cheap hdmi cable in dublin?

TLG

where do u get one?

guil

anywhere, tesco had one fo 10 try there

Vendetta

5 euros in zavvi. Cheapest i found.

Ourlad

got 1 in argos for €7

projectmayhem

Not to hijack the thread but why would you cheap out on the HDMI? A good HDMI does have better performance... Not in the old gold-plated scart myth kind of way, but in a real way.

I bought a good belkin HDMI after testing out crap cables versus good ones on the same TV and seeing an immediate difference, especially in aliasing etc.

elgriff

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/upgrade/4235717.html

http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=ps3&message.id=828972

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2007/2/19/7116

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11276_7-6845988-3.html

noodler

The evidence saying that cheap ones are the same seems overwhelming. No on ever proposed a certain Scart was better than another, did they?

projectmayhem

elgriff wrote: »

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/upgrade/4235717.html

http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=ps3&message.id=828972

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2007/2/19/7116

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11276_7-6845988-3.html

The best test we did was to have a blu-ray player stopped, with the manufacturers' logo on screen. With cheaper brands, even the background colour was slightly different, and the circular logo was aliased on cheaper ones. Sure, in-game or in-movie it's hard to see these things, but it was definitely there.

The PM quote that "digital is digital" is rubbish.

noodler wrote: »

No on ever proposed a certain Scart was better than another, did they?

I remember someone trying to sell me a massively expensive Scart cable because it was "gold plated" which would make everything better, despite the fact I had a bog standard VHS player and a horrible small TV at the time.

noodler

With all due respect. He showed some empirical evidence and you just said his claims are rubbish. I think its a racket personally.

You will understand if someone didn't take your word for it.

ongarite

Its electrically impossible to have better colour and aliasing with cheaper or more expensive HDMI cables.
Your HDMI device send a clock pulse of 0,1 in certain sequence to recieving HDMI device which then interprets these 0,1 and displays them on TV, etc.

A bad, cheap HDMI cable will transmit the same 0,1 as expensive cable. A failure to send 0,1 would give either complete loss of signal or digital blocks on TV.

Your assumption of better aliasing and colour is just that; your brain trying to fool you into thinking that the more expensive cable was worth spending all that money on.

This whole transition from analogue to digital connections is killing the emperior new clothes AV industry. These companies that get you to buy €200 SCART cables have to make it seem like its worth buying their "HI-SPEED 1080P" HDMI cable or "SUPER CRISP" optical audio cable.

guil

totally different area but sky is digital and ya can only get a proper picture or nothin, its not like the old sattelite where the picture would be fuzzy so i presume its the same with hdmi

QuadLeo

projectmayhem wrote: »

Not to hijack the thread but why would you cheap out on the HDMI? A good HDMI does have better performance... Not in the old gold-plated scart myth kind of way, but in a real way.

I bought a good belkin HDMI after testing out crap cables versus good ones on the same TV and seeing an immediate difference, especially in aliasing etc.

No offence but that's absolute rubbish. There is no difference between cheap and expensive digital cables. I work with digital signals all day and I know for a fact that it is not possible that there can be slight degradation of a digital signal. The signal is either 100% perfect or it's destroyed. There's no in-between. It's only since HDMI came on the market that this debate started. Digital signals have been used in recording studios for the last 20 years. Engineers make up AES/EBU cables themselves all the time with any old mic cable, XLR connectors and a soldering iron. Do you really think that the best studios in the world would "cheap out" on the quality of their cables if it actually made a difference?... If you noticed a difference in picture then I'm sad to say there is something wrong with your TV or Blu-ray player. It's a myth and it's this misconception that allows companies to sell 3m HDMI cables for €150. Good for them if they can fool people into buying them. You'll notice that the people who state that there is a difference and explain it using fancy diagrams are the same people who sell the stuff.

ongarite wrote: »

Your assumption of better aliasing and colour is just that; your brain trying to fool you into thinking that the more expensive cable was worth spending all that money on.

