About to move on from the world of Scart! Need to connect 32" Samsung HD 1080 non-smart TV with Panasonic HD smart PVR. The Amazon ad suggests a £4.95 HDMI cable. Is this penny-pinching? Would I see a difference in quality if I paid more?

No - Digital simply requires the device receiving the signal can tell a zero from a one. If it can the picture quality will be identical. If it cannot the problem will be instantly obvious (You will get nothing or a pixelated mess).

It's part of a massive scam to make lots of money from gullible consumers with more money than sense)

In fact a £1.00 HDMI cable from Poundland will almost certainly work just as well, if it does not, take it back it's faulty.

Try a blind test, ask a mate to tell you which HDMI cable you are using (£1.00 - £100.00).

To do that you'd have to buy a £100 cable!

In the early days when HDMI cables started, so many people were being absolutely ripped off with sales staff saying you must have an expensive cable to get a good signal........ some people still are being conned with this bullshit.
It was just a total scam........ they were all at it, Currys, Comet, Richer Sounds etc etc.

I know but some people need a lot of convincing

Some people just have too much money:

http://www.amazon.com/Diamond-Digita...pr_product_top

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/audioque...=1218324437192

You only need to buy more expensive cables for a long run. If you only need 1-2 m, then the ones off eBay for a £1 will do.

And even then you don't need to spend a grand a metre (yes you really can spend that much on a bit of wire ) to get a decent lead.

I needed a 15m long lead to run to a ceiling mounted projector in a meeting room at work, got a Pro-Signal cable from CPC for under 20 quid. Works absolutely perfectly.

CPC are a great place to buy reasonably priced cables

As everyone has said, it's digital - so picture quality isn't affected by the lead - a £1 one works exactly the same as any higher price you can imagine.

I wouldn't say it's quite so cut and dried.

I connected the HDMI2 ARC from my TV to my amp using a £1.25 eBay cable and found it was subject to external RF interference - the audio would drop out when someone turned on a light switch, for example. Swapping it with the slightly thicker cable that came free with my PVR eliminated the dropouts, and the PVR seems quite happy with the thin cable.

Get one from a Poundshop.

Ignore the HDMI experts on here that will now take this thread into a dozen pages & try to baffle you with made up HDMI science!!

This 12m cable is the most expensive I've found. They used to do a 16m version, which was well over 10 grand iirc.


Who on here has done that?

I see no evidence for much of that. These threads always go the same way which is people quite rightly dissing the expensive HDMI cables and then posting links to really expensive cables. You could cut and paste posts from previous threads on the subject and no one would notice the join.

I suspect that the thicker cable has much better shielding than the thin cable and that moving the thin cable relative to the rest of the cable spaghetti behind your TV is what helped it work better.

It is not about pseudo-science with exotic materials and construction techniques but about decent manufacturing quality. A dodgy connection in the plug is always going to cause problems.

However the reviews on the Amazon page are priceless and well worth reading, they are very funny. And there's me thinking Americans have no sense of humour, or should that be "humor"!!

cheapest one that works. pound shop fine.

the pound shop cables do not meet any official spec - and perform slighty worse -but that dont matter cos its digital ... on a short cable there is no practical difference.

if the picture looks ok then it is ! you will instantly notice any "missing pixels". especially on HD.if none then that is as good as it can be. and a more expensive cable will not make a difference.

.... the issue is "the digital cliff" look tht up if u want .......

hdmi is designed for short range high rate data transfer. so convolutional coding is absent and the error detection is only on the signalling scheme used which is farily crude .... but if the picture looks ok then it is !

the pound shop cables are "any old wires used" and fail in respect of not being specified correct characteristic transmission line. but this doesnt matter over short distances ..... so who cares ?

Have you a source for this allegation?

The Pound Shop cables represent a truer cost of manufacturing the cables. The high cost of cables, especially for a "digital" signal is a con, it has been for years.

The great thing about HDMI cable being able to carry video as well as audio signals demonstrates that perfectly because you can actually see there is no difference.