HDMI cable advice / recommendations

[admin_exported]

Hi.

Soon I'll be buying my first HD TV (probably a Samsung UE40B8000) and as a result have no knowledge, let alone experience of good/bad HDMI cables. So I'm hoping someone can help advise...

I'll probably mount the TV on my wall, so I've had to guess a bit (with the help of a tape measure) as to how long my HDMI cables will need to be, and I reckon they'll need to be 4m.

I'll be connecting a Sky HD box, PS3, and a Sony RDR-HXD890 DVD/HDD recorder to the TV via HDMI. I'll obviously be using my PS3 for gaming, but I will also be using it to play Blu-ray movies. So I guess the quality of the cable between the TV and the Sky HD & PS3 need to be very good quality, but would I be correct in presuming I'd be wasting money spending too much on the cable from my DVD/HDD recorder?

I don't want to spend crazy money on leads if I'm not realistically going to notice the difference, but at the same time I obviously don't want my cables to degrade the input sources. I've had a look at the reviews of the HDMI cables (this website) that have 5 stars, and they range between £5 - £300! I cannot believe they all as good as each other (despite all having 5 stars) at those prices, so does anyone have recommendations as what I should (or should not) be buying?

Thanks.

 

[kena]

No doubt people will be on saying you are wasting your money full stop as it's only 1's and 0' s but you do need a god quality cable to get the best out of your system. On the really expensive cables the law of diminishing returns is definitely a factor.

I use 5M Van Den Hul HDMI flat £112.45 from hi-fi cables, good well built cable , also you can get 5m from Darren at Clearer audio (£88) I use a couple of those as well another I'd recommend plus he will give you 60 day money back guarantee so you could try it .

Still get a good cable for DVD/HDD as anything Will be better than whats supplied just pick a price and get something rated in your price range.

 

[Anonymous]

fiction sepnd a fiver that as good as it gets

 

[Anonymous]

Oh wow. You have picked a very debatable topic to start off with. You should have asked about mains cables while you were at it.

You don't mention a budget but I would tend to agree that you should get the best you can afford. Usually you get what you pay for (IMHO, and I am sure may will disagree).

Having said that there is a company called mark grant cables that do seem to offer very good cables in decent lengths at good prices. I've not tried them myself but they get a lot of good reviews & I would be very tempted to give them a go.

Oh and with reference to 5 star products, the value for money is taken into account when allocating the stars. So a 2 or 3 star £300 cable will still be better than a 5 star £5 cable (WHSV team please correct me if I'm wrong).

 

[Garth Man]

hmm spend £100 or £7.99

http://www.play.com/Electronics/Electronics/-/997/1242/-/7963567/Limit-HDC-2030F-Professional-Quality-Flat-HDMI-3-Metre-Cable/Product.html?searchtype=genre

meow

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the advice so far guys.

barnsleydave: Oh and with reference to 5 star products, the value for money is taken into account when allocating the stars. So a 2 or 3 star £300 cable will still be better than a 5 star £5 cable (WHSV team please correct me if I'm wrong).

Yeah, to be honest, thought that might be the case. I don't like it when they do that in reviews... I prefer reviews to indicate how good the product is, so I can easily compare it with other reviews, then I can make my own decision whether or not its good value. Sometimes (not on this website) ratings are marked up or down when a similiar referenced product is better/worse - very frustrating, again all I want to know is how good/bad the product is. Oh well.

 

[Anonymous]

Garth Man: hmm spend £100 or £7.99

http://www.play.com/Electronics/Electronics/-/997/1242/-/7963567/Limit-HDC-2030F-Professional-Quality-Flat-HDMI-3-Metre-Cable/Product.html?searchtype=genre


Cool, I work for Play.com, so I'll get that a bit cheaper.

 

[bigblue235]

metalhead:Cool, I work for Play.com, so I'll get that a bit cheaper.

Oh, in Jersey?

 

[Garth Man]

you lucky git metalhead get me a job!!!!??

I have that cable and its fine, does the job

 

[Anonymous]

bigblue235:

metalhead:Cool, I work for Play.com, so I'll get that a bit cheaper.

Oh, in Jersey?

No in the office just outside Cambridge.

 

[Anonymous]

I've got Chord Co. Silver plus and a Kimber/Russ Andrews HD-09 - similar prices when I got them and maybe the Kimber one is marginally better colours / naturalness ..... but not a huge amount in it...... they do one below and one above now too, price-wise and you can even upgrade later and get your money back against the first one which is cool.

 

[Anonymous]

barnsleydave:

Having said that there is a company called mark grant cables that do seem to offer very good cables in decent lengths at good prices. I've not tried them myself but they get a lot of good reviews & I would be very tempted to give them a go.

I've bought a wide variety of Mark Grant products over the years. Extremely well made, and without the huge mark-up prices of the large corporations.