+1

QuadLeo

guil07 wrote: »

totally different area but sky is digital and ya can only get a proper picture or nothin, its not like the old sattelite where the picture would be fuzzy so i presume its the same with hdmi

Exactly. Another example. Even thought the air, through the wind and rain, and storms and whatever. The picture is either perfect or it's destroyed.

projectmayhem

I'll continue to play devils advocate here. Yes, it's only 1's and 0's, but there's still electric current. Fire too much data through a cheapo cable (HDMI or otherwise) and the receiver can get confused. On top of that, cheaper cables are made with cheaper components, so the cable shielding isn't going to be the best, and as such can cause loss in quality.

A 2 meter cable running 720p signal probably will have little or no effect regardless of your cable, run 1080p over a longer distance and the more expensive cables make a very noticable difference, even running them through digital signalling boxes.

I recall a gizmodo article (can't find the link) about this stuff where they did find a difference, and the longer the cable with a higher resolution (I think they tested beyond 1080p for "future proofing") made a much bigger difference.

Hell, even Samsung recommend you spend 10% of your TV price on good cabling, and they don't even make cables... surely they've found something in their R&D to suggest there's a difference.

By the way, I'm not making an argument for €150 cables. I wouldn't spend more then €50 on one, but there is loss in quality in a €10 cable...

guil

i have seen countless tests where they show that there is no difference what so ever in an expensive cable and a cheap one, i dont have the links but ongarite posted one b4 i think

ongarite

Those 1,0 are 0V and 5V. All devices have jitter correction so IF 4V or 7V transmitted, the recieving HDMI device still knows that its meant to recieve a digital 1.

A 2M €5 cable will transmit 1080p with no picture breakup or corruption.
A 20M €5 cable MAY have issues with 1080p and picture breakup.

In general, if you are connecting a PS3 to TV with cable under 5M, the cheapest one you can find will work perfectly.

ravydavygravy

ongarite wrote: »

In general, if you are connecting a PS3 to TV with cable under 5M, the cheapest one you can find will work perfectly.

I think that sums it up pretty well - in the vast majority of PS3 to TV scenarios, the cheapest cable will do.

Anyone want to summarise all this info in the PS3 FAQ thread? Include the links posted earlier, and maybe a link to wikipedia on hdmi (interesting reading, which supports the "maybe it matters at high res over long distance" argument)

Dave

smooch71

I bought a HDMI lead in a game shop for €50 and a "gold plated" one on ebay for .99c

There is absolutely no difference between them.

Check ebay out, the ones in the shops are a rip off

noodler

Your a bit of a legend. Most people who have bought an expensive one feel to angry to admit there is no difference.

Flaccus

I hope you returned the €50 cable or was it in one of those almost indestructable plastic boxes that alot of the high end cables come in, which requires a scissors to tear open, thus meaning no chance of a return

I use a 130€ cable myself. It's a Belkin PureAV Black, 3metre, gold plated, braided, HDMI 1.3 job. Very nice :eek:





I have it only because the sale guy gave it to me for a tenner when buying a new TV

guil

i bought a poxy monster 300 for €100 and there is no difference between that and one i got for 20

smooch71

Yeah it was in one of those packs alright.

I wore out three scissors trying to open it so there was no way to return.

Playstations, Xboxes and HD TVs are all expensive enough without having to fork out €130 for a lead that should have come with each one of them in the first place anyway

Sky have a great deal going. You pay €150 for the HDMI lead and get a Sky HD box free!

QuadLeo

smooch71 wrote: »

Sky have a great deal going. You pay €150 for the HDMI lead and get a Sky HD box free!

