His Grain!

Yes, I know, I was just trying to get a point across to those who don't understand electronics. There appear to be too many people who just dismiss things out of hand because they don't understand it. Cable length, resistance, capacitance, shielding, connector fit/tightness, connector oxidisation can all blur the threshold causing errors. More often than not these errors will be automatically corrected or compensated for and you'll never notice them.
I was just trying to make the point that if I could afford it I wouldn't buy a £15,000 projector and connect it to a £10,000 media system with a £3 cable! I'd want to ensure I've got the best out of my system by reducing the chance of errors to a minimum. Would that make me a 'banker' with more money than sense? I think not.

But are you sure that a £100 cable is any better than a £3 cable. In the world of electronics how much does it really cost to make a £100 cable, at production level bet this could be a fair amount below a tenner......

I can understand analogue things making a difference - eg speaker cables, turntable pickups, even quality of plugs/socket, but i struggle to with digital cables

as already said, its either 1s or 0s in the cables and there's oversampling and integrity checks to make sure everything works - anyway I found a Tesco HDMI PS3 cable (gold-plated stuff) for 4.99 or 7.99 (something like) which is great. Not tried the cheaper version that cam with my foxsat receiver, so not sure if that would be different.

Now I do want a HDMI splitter, and I a can see that price here WOULD make a difference, cause I presume theres some circuitry going on.

at some point I just feel, you start paying increasing amounts for very small increases in performance.

so a £1000 Hi-Fi amp is better than £200 amp, but the cheaper one is still good.

I can hear a difference between £5 headphones and £20 ones, but can anyone tell the difference between £20 headphones and £80 headphones.

Yes it would - unless it provided some noticable improvement - which it wouldn't.

The ONLY way to decide is blind tests, and NONE of these overly priced HDMI cables have ever passed blind tests which show they give any improvement at all.

The more expensive the cable, the higher (FAR higher) the profit margin - on a £5 cable the retailer might make £1 profit, on a £50 cable he might make £40 profit. Profit margins on expensive cables are HUGE, which is why Comet etc. try and sell you an expensive cable.

Very true. My buying philosophy has always been to try out the options, starting low and going up until I can no longer justify to myself the price increase for the improvement gained.
WRT HDMI cables, after having a couple of cheap ones fail on me after a few changes to my system I decided it might actually be worth spending a little more and getting better made cables.

LOL, that old blind-test chestnut. Probably performed in a screened lab with short cable runs and over a short period of time - no you'll not see any difference. But try it in a modern home with all sorts of RF noise around (Wi-Fi/GSM/Mopeds/Homeplugs etc.) with dust and dirt, variable hot cold temperature cycles, maybe longer cable runs, the occasional re-configuration (i.e. a certain amount of plugging/unplugging) of systems and lastly a reasonable dose of time to let the dirt and oxidisation get in, you might get different results.
Are you really saying that you've never had a cable fail in any way whatsoever?

No, with cheap things, you get a big improvement on quality but the more you spend, the less the improvement is and the worse value for money things are.

That goes for headphones, TVs, hi fi etc and even things like cars.

But not with HDMI leads, which are all made to a common specification, and certified accordingly (supposedly).

But probably not anyway, it's quite likely that stupidly expensive leads are more troublesome in that respect anyway, Monster cables in particular are known for causing damge to sets they are used with (too big and too heavy).

Basically your opinion seems to be that while they don't give any performance advantage (as you've just agreed) the higher price 'should' make them more reliable and longer lasting.

There's also nothing whatsoever to stop you doing blind testing in a home environment, and that would show no differences either.


No, occasionally cables do fail - expensive ones as well as cheap ones.

I would say don't buy the absolutely cheapest ones you can find, they are usually cheap for good reason - but at £5 for a SCART lead, or £10 for an HDMI lead, you're probably as good as anything else, particularly the HDMI lead.

Oh too true, very often most expensive does not equate to best. Although price can often be a good indicator of the quality to be expected.

Nope, I did not agree. Better cables in general will cost more and will eliminate RFI better (hence less grain/noise if RFI is tipping bits over the digital cliff). They will also survive home environments longer.

Ive never had a cable fail ever, even having speaker cable going under the carpet where people walk. Scart cables last for 10+ years.

Longevity shouldnt come into it. HDMI cables will last until they are replaced just like scart cables did.

So what you're saying is, if RFI doesn't affect anything then a £3.00 cable is good enough?

Exactly and only a moron would go out and spend £80 on a cable instead of trying a £3 cable 1st on a minute chance there will be interference.

There's something that tickles my laughter buds about blind testing something to do with a visual medium.

Thanks, I missed that one. Brilliant I personally use a cheepo HDMI lead from Asda. no problems whatsoever.

What does interest me is an HDMI switchbox as I do not have enough inputs on my TV.

Anybody any suggestions

If you only want one of the inputs turned on at the same time one of these works great for me

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/3-WAY-hub-spli...3A1%7C294%3A50

It remembers the last used or switched on input, but does have a button to manually select inputs

By all means try both and see if it makes any difference to you. If you are happy with a £3 cable then that's fine, that's your choice.

