HDMI Cable

yes there is a difference.
it is the only contact from your PS3 to your HD TV.
get one for at least 40/50 notes.

you don't want to skimp on cables after spending over €1500 on AV equipment.

No there most definitely is not a difference.

As posted, its all digital , so there is no difference ,

Ive tested em at work , and from the cheapest to the dearest there is not one jot of difference , at least until you hit 15 meters in length anyway.

So , get the cheapest one you can find. With digital its a black and white situation , it either works or it doesnt , there are no varying degrees of quality ,

The likes of " Monster " will try and tell you different , but its Complete BS , their arguments only apply to analog , not digital.

I'm going a bit off point here too but you know when you power on the sky digibox and the TV's source automatically changes, is there any way for HDMI to do this as well or it is TV dependent? I'd like it so that when I power on the PS3 that the TV switches to the HDMI source without having to go through all the TV source channels manually

The interface specs allow for this and of course the cable has the line , but your TV has to have this feature , and not many do at the moment ,

Panasonics do , if your model has " Viera Link " . Thats one example ,

names for CEC are Anynet (Samsung), Aquos Link (Sharp), BRAVIA Theatre Sync (Sony), Regza Link (Toshiba), RIHD (Onkyo), Simplink (LG) and Viera Link/EZ-Sync (Panasonic/JVC).

Check for the logos of the above on your TV.

The line in question is the CEC ( consumer electronics control ) line , info is about half way down the page ,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI

If your Gear doesnt have the feature though , theres nothing you can do about it.

However shielding and impedence can affect a digital cable, in terms of jitter

My Lab tests consistently proved that signal degradation due to impedance , shielding , attenuation etc didnt show till 15 meters and even at that it was pretty low. HDMI is a balanced line , so shielding is not as important on the connection as it would be say with an analog signal.

After 15 meters attenuation started to play a big part , with some cheaper 20 meter cables having severe drop outs ( digital break up ).

At lengths of 1 to 5 meters , which is what most people here want , get the cheapest you can , it will do the job exactly the same as any other cable at any other price.

( Incidentally , the tests were for a major supplier of a home media device , who wanted to know what qualities a good HDMI cable would need to have if they were to include one with their product .... no names allowed... )

The good news for them is that the results showed that pretty much any one would do , saves them a few dollars Im sure !

I don't think the PS3 can tell what resolution your TV has but maybe I am wrong.:)

I understand that all hdmi cables do exactly the same job. Just out of interest, I got a hdmi cable in argos last year for my upscaling dvd player. On the box of it , it gave a list of supported modes. 720p/1080i was the highest listed. Whats the deal with that???? Should 1080p not have been listed? The cable was 40euro and at the time, was the only hdmi cable argos stocked as far as I can remember.

I beginning to sound like a parrot on the boards at the moment over this issue , that labelling of HDMI cables for different picture quality is a lie. Its complete and utter BS.

The cable does not know or care what type of picture is transmitting down it , the bandwidth of a HDMI cable is well beyond any resolution in existence at this time and they have all even be shown to handle experimental resolutions at least Double that of anything available for consumers at the moment , so pay no attention to this trash. Its a Con.

This one really makes me mad. Any sales assistant that gives you this spiel deserves a good slap!

On a side note , The PS3 uses the HDMI to interrogate your TV and find out the highest resolution its capable of and sets itself up accordingly , so yes it can tell what res your tv can do.

i have my PS3 connect to my Phillps 37"- the spec of the tv say it 720p but when i run the display setup on the ps3 it gives the option to select 1080p!!
why would this be? i have it set to 720p as this matches the tv.

Your TV may well be a 720p TV , but if its capable of accepting a 1080p picture then thats the way the PS3 should be set up , That way the scaling only happens once , scaling is where the picture is resized to fit your TV , if you have a 720p TV and set the Ps3 to 720p , the PS3 will scale , and then your TV will scale too. You really only want this to happen once and the TV scaler is usually better so let the TV do it.