HDMI Cables; Different prices, same quality?

Mr. Flibble

I'm looking at some sub 2m HDMI cables and prices seem to vary from >60euro to <20euro. Given that the data is digital, is an expensive 'high quality' cable a pointless marketing gimmick, or do they provide higher quality?

mossym

what the more expensive ones do is lessen the loss over distance. FOr your <2m , you shouldn't need to spend to get the best. Mine for example needed to be 13M, so i went for good ones to avoid sparklies on the strength,

HDMIv 1.3 has built in cable equalization, which should take a lot of the guess work out of cable buying. Unfortunately it is not readily available yet, the PS3 was the first 1.3 source

mathias

Given that the data is digital, is an expensive 'high quality' cable a pointless marketing gimmick, or do they provide higher quality?

Your correct , certainly at 2m ( and very debatable over longer distances ) there is no difference , all HDMI cables are balanced lines and digital content , so there is no grades of quality , it either works or it doesnt full stop !

Gran Hermano

http://www.lidl.ie/ie/home.nsf/pages/c.o.20070423.p.HDMICable

Might be worth a shot for €7.99 for 2m.

mossym

mathias wrote:

Your correct , certainly at 2m ( and very debatable over longer distances ) there is no difference , all HDMI cables are balanced lines and digital content , so there is no grades of quality , it either works or it doesnt full stop !

no debate over longer distances..i work with a group that has tested most brands of hdmi cables on the market, up to 30M long. a 30m cheapie cable causes problems...won't display anything over 480p, 10m is okay up to 720p but won't do anything higher.

balanced lines? all cables will have a capacative effect, hang enough capacitance on a digital signal and see how well it performs..

so for short distances a hdmi transmitter will have no problem driving cheapie cables. Believe me you use a long poor quality cable and you're taking a risk. HDMI cable equalization is going to start getting very important with the price of cables going down and down.

and believe me, i take the opposite stance on audio cables, can see the reasoning for spending huge amounts on "superior" cables. I've seen the effect of cheap hdmi cables though

mathias

I wouldnt have any experience of 30M so I'll go with you on that one , but I ran a 15M cable across my " home cinema" from the amp ( which is under the screen ) to the projector and had absolutely no problems , beautiful pictures in 1080i from my Sky HD box , although that is fed into a pioneer AV reciever with HDMI switching so that may be giving it a boost.

It was a " Goto " cable and I got it for €60 on ebay , that seemed pretty cheap to me for 15m.

8T8

HDMI is only meant to go 15M anything over that is out of spec and so may need special cables, inside the 15M limit anything will do like the cheapest cable you can get.

mossym

we use 30m half decent cable as a substitute for poor grade shorter cables...

we've a 12M cable here that won't do 1080p without cable equalization

oh and btw, check the spec,,there is no limit for distance on hdmi cables, it's minimum signal quality..which is where the equalization comes in...

cable can be 400m long if the signal levels are good enough