I very quickly ran out of HDMi ports on my TV, so invested in a 4 port switch from the lovely people at iWorld (no I don't work for them).

What i want to know is, am I really going to notice a vast difference in the choice of HDMi leads that are available for me to buy? And....secondly, routing the picture through this switch, would that also cause a picture to be of lesser quality? Visibly to the layman i mean.

I ask because I had a V+ HD box going into the port on the TV with a gold plated lead. I wanted to connect my Apple TV via HDMI so went out and brought a lead for £9.99 from Woolworths or somewhere similar, obviously your bog standard bottom of the range job, and plugged them both into the new switch. Now the picture quality, in my eyes, is visibly worse. Should I not have been so tight and spent a bit more on the new cable, or is there really not that much difference and i've wasted £60 on the switch instead?

Thanks in advance gents, i'm a bit of a novice when it comes to things like this Although I have a feeling that I may have already answered my own question!

You're right. You have answered your own question.

Although there is the chance of a really long thread if we start the "Do cables make a difference" debate.

However, as you have found. All cables are equal, just some cables are more equal than others.

Generally, if you spend a fortune on cables and can't tell the difference then you have wasted your money.

Equally, if you buy a really cheap cable and CAN tell the difference, you have still wasted your money.

D

Cheers for the brilliant response Dan, it had me in stitches!

I hear what you are saying about the cables and the length of the thread which would insue. I have had the same argument about the quality of mp3's with a guy at work for the last year!

To be honest, its like when I first got an HD feed; it was amazing for about a week, almost crooning over it; a week later and its just another TV picture, looking like anything I had before. The picture looks now just like it ever did!

I will buy some more leads but in a weeks time I won't notice the difference with those either ;o)

May sound a daft question, but did you try each lead without using the switch to see if there was any difference in the quality?

If not, then it may be the switch which is reducing the quality.

Im interested to know if it is the switch as i will probably need one myself in the near future and i would of thought spending £60 on one would be sufficient enough to ensure good quality.

Digital signals degrade in a different way to analogue signals. Ghosting and softness do not trouble HDMI cables, but sparklies and intermittent loss of video sync are known symptoms, especially at long cable lengths or when using a switcher.

I believe the OP may be imagining the drop in video quality when the switcher is connected, but without seeing his setup for myself I have no way of knowing for sure. Who knows, maybe one of the £20 eBay switchers would do the trick?

Is it not also the case that devices negotiate resolution when connected via HDMI and hence a lower quality HDMI cable could be forcing the devices to select a lower quality display format due to signal errors?

I've personally thown away the free HDMI cables that came with my devices because I had so many problems with them - loose connections - synch/re-synch problems. I invested in some Pure A/V ones and have had no problems since.

They do negotiate resolution, but whether you get that resolution depends on the supported resolutions of the TV and not the HDMI cable.

My view is that if the cable works - with no HDCP handshake or loss of sync issues etc - then there is no point buying more expensive replacement cables because digital signals do not degrade in the same subtle way as analogue ones. You were probably unlucky with your cheap cables, or perhaps your equipment happens to be picky about the types of cables it wants to do business with?

And is it not also the case that hdmi 1.3 at 1080p resolution and using the increased range of colours requires a better cable as the data rate is considerably faster than earlier versions of HDMI? I believe the better cables are certified for hdmi 1.3 whereas the "cheap" ones aren't certified at all.

The more expensive cables are HDMI certified, but then part of the extra cost comes from the royalties paid to the HDMI licence owners.

There is no technical difference between an uncertified cable and a v1.3 cable. You may wish to pay more for a v1.3 certified cable, but if your cheap cable can't handle the extra bandwidth you would be legally entitled to a refund under the Sale of Goods Act for a faulty product.

You can actually tell quite a lot about cables just by examining the build quality. If it looks cheap it probably plays cheap as well! Some budget cables are surprisingly well made though.