HDMI Cables ?

For your T-Geeks like me, was wanting your feedback on this. Is there an ideal HDMI cable for Blu Ray, or a gaming system, that is preferable? Are they all the same with shitty marketing? I am looking for to get the best possible picture for my HD TV.

Thanks

They are all the same.

[quote]johnnytang24 wrote:
They are all the same. [/quote]

But some are 70 bucks and some are 20!!!

Get the prettiest ones that go with your decor.

My cables were by Cables Unlimited but I bought them on Newegg. I don’t believe there’s really any difference or preferred cable.

I just bought two of them at once and I use one for my PS3 and the other with my HD DVD player. Both work fine.

Get the cheapest ones you can find for the length you need.

Monoprice.com usually has some good deals.

When I see someone’s HD setup, I try and remember to ask how much their HDMIs cost since it’s a dead giveaway for where they rank on the savvy-sucker spectrum.

I had a kid at Circuit City try to tell me that I needed a special HDMI for 1080p vs 720p. The one he claimed I needed was $100. I didn’t buy my cable there.

DB

[quote]dollarbill44 wrote:
I had a kid at Circuit City try to tell me that I needed a special HDMI for 1080p vs 720p. The one he claimed I needed was $100. I didn’t buy my cable there.

DB[/quote]

Yeah, they tried to get me too. Walmart has them on sale for 20 bucks or less. You can find them online for even cheaper. They are only getting away with it because few people are aware.

[quote]MaximusB wrote:
For your T-Geeks like me, was wanting your feedback on this. Is there an ideal HDMI cable for Blu Ray, or a gaming system, that is preferable? Are they all the same with shitty marketing? I am looking for to get the best possible picture for my HD TV.

Thanks [/quote]

It depends on what kind of TV you have and what you are watching. Everything in HD has a specific bandwith that it operates in. If you choose a cable that is to crappy not all the info gets through you get less picture quality than you would through a better cable.

You are going to need a better cable if you have a 120hz 1080p TV that is watching blue-ray than you are if you have a 720p Dynex watching re-runs of I Love Lucy on TVLAND-HD.

All cable and satellite channels broadcast in 720p at the moment also.

[quote]EG wrote:
It depends on what kind of TV you have and what you are watching. Everything in HD has a specific bandwith that it operates in. If you choose a cable that is to crappy not all the info gets through[/quote]

It gets stuck in the cable?

Bzzt. Thank you for playing.

[quote]EG wrote:
It depends on what kind of TV you have and what you are watching. Everything in HD has a specific bandwith that it operates in. If you choose a cable that is to crappy not all the info gets through you get less picture quality than you would through a better cable.

You are going to need a better cable if you have a 120hz 1080p TV that is watching blue-ray than you are if you have a 720p Dynex watching re-runs of I Love Lucy on TVLAND-HD.

All cable and satellite channels broadcast in 720p at the moment also.[/quote]

This is… not correct at all. Have you ever taken a digital signal processing course?

It’s really difficult for a digital signal to be degraded without being completely unwatchable. You’ll either get the same picture quality or no picture at all.

See, the crazy thing about 1’s and 0’s is that when one bit goes bad, it’s impossible to do the decryption, unlike in analog where the picture will just look fuzzy. Therefore, when a cable gets the stamp of approval and is labeled HDMI-compatible, it is guaranteed to not drop packets above a certain threshold.

In conclusion, pretty much all HDMI cables are exactly the same - you can go and buy your 100 dollar cables, while I’ll buy my 8 dollar ones.

You may have a case for delivering a signal through a computer server room which is buzzing with electricity compared to wiring up an apartment. However, there’s no need for a better cable in your example. Sorry!

[quote]Bergman wrote:
You may have a case for delivering a signal through a computer server room which is buzzing with electricity compared to wiring up an apartment. However, there’s no need for a better cable in your example. Sorry![/quote]

The funny thing is that if you’re wiring a corporate network for gigabit ethernet, you’ll get Cat-6 cable for pennies per foot. No one will complain that they’re receiving “degraged packets” on the network or that their web pages are fuzzy. That cable often runs next to electrical equipment and wiring, goes on for hundreds of feet thru ceilings, basements, walls, etc.

But somehow, once at home, for a cable that’s about 6 feet long between your cable box and your TV, you’re going to need gold-plated contacts and 3 layers of laminated shielding? Unless your living room is inside a nuclear reactor, it’s unlikely.

If P.T. Barnum was reincarnated, he’d be a Monster Cable salesman.

[quote]EG wrote:
All cable and satellite channels broadcast in 720p at the moment also.[/quote]

I don’t know about how it is in the US, but if you’re in Quebec and getting your HD from Videotron’s Illico HD service, the HD channels are all in 1080i.

Well, for the best quality, you can go with the Transparent HDMI cable:

http://www.hifi-products.com/Transparent,Cable/High,Performance,HDMI,Cable,cable,65695D11ED6FF44B,PicFront.html

But for quality sound, you’ll need need their speaker cable:

http://www.hifi-products.com/Transparent,Cable/Opus,MM2,Speaker,Cable,cable,1035916212FC55E7,PicFront.html

Typo? Lacking decimal? No, it’s a USD$33,000 speaker cable.

Oh, sorry, those are the budget ones. They go up to $43,000

[quote]johnnytang24 wrote:
Well, for the best quality, you can go with the Transparent HDMI cable:

http://www.hifi-products.com/Transparent,Cable/High,Performance,HDMI,Cable,cable,65695D11ED6FF44B,PicFront.html

But for quality sound, you’ll need need their speaker cable:

http://www.hifi-products.com/Transparent,Cable/Opus,MM2,Speaker,Cable,cable,1035916212FC55E7,PicFront.html

Typo? Lacking decimal? No, it’s a USD$33,000 speaker cable.[/quote]

lol!

They deserve that kind of price just for using picofarad in their product description :stuck_out_tongue:

Get the cheapest possible. They are all the same.

Analog singals benefit from the best conductive materials for SNR, etc.

But digital signals don’t. Its a 1 or its a 0. If its a really distorted 1 its still a 1.

The cables from the amplifer to the speakers should have some money spent on them but not from the TV to DVD player.

I have 2 HD TV’s one LCD one DLP with a total of 5 HDMI cables between the two, get the cheapest ones you can find at the shortest length you need. There is no difference…

[quote]pookie wrote:
The funny thing is that if you’re wiring a corporate network for gigabit ethernet, you’ll get Cat-6 cable for pennies per foot. No one will complain that they’re receiving “degraged packets” on the network or that their web pages are fuzzy. That cable often runs next to electrical equipment and wiring, goes on for hundreds of feet thru ceilings, basements, walls, etc.
[/quote]

Well, the nice thing about webpages is that they run on HTTP (generally) over TCP, which allows for dropped packets. HDMI, on the other hand, has no such method for resending a packet (similar to any other streaming protocol), but I’m sure you knew that. The question then becomes how often packets get lost in a corporate network. I’m willing to bet close to zero, but I have no idea just how close to zero.

Either way, we’re nitpicking because we both agree Monster is a damn sham.

Amazon has them for as low as $2.47. I went for the $10 one though b/c I get free 2-day shipping

http://www.amazon.com/HDMI-Cable-2M-6-Feet/dp/B0002L5R78/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1229421854&sr=1-1 -$2

http://www.amazon.com/Premium-HDMI-v1-3-Cable-6ft/dp/B001BM5XB2/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1229421854&sr=1-3 - $10