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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)

#81

Post by joezydeco »

blhack wrote: post #73
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.

Does your city have a Fry's electronics? Last time I was there, they had HDMI cables on sale for something like $4; I bought a gaggle of them. If you don't have a Fry's, you're missing out on something wonderful. Every Fry's about a hundred people who absolutely and completely despise every single aspect of their jobs, and have been forced to wear white button-down shirts with ties. Fry's sells everything . From gree…

Yes, my city has a Fry's.

And I've had the same experience as you. I've never seen a store so stocked with salespeople (and 70 cash registers!) but with so little interest in the process of selling and supporting material.

But my original point was that the typical person sitting at a checkout with an HDTV doesn't know what the HDMI cable does, much less that they can buy it at Fry's or Monoprice for 25x cheaper.

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

#82

Post by tel »

pak wrote: post #77
ghshephard wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly you've never had an Ethernet Cable that got caught in a door. Or was terminated poorly. Or doesn't have the insulator sheath under the crimp. Or run parallel to a set of Florescent light ballasts. All of these events can reduce performance on Ethernet without causing it to fail outright. There is a reason why every single TIA/EIA 568 cable plant is carefully tested for things like Near End Cross Talk (NEXT),…

Anything running over Ethernet has packets with checksums. Yes, noise will cause packets to drop, and that results in lower overall throughput, while connectivity still remains possible. The signal running over HDMI is not packet-based. You don't have any mechanism like with TCP where packets can get dropped and resent later. So if interference causes bits to flip on an HDMI connection, you will immediately see the i…

Again, nobody is disagreeing. This isn't a defense of Monster, it's a typical It's More Complicated Than That jibe. Don't buy Monster unless that flowchart checks out, but also realize that it's not impossible to see signal degradation on those cheaper digital cables.

It's just a lot less likely.

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

#83

Post by matwood »

ghshephard wrote: post #58
matwood wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Clearly you've never had an Ethernet Cable that got caught in a door. Or was terminated poorly. Or doesn't have the insulator sheath under the crimp. Or run parallel to a set of Florescent light ballasts. All of these events can reduce performance on Ethernet without causing it to fail outright. There is a reason why every single TIA/EIA 568 cable plant is carefully tested for things like Near End Cross Talk (NEXT),…

You're confusing what I was saying. In an HDMI situation if you use a cheap cable and the picture and sound are fine, buying a more expensive cable isn't going to change anything. With HDMI in particular, if the cable is failing you'll know right away with either a poor picture or sound. It won't have the gradations that were possible when pushing an analog signal around - i.e. the picture looks could, but it could be sharper with a better cable.

I'm not sure why you brought ethernet into the mix, but generally you're talking about much longer runs than HDMI and it's often not as easy to see when your are losing packets without specifically checking if you are dropping packets (IMHO poor network performance IS failing outright, but not as easily seen as a bunch of blocks on the TV). Even then, the cable you use is either delivering all the packets or it isn't (up to an acceptable level of errors/loss for the length you are running). Delivering a stronger 1/0 isn't going to change anything as long as it's strong enough for the receiver to differentiate. That's where it either works or it doesn't comes from.

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

#84

Post by Pahalial »

Sam_Odio wrote: post #24

Even better: An electromagnetically shielded, gold plated optical audio cable. Sold at Sears [1]. I stopped buying cables retail a long time ago. My favorite supplier: RiteAV. They're (IMHO) the Amazon of cables. Huge selection, modest prices [2], and great customer service [3]. 1. http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_05750807000P?vName=... 2. HDMI cables start at $3.50 - http://www.riteav.com/hdmi-cables-c-141_1…

Not to knock your suggestion, but I've had similarly great experiences with http://monoprice.com . It seems similar to RiteAV, but much bigger and their prices seem on par (maybe 6-10 cents more expensive):

http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Monoprice

Marginally higher rating, but more importantly a MUCH larger sample size (2338 lifetime reviews vs. 25)

Also, as someone north of the border they do ship here, whereas (as far as I can tell) RiteAV doesn't.

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

#85

Post by lkjhgvbnm »

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…

>"Digital" signals are analog signals

True that's why I reject TVs with a video chipset, I want a TV and a DVD player that uses valves for the video processing.

I wonder how big an MPEG-2 decoder in valves would be?

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

#86

Post by matwood »

wwalker3 wrote: post #54
matwood wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's still not correct. For HDMI in particular, there's no error correction at all on the video data (though there is on the audio and control data). So if one bit gets flipped in the video data as it goes through the cable, you're going to see that wrong bit on screen. You'd have to have an insanely high bit error rate for your eyes to notice it, but it's there, and it gradually gets worse as the error rate increa…

IMHO, seeing sparkles on the screen means 'does not work.' Hearing audio errors means does not work. When pushing a digital signal around if you have significant errors you'll know quickly at the receivers end if the cable is bad. If you hook up your cheap cable and don't notice any of these errors, getting a better cable isn't going to make the picture sharper or sound clearer like in the days of pushing analog signals around.

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

#87

Post by corysama »

I've read exactly one semi-scientific comparison of popular DVI cables of varying price. Amazingly, the conclusion was that Monster Cables really are better. However the difference had no effect unless you were running a high-bandwidth signal (>=1920x1080x60Hz) over a long distance (>=12 feet? I don't recall exactly). The cheaper long cables would work for low bandwidth signals, but would lose sync and fail at high rez.

Either way: monoprice.com

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

#88

Post by Groxx »

My personal favorite store to get cables from: Fleet Farm.

Typically, you can find almost any kind of cable for $5-$10, some of the common ones for less. I think my 25-foot flat ethernet cable came in at a whopping $12, but it's been the most durable I've owned.

They've also got rational pants, which my wife in particular likes.

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

#89

Post by stavrianos »

jerf wrote: post #41
edd wrote: post #8

How can companies still get away with not shipping these cables in the box with displays?

Second order effects, of course. If Samsung ships a cheap HDMI cable in the box, it's very little skin off their nose; they raise the price by their cost, about $2, and even in the competitive TV market that's probably absorbable to some extent. But what happens next? They ship their TV to Best Buy, who quickly notices the TV ships with an HDMI cable, "robbing" them of the chance to sell a Monster cable. Or worse, th…

So, when I buy a TV, it's effectively being subsidized by other people's cable purchases.

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

#90

Post by andrewcaito »

I'm reminded of an incident a few years back when Monster sent a cease and desist letter to Blue Jeans Cable. The CEO wrote them a response that was pretty well publicized: http://gizmodo.com/380055/blue-jeans-cable-calls-bs-on-monst...

I bought some cables from http://www.bluejeanscable.com/ a few months later. I needed to make a few longer than normal runs, and they had reasonable prices and were direct about the capabilities of their different products outside of spec.

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