
Simes.
My short 1 metre runs are all ebay specials, the 10M run I have between the AV reciever and the TV is a £40 quality item - Key factors in the quality are the solidity of the connectors i.e they plug in securely (less likely to come out), and the actual quality of the connections themselves.
HDMI will either work or not, and dont fall for the needing a HDMI version X cable either...
Simes.
bristolracer said:
The gadget show tested these a couple of years ago, they had to spend £170 to see a tiny difference
It must have been I their imagination though, digital is digital.Today someone else was telling me how she just got a new telly from currys and bought a £80 HDMI cable because the salesman told here she needed it, I tod her to take it back, if I did this it would be called fraud.
I ran a well protected and expensive cable from my wall to the other side of the room (just over 10m) purely because it was a long run.
For the connection from the tv to the wall plate, and from the sat box to the other wall plate, I spent less than £10 on both of them.
Can't tell the difference over when it was an expensive cable less than 2m from the sat box, directly to the tv.
No idea if it was worth spending the extra on a long length or not, just didn't want to take a chance when I was chasing all into the walls etc. It's a bit beastly, and runs next to electric wires, so I suppose some insulation was always going to help?
For the connection from the tv to the wall plate, and from the sat box to the other wall plate, I spent less than £10 on both of them.
Can't tell the difference over when it was an expensive cable less than 2m from the sat box, directly to the tv.
No idea if it was worth spending the extra on a long length or not, just didn't want to take a chance when I was chasing all into the walls etc. It's a bit beastly, and runs next to electric wires, so I suppose some insulation was always going to help?
Chris Hinds said:
Nothing. The 0s and 1s can't tell what kind of cable they are passing along. Expensive cables are snake oil and nothing more especially in the digital domain. In the analogue world if the cable is capable of carrying the necessary voltage and current without significant heating (hence increasing resistance and affecting capacitance too) then cable makes no difference there either. It helps relieve people of excess cash though.
For digital .....^ this. You can't really add interference to binary code - not in any normal conditions.For analogue audio, I'm not so sure. In the early 80's, when my hearing was good, I worked for a group of hi fi magazines and extensively tested speaker cable and interconnects. I would say there were differences. Funnily enough, it was often cheap solid core mains cable that out-performed exotic monster cables.
There is a difference between HDMI cables, but it's minimal. Over a long run (10m or so) then get more expensive stuff. For 1 or 2 metres, don't worry about it.
However, the next person who says "it's 1's and 0's so doesn't matter" is going to get a kicking. Whilst it is a digital signal, there are a lot of different digital signal all going down separate little pipes that need to be combined into a useable signal in the TV.
If you get mistakes or missing information or the timing is out between any of those little pipes, then the telly error correction has to kick in and that will affect quality.
Whether it affects the quality enough to notice is a different matter, but to say that "it's digital so irrelevant" is I'm afraid, total nonsense.
IforB said:
However, the next person who says "it's 1's and 0's so doesn't matter" is going to get a kicking. Whilst it is a digital signal, there are a lot of different digital signal all going down separate little pipes that need to be combined into a useable signal in the TV.
freecar said:
IforB said:
Adrian W said:
It's packet data, both ends know exactly what they are going to get in advance.
Where's the facepalm smiley when you need it?I didn't know HDMI was psychic!
Gassing Station | Home Cinema & Hi-Fi | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff