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Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)

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Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)

#31

Post by mseebach »

micks56 wrote: post #20
mseebach wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "It is digital. It either works or it doesn't" in the context of A/V refers to the quality of the converted analog signal - what comes out of the speakers or is visible on the screen. And the signal getting through can either work or not, no matter how well engineered the cable is, isn't that correct?

But the reason why your digital TV shows the correct screen is because the cable transmitted the "digital" bits between your DVD player and the TV correctly. If you have a poorly made cable you will get bit errors. Electromagnetic interference from other A/V equipment could also cause bit errors. A well made cable with twisted pairs, proper shielding (few people do this correctly), and well formed connector crimps wi…

> But the reason why your digital TV shows the correct screen is because the cable transmitted the "digital" bits between your DVD player and the TV correctly. If you have a poorly made cable you will get bit errors.

Yes. Which is why the poorly made cable can be said to not work.

> And your speakers are playing an analog signal.

Huh? I've never heard of HDMI cables capable of carrying analog sound.

Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)

#32

Post by cake »

micks56 wrote: post #22
cake wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that "it either work or doesn't" only if the receiver has some kind of cyclic redundancy check before processing the signal. My guess is that very few digital A/V systems implement this. Proof of this is the weird sound you may hear on a damaged compact disc, it half works.

There probably are CRCs run during the decoding process, but CRCs only tell you "yes this is correct" or "no, something went wrong." There are additional protection schemes that can detect and correct bit errors. Those are probably also run during the decoding process. The problem is that you can only detect so many wrong bits in a given word, and beyond that no correction can be made. That is probably why the damage…

Yes it depends on the way you handle the response of the CRC, you could say "give me the data I don't care" or "please try to read it again it's wrong".

In my opinion that is just the proof that it's not as simple as "it just works or not" but rather : depending on muptiple factors such as error correction and the way your algorithm works on the receiver it may "half work" no matter what kind of cable you plug in.

Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)

#33

Post by oostevo »

micks56 wrote: post #20
mseebach wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "It is digital. It either works or it doesn't" in the context of A/V refers to the quality of the converted analog signal - what comes out of the speakers or is visible on the screen. And the signal getting through can either work or not, no matter how well engineered the cable is, isn't that correct?

But the reason why your digital TV shows the correct screen is because the cable transmitted the "digital" bits between your DVD player and the TV correctly. If you have a poorly made cable you will get bit errors. Electromagnetic interference from other A/V equipment could also cause bit errors. A well made cable with twisted pairs, proper shielding (few people do this correctly), and well formed connector crimps wi…

Yup, the correct signal might not get through if you don't have perfect shielding. And a speck of dust on a CD could theoretically ruin a whole song.

That's why CDs (and cellphones, modems, and countless other digital devices) use channel encoding.[1] That way you don't have to have a perfectly noise-free signal to reconstruct the original information.

I don't know that many specifics of the DVD or Blu-Ray standards, but I'd put money on them using Reed-Solomon or something similar.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed-Solomon_error_correction#D...

(Edit: forgot footnote)

Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)

#35

Post by dpcan »

mrcharles wrote: post #18
joezydeco wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except when you're buying a new TV and you're at the checkout, you realize you need a cable to finish your hookup. This is why you never see a $10 cable in a retail store, like the poster above mentioned. It's all about the psychology of needing it now instead of being able to wait 4 more days.

This is why you use monoprice.com. Every time you need a cable, you actually order 4. It's still 1/4 the price of buying it from a retail store, and then when a friend needs a cable for that new tv he just bought, you can hand him one, for 1/4 the price of what he'd pay in stores, and he thanks you, AND you've just paid for your own cables. Really, just don't ever buy a cable in a store. Ever. Getting a TV? Plan it a…

The original poster is precisely correct from my experience.

The only time I purchased a cable online was when I bought someone a gift that required the HD cable.

All the other times, we ran around the corner to Shopko and paid whatever their price was because we had a new HD system setup and wanted it in HD. Now.

I really don't think it's a casual purchase for most people, and I certainly never considered buying more than one at a time.

Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)

#36

Post by ramchip »

micks56 wrote: post #28
[deleted] wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Are the colors 0026FF and 8026FF the same? No, they are not. And the difference between blue (0026FF) and purple (8026FF) is a 1 bit error. You will see an image, but not the image your DVD told your TV to display. edit: This comment makes a lot less sense with the deleted comment removed.

It takes a lot of noise to alter the digital signal like this. If we're talking long distance, like a telephone line, the signal gets weak enough that it can happen regularly, but on the cable from the DVD to the TV the voltage drop is ridiculously low. Noise doesn't affect your signal by 4 volts unless you have a serious problem with your system.

Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)

#37

Post by Frazzydee »

TheBranca18 wrote: post #14
Frazzydee wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just make sure you pay by google checkout or paypal. I'm surprised people don't seem to be angry about the way they've handled the data breach issue.

You mean the fact they store your password in their database as plaintext? Yeah kinda scary to be honest.

That's unfortunate. I guess it goes to show how much value those "Hacker Safe" badges are. But how do you know they store your password as plaintext?

I was talking about the way they handled it in general. They didn't email any customers, and they still don't know which cards/orders were affected. I think they should at least be able to tell me which customers have been complaining (ex. those who made orders between DATE_A and DATE_B)

Also, they deleted data that they previously assured me would be kept & accessible (last 4 digits of credit cards, so that I can check the appropriate bill). It took me over a week and at least 5 different CSR's to find this out- I was given the runaround before that. Live support & phone support both told me they couldn't help, and claimed that the email support team is the only group that could. Over a week later, I still have not received a response.

Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)

#38

Post by carterschonwald »

An excellent place for purchasing av and other sorts of cables at sane prices is monoprice.com Ive been very happy with the pricing which is consistently the lowest I've seen and the construction quality both. Sanely priced does not imply any loss in construction quality nor does the contrapositive hold, though US consumers are conditioned to view price as a signalling mechanism for quality to various extents

Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)

#39

Post by micks56 »

matwood wrote: post #29
micks56 wrote: post #10

My patience for the line, "It is digital. It either works or it doesn't" ended a long time ago. "Digital" signals are analog signals, but the only difference is that they are restricted to being above or below some threshold. But around that threshold there is a gray area where you can't really tell whether your signal will be interpreted as 1 or 0. I am not defending the need for high-end HDMI cables. But saying "It…

I think the point of the "either works or it doesn't" is a comparison versus analog. With an analog signal you could get slightly better results by getting better cables (or worse with worse cables). If you have a poor digital cable it flat out doesn't work. If the cable you're using works, buying a more expensive cable isn't going to make it work any better. Either the 1s and 0s made it from the source to the destin…

I think your understanding of cables is off.

All signals are analog. Every single one. (Actually, I take that back. With the exception of quantum computers, to date, all signals are analog).

A "digital" cable doesn't just work or not work. It is possible to receive spurious bit errors for many reasons. For example, you turn up the volume to your awesome surround sound speakers, which causes more current to flow through your speaker wires that happen to be running parallel to your horrible HDMI cable. The increased current causes interference in your low-power HDMI cable, causing bit errors in the transmission.

Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)

#40

Post by Frazzydee »

dpcan wrote: post #35
mrcharles wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why you use monoprice.com. Every time you need a cable, you actually order 4. It's still 1/4 the price of buying it from a retail store, and then when a friend needs a cable for that new tv he just bought, you can hand him one, for 1/4 the price of what he'd pay in stores, and he thanks you, AND you've just paid for your own cables. Really, just don't ever buy a cable in a store. Ever. Getting a TV? Plan it a…

The original poster is precisely correct from my experience. The only time I purchased a cable online was when I bought someone a gift that required the HD cable. All the other times, we ran around the corner to Shopko and paid whatever their price was because we had a new HD system setup and wanted it in HD. Now. I really don't think it's a casual purchase for most people, and I certainly never considered buying mor…

Also, when you're buying a $3,000 TV, $100 for the cables doesn't seem that bad, relatively speaking.
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