PC PLOD mode on ["I'll just make a note of that, Sir!"] PC PLOD mode off

A man offered $1m if anyone can tell the difference between a normal cable and one that costs thousands.

http://gizmodo.com/305549/james-rand...les-are-better

That pretty much proves audiophiles are freaks and are out of their minds.

In Currys today I noted they sell a Belkin 2M HDMI cable for £99.99.

http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/stor...&category_oid=

I wonder how many they sell?

Automan.

They don't have to sell many, as the profit margins are so massive.

Too many! I got caught in PCWorld a couple of years ago. Spent an outrageous €70 for a component lead for my TV. My only excuse, and a poor one, was that it was Boxing Day and I was a bit "under the weather". I was annoyed with myself for weeks.

There have been many dillusional people on these forums over the years who have said that a gold plated HDMI lead costing over £25 will give better picture/sound output than a basic one costing £1. It is absoulte insanity, a digital bit-stream, when interfered with disappears or 'blocks' as 'bits' of data are lost'. Pretty much every cable is specified well enough to carry a digital bit-stream well enough not to 'block' no matter what its made out of.

All you need to look for when buying any kind of cable to carry a digital bit stream is that the PVC of the cable itself is reasonable quality and that the plug on each end is terminated well. Even third world countries can manage to make cables of this quality these days so it's unlikely you'll get a bad one even if its only cost £1.

The claims that places like Currys make regarding any form of technology are outrageous and any consumer who feels they have been duped should make a complaint. They play on people who don't know any better and that's how they made billions back in the 80's and 90's.

Walk into a shop like that knowing what you want to buy and your asking for trouble, you are more likely to come out with something the exact opposite of what you wanted, costing twice as much or bundled with a load of extras you'll never use. Or even worse, ALL THREE!.

Please take a few moments to verify your facts before you post drivel like this that will lead to many people being disillusioned (to use your own word) as to the effect of interference on HDMI. HDMI picture data has NO error detection or correction so interference will only manifest as corrupted individual pixels, i.e. increased apparent 'grain'. The picture will be lost only if the cable is so ridiculously bad that the clock sync and/or the control channel (which does have error detection) is corrupted.
HDMI, though digital, does not work the same way as DTT or DSat!

Gold plating is something that many people dismiss as being irrelevant. The truth is that it only works if both plug and socket are gold plated. The gold works by stopping oxidisation that can degrade a connection over time. (Chemistry 101: Gold is less reactive than most other metals.)
A cheaper alternative to gold connectors is to simply unplug and re-plug the connector when problems are noticed, this will scrape off the oxidisation layer and re-establish a good contact. But if your devices have gold sockets and you can afford a cable with gold plated connectors you can avoid this albeit minor inconvenience.
(Ask any honest computer engineer and they will tell you that many PCs with hardware faults can be fixed very simply by re-seating contacts. The dishonest ones will not tell you and will charge you a small fortune to do this for you.)