The biggest mistake people make when looking at HDMI is in understanding the way it will fail if there is interference. I think DSat and DTT have given a lot of people the wrong idea about the effects of interference on digital data transfers. On DSat and DTT the data is transferred compressed and hence data corruption causes large noticeable artefacts. The same is NOT true with HDMI. HDMI transmits the data in full without any compression so interference will only manifest as individual pixel errors (maybe just a few in a million). For example this could just mean a few pixels having a lower/higher red channel value than they should - most people probably wouldn't notice and would be quite happy. Of course if the interference is too bad the clock sync will be lost and you'll lose the picture totally. HDMI also doesn't work like your PC network, in an Ethernet (wired or wireless) the receiver of the data is able to request retransmission of corrupt data, HDMI has no such capability so the receiver has to make the best of what it gets.

Nigel mentioned blind testing and this is probably a good idea when trying various cables to find one you are happy with, after all, if you are happy what else matters?
What I would like to see though is more technical testing of the various cables. For example wrap the cables around a couple of active Wi-Fi hubs/mobile phones and determine the data error rate of the various types of cable in that situation. To date I have seen nothing of the sort, only subjective testing.

To return to my original point, if I was spending thousands on a system, I'd want to ensure I've got the best picture possible. Lacking any technical data on the performance of the various cables (since there doesn't appear to be any available) I'd choose the one that sounds like it has the best chance of delivering the data as near perfectly as possible - regardless of the cost.

Lastly, with regards to the, admittedly, ridiculously overpriced mains lead mentioned, my point is similar. If you have gone to the effort of eliminating RFI as much as possible from your very expensive media system does it not seem daft to stick to standard unshielded two core flex which WILL re-introduce RFI to your WHOLE system (unless the components are optically isolated of course).

Sounds like...... Glad I don't bye motorbikes on that reasoning.... Cost is not the issue its specifications, if a £100 cable can only quote the same specifications on its box as a £20 cable then I will buy the £20 cable... I never take the marketing blurb as factual thats printed outside the box...

That's the point, any HDMI cable you buy should be HDMI certified - meeting the specific requirements of HDMI.

So you have a £5 cable that meets the spec, you have a £100 that meets the same spec, there are no technical differences published, and on blind tests no one has ever been able to distinguish between them.

Some people seem to think the dearer one must be better, and happily help the profits of the shop - but as seen in this thread (and the many others) they can't give any sensible reason for this, and just make silly suggestions about the possibility of it been slightly better under some imaginary fictional interference circumstances.

No, if I had unlimited money, Id buy a £3 lead and give the £97 to charity. That would make me feel better than blowing it on something that makes no difference.

It would be like someone marketing a £100 mug that claimed it made coffee taste better. Of course you could buy it and think it tastes better (when it doesnt) or buy a normal mug because you know theres no difference.

I've got some magic beans for sale if anyones interested...

Are they the ones that don't give you wind?

It would appear that it is pointless to continue debating this so this will be my last post on the subject. So here are just a few facts that I'm reasonably sure I've got right but if someone with more knowledge comes along and corrects me so be it.

1. HDMI is an INTERFACE specification in that it specifies connectors and signalling characteristics. It does not to my knowledge specify the quality of the cable used. In particular I have seen no indication off any requirements on RFI shielding for HDMI cables.

2. HDMI transmits uncompressed pixel data with NO error correction at the higher resolutions (above SD). So long as the link is not totally dysfunctional, transmission errors will only show up as 'grain'. (It should be noted that the HDMI specification allows for the corruption of control data packets which can then be retransmitted at the request of the receiver but this does not cover the actual picture data.)

3. RFI is and always has been a very real problem in 20th Century homes let alone 21st Century homes.

4. A complete entertainment system is all electrically connected and hence ANY weak point in the system that allows in RFI will infect the WHOLE system.

To add point 5

5) There's no evidence to suggest a cheap HDMI lead is in any way less RFI proof, or that any such theoretical RFI has any effect whatsoever on an HDMI connection.

Just 'making things up' in no way justifies paying more for a lead that performs identically.

Anyone done any research on using HDMI cables at higher bitrates ?

Understand that failure of some HDMI leads can occur when Deep Color is transmitted and the cables maximum bandwidth is exceeded.

Apparently transmitting at 30 Bits the interface runs 1.25 times faster and at 36 bits 1.5 times faster than normal.

This speed change has resulted in some HDMI cables being unable to cope and causes no picture or picture distortion.

Solution then is to upgrade the cable or use a shorter one.

As for RFI getting through the mains transformer and 'polluting' a system, that's a joke. The mains is a noisy 50/60Hz 220-250V AC system full of spikes and inherent noise. The job of a transformer in an A/V system is to step that down to a useable level and smooth it out. Any RFI that gets into the cable is going to be tiny compared with noise already on the supply and therefore totally removed by the PSU. It is the quality of the PSU which makes the difference here, not the cable bringing the mains in.

What's the point in sheilding the mains cable and not the rest of the house wiring anyway? And if you do sheild the mains wiring, what about the cables to the house, or the HT cables to the substation? You can go too far with eliminating noise and still be fruitless.