[Dave_Herts]

On The Gadget show on Channel 5 this evening, they did a comparison of a £20 v £120 HDMI cable using identical tv's, blu-ray player n disk. It confirmed what has been said on here before that there is absolutely no difference in picture quality between the 2 leads.

Its repeated on Sunday morning.

[LCDMAN]

I mentioned it on this thread about HDMI cable here;

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s...3#post23652473

Unusual for them to come to such a correct conclusion in such an unbiased fashion (IMO)

LCDMAN

[F2kSel]

I thought £20 was still over priced.

[Majestyc]

It's a digital signal - as long as the cable has no manufacturing defects a cheap one should be absolutely fine.

[roddydogs]

you can get these for less than a fiver-including postage!

[alfablue]

I absolutely agree with the logic that with a digital signal, any reliable cable should do, however the Gadget Show's tests are laughable. In this instance they knew which TV was wired up with which cable and they watched a brief and unrepresentative segment. On the bike and swimming tests they may as well have been comparing the different fitness and skill levels of the presenters rather than the products. It's all good fun (I do enjoy the show) but their tests are usually completely worthless.

[roddydogs]

How daft asking a group of young people whether they'd rather have (a) a portable jacuzzie (b) something for cutting logs or (c) some plants in a plasticky container! DOH

[strumstrum]

I have always agreed that a cheap HDMI is all you need and I use the ones from Play that are very similar to the Logitech ones in the test..

what I will say though is my mate got a cheap one in a bundle with his PS3 and he had piccy problems and it turned out it was the HDMI cable not having enough shielding so external interference was getting in so there is cheap and then there is too cheap.

[+3dB]

It makes me laugh how some people rant and rave about expensive digital connectors without stopping to consider how their home network is wired, or the quality of the miles of cable bringing the digital signal to their home in the first place.

[alfablue]

Quote:

Originally Posted by +3dB

It makes me laugh how some people rant and rave about expensive digital connectors without stopping to consider how their home network is wired, or the quality of the miles of cable bringing the digital signal to their home in the first place.

However, these connections are not without errors. I presume you are referring to internet connections, the performance of your web surfing experience will degrade depending on these errors, though will be largely unnoticed and / or tolerated. Whilst I obviously understand and agree that an HDMI cable has merely to transfer the digital data between source and TV, and if it does, the end result should be identical regardless of the cable used, it is possible especially at the very lowest end of the market, to have a cable that cannot do this reliably without errors (as suggested by strumstrum), and this may impact on picture quality.

Quote:

Originally Posted by +3dB

It makes me laugh how some people rant and rave about expensive digital connectors without stopping to consider how their home network is wired, or the quality of the miles of cable bringing the digital signal to their home in the first place.

...and the quality of the wiring inside the component itself.

For wireless applications I bought an air purifier - internet is much quicker and the sound quality of mp3's when blue toothing from pc to phone are amazing.

[Kevinlad]

So does it matter if a HDMI cable has gold plated connectors and/or oxygen-free?

[B-29]

Some people will always claim their Monster/IXOS cable is wonderful as a large amount of AV snobbery is always present, an analogue signal may degrade but a digital one is either there or not there in reality.

[John Currie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kevinlad

So does it matter if a HDMI cable has gold plated connectors and/or oxygen-free?

Absolutely not.

[RobAnt]

As I understand it, the issues are around how hard the error correction has to work. In the initial days of CD it was thought that a very cheap cable could induce errors, causing the error correction circuits to work overtime, thus causing the processor to work harder.

Personally, I've never noticed one iota of difference.

All I know is that MP3s sound stodgy and lacking in atmosphere when compared to a relatively uncompressed CD through the same amp/speakers.

[goomba]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TommyW

For wireless applications I bought an air purifier - internet is much quicker and the sound quality of mp3's when blue toothing from pc to phone are amazing.

For wireless you really need oxygen free air.

[+3dB]

Instead of testing picture/sound quality, which can be subjective, have any testers tried putting data through HDMI cables and testing the accuracy of the zeroes and ones emerging at the other end?

I'm willing to bet good money there's no benefit in using the very expensive leads.

[RobAnt]

Quote:

Instead of testing picture/sound quality, which can be subjective

Possibly with different source and display kit, but if you use identical kit for conducting trails like this then it is either the same, or it isn't, regardless of subjective interpretation.

Otherwise, I agree with you.

[sancheeez]

Quote:

Originally Posted by +3dB

Instead of testing picture/sound quality, which can be subjective, have any testers tried putting data through HDMI cables and testing the accuracy of the zeroes and ones emerging at the other end?

I'm willing to bet good money there's no benefit in using the very expensive leads.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s...4&postcount=24

According to th test I linked to in that post (and it looks like a good one), high quality cables are better with massive data volumes.

But in the real world, as it stands today, there is pretty much no benefit ..... seemed to be their conclusion.

[beko1987]

In my parents room, when I was installing freesat I ran out of cat100 cable, so went into the garage, found some old co-ax (very much pre-digital), and extended the cable with that. No loss of signal strength or anything. I agree, as long as it can pass the 1s and 0s then its fine!

[bobcar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RobAnt

As I understand it, the issues are around how hard the error correction has to work. In the initial days of CD it was thought that a very cheap cable could induce errors, causing the error correction circuits to work overtime, thus causing the processor to work harder.

Personally, I've never noticed one iota of difference.

All I know is that MP3s sound stodgy and lacking in atmosphere when compared to a relatively uncompressed CD through the same amp/speakers.

HDMI doesn't have error correction for video, it does use BCH correction for control and audio as these are more affected by errors whereas the occasional video error is not a problem. Note I say occasional here because if the HDMI cable is not up to (say a very long poor quality one) then the problems are horrendous and clearly visible - nothing subtle.

MP3 sounds horrible compared to CD because of the compression used (I know you mentioned that) it's nothing to do with error correction, HDMI of course is not compressed.