HDMI Cable, any difference??????

[Garth Man]

Are there any differences between the cheaper and high end HDMI cables???

I only need a 1-2 metre length, and have several people telling me its pointless spending loads on a Chord, QED etc brand

Thanks

 

[Clare Newsome]

Oh Lord, can't we have a break for Christmas?

But seriously - please type HDMI into the 'Search Forums' box on the top right of this page, and you'll find a wealth of threads with hundreds of answers to your question. It's a topic debated on what seems like a weekly basis!

(And if that's too much effort, my easier suggestion would be to click here and buy this bargain),

 

[laserman16]

Clare Newsome:
Oh Lord, can't we have a break for Christmas?

But seriously - please type HDMI into the 'Search Forums' box on the top right of this page, and you'll find a wealth of threads with hundreds of answers to your question. It's a topic debated on what seems like a weekly basis!

(And if that's too much effort, my easier suggestion would be to click here and buy this bargain),

Must be the most popular subject on here. Claires advice is good, a cracking lead for an almost giveaway price

 

[Garth Man]

Thank you, I did see that bargain on Play

many thanks, though its would be nice to see these bugdet cables get tested in your mag

I am a devotee subscriber so please be kind

 

[Anonymous]

Hey Garth Man, In short, no.

In long, noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Its nonsense... same as digital optical, digital was created for that very purpose, analogue signals can be distorted and repaired slightly, but digital is either on or off. unless there is something wrong with the cable, its fine.

 

[professorhat]

Hey Garth Man, in long, yes.
In long, Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.
No reason to do that really, except I'm a bit drunk. Oh, and that I've personally tested different HDMI cables and found that there are differences. No idea where the concept above came from i.e. "digital was created for that very purpose, analogue signals can be distorted and repaired slightly, but digital is either on or off. unless there is something wrong with the cable, its fine" but I'm afraid this statement is without certainty not true.

 

[Anonymous]

professorhat:Hey Garth Man, in long, yes.

In long, Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.
No reason to do that really, except I'm a bit drunk. Oh, and that I've personally tested different HDMI cables and found that there are differences. No idea where the concept above came from i.e. "digital was created for that very purpose, analogue signals can be distorted and repaired slightly, but digital is either on or off. unless there is something wrong with the cable, its fine" but I'm afraid this statement is without certainty not true.

If you can find differences in the cable, and am happy with stumping up the extra, then far be it from me to say your opinion is wrong.

My reasons for my answer were that. if we go back to year 8 science, remember digital/analogue graphs.

Digital signal is transmitted down the cable as either a 1 or a 0, on or off, so when the signal is received the other end, the decoder can easilly distinguish if its on or off, no signal degredation possible (unless over extremely long runs)

Whereas with analgue, where a point on a waveform could represent, as an example, any number between 1 and 30, and lets say through distortion it should have been 15 and was distorted to 18, the processor could assume the intended value was 17, thus being a 'loss' on the original signal path.

My opinions also go on the fact that ive seen a lab test between HDMI cables where a computer was used to put a signal through a HDMI signal and analyse the resulting signal, they tested 4 cables running from costing £7 to £250 and the results were uniform, absolutely no difference in the signal whatsoever. And thats computer physics.

www.hdmi.com will also tell you that, as long as a cable is HDMI compliant, you wont notice a difference.

I have also done private tests, with a £12 cable i got off play, and a £130 monster cable my father had, we were unable to notice any difference.

Bottom line - (In my opinion) is that as long as a cable is of reasonable quality, there is no point spending the extra.

Apologies professorhat if you think I may be adding fuel to a fire, but ive seen just too much evidence to suggest there is no difference whatsoever.

 

[Sliced Bread]

However digital signals can (and do) be the susceptible to interference. The signal may contain just 0's and 1's, but there are allot of zero's and ones here. 24mbps (just for the sound). In fact this is why Network Packets were invented...in order to deal with loss of information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_packet

However, as mentioned before in this forum, no-one seems to know what type of error correction (if any) that DVD / Blu Ray players use. If they do not use error correction then they definitely will lose data in the cable. If they do use error correction, then it depends how good that error correction is. Remember, that this is a film running in real time and not a computer file that can down load in 'as long as it takes'.

The fact is, that there is allot of argument for against (most of it argued by people who are not in full possession of the facts...and that includes me), so the best thing to do is either try for yourself to decide if you can see/hear a difference or pick up the bargain QED cable that Claire pointed out at the start and not worry about it.

 

[professorhat]

Indeed, thanks John. The TCP/IP protocol is used for virtually all computer related communications because so much data is lost from one to the other. The standards in TCP/IP ensure all the data is correctly received.
Whether you think HDMI cables make a difference or not is your own opinion, my point is saying there can't be any data loss because the signal is digital is incorrect.

 

[Anonymous]

I can only go on my own experience here - I changed from a reasonable quality Panasonic HDMI I bought with my BluRay player when I got it. When I ended up getting my Kuro, I ordered some Chord Silver Plus 1.3's and hooked them up. I can't comment on the picture quality difference as I hadn't tried the Panasonic with the new screen but the sound was hugely improved compared to the Pana cable - much cleaner, deeper bass and sharper to-end. So, in my case, the Chord's were well worth the money and I suspect if I hooked up the Pana cable now I'd see a difference in picture too. I also had some nice gains by replacing all my mains cables with ClearerAudio CopperLine and CopperLine Alpha too. No need to convince me on the worth of good cabling.

 

[Anonymous]

The interference mentioned that can affect digital signals is the same interference we see day in and day out on adsl connections across phone line; signal noise and attenuation. At short distances attenuation is negligable, and you would need a lot of interference to cause signal degredation on a digital signal (once again, over short distances).

We are talking about 0's and 1's, or rather, different voltage levels. So, simply put, the binary logic levels will be something like 2 volts max for low signal (binary 0), and 3 volts min for high signal (binary 1). I do not know the exact levels, so that was just an example, but either way signal noise will have to be pretty high for a 0 or 1 to be lost - especially over a short distance of several feet. Taking that into account, the only way a cable could drop 0's or 1's, even over a signal of 5 gigabit/sec, is by the cable being made poorly and losing signal altogether.

Of course, i'm talking with respects to relatively short cable runs of several feet. I am quite certain factors such as thicker core cabling and improved shielding will help with increasing cable lengths on long runs.