Brilliant! LMAO!

mobius42

This reminds me of the test they did with the Monster audio cables and the coat hangers. One speaker system used the monster cables and the other connected the speakers by using a coat hanger. No-one could tell which was which.

http://consumerist.com/362926/do-coat-hangers-sound-as-good-monster-cables

Zonda999

There have been huge threads on this issue before. Just do a search.Mathias is the man in the know.He seems to know a lot about it and is adament the cheap cables are exactly the same

L31mr0d

I'm an electronic engineer and the whole expensive cable game is a farse, its smoke and mirrors for people who don't know enough about digital electrical signals.

This topic has already been flogged to death (in numerous other threads also) but advising people to buy expensive cables is misinformation. You'd have to have some serious source of interference directly beside the cable to notice any type of digital signal loss in cables shorter than 5M, and even in that case the signal would just break up entirely, you wouldn't see analogue output differences such as worse aliasing or "fuzziness" in the picture, unless your TV is decoding to analogue and there is an issue with its DAD.

mathias

I posted this before and as has been said this topic has been done to death , but to stop anyone getting ripped off its worth it to post again ,

http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/8752/marketplace/packing_the_deal.wmv

Thats a good video and explains it very nicely , the tech tests are at the end and are absolutely correct.

I had a project to do late last year , concerning a major customer who was intending to ( and has ) include a HDMI cable in with their product and wanted to know what differences there were if any in HDMI cables.

A Detailed tech breakdown of cable properties and performance was needed and we did that , the test included over 100 cables with various performance claims and ranged from €2.99 to €499 in price at the time , we bought them all and this was included in the price of the job.

The results were rock solid conclusive , any cable less than 10 meters that is mechanically sound ( that means no bad solder joints or broken wires ) will give a bit error rate of 0%.

There is no arguing with that , a bit error rate of 0% means there is absolutely no difference whatsoever in the results that are caused by the cable.
( This is exactly what the guy in the video means when he says its as good as it can be , he got an error rate of 0% , meaning it cannot be any better ! )

So , I am absolutely convinced beyond any doubt that you should get the cheapest one you can , it will do the job as good as any other.

Concerning Projectmayhems post :

I'll continue to play devils advocate here. Yes, it's only 1's and 0's, but there's still electric current. Fire too much data through a cheapo cable (HDMI or otherwise) and the receiver can get confused. On top of that, cheaper cables are made with cheaper components, so the cable shielding isn't going to be the best, and as such can cause loss in quality.

There is a big difference between a digital cable and an analog cable , and to make myself clear here , a digital cable is a cable intended to carry an electrical signal that represents a code as opposed to an analog of a signal.

A Digital cable carries voltage at two distinct levels , representing binary data or 1's and 0's. All that matters to get perfect results are that the levels are distinct from each other. Once that happens the signal gets from A to B in perfect condition. The cable can take an enormous amount of interference and still produce pixel perfect results , so to a large extent , interference does not matter one iota , the cable can lose up to 75% of the signal and still produce a perfect result.
In the case where it actually falls below the threshold and the levels are not distinct , what you see is complete failure , total picture breakup , its never subtle , which is why you will often hear the " it either works or it doesnt " quote.

To add to that , most so called " premier " cable companies like monster , cord , kimber etc. claim there is a bandwidth issue with HDMI , this is total rubbish , bandwidth is not an issue with any HDMI cable , even with long runs approaching 20 meters bandwidth is not the issue , the issue is attenuation , and this can be corrected with repeaters , if there was an inherent bandwidth issue no repeater would correct the issue , and for the record there is no content in existence , or planned to be in existence that uses the 10.2 Gbps bandwidth that all HDMI cables have.

Any site , or magazine that says there is a difference in output quality regarding HDMI cables is operating on advertising revenue or are in the business of selling cables , in short , they are lying to you.

Thats a fact.

noodler

I love you Mathias.

Flaccus

I found this article interesting. Here is the link to part3. They talk about long HDMI cable runs and future proofing at res's above 1080p.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/hdmi-cable-battlemodo/the-truth-about-monster-cable-+-grand-finale-part-iii-282725.php

smooch71

Anyway, like I said. 99c on ebay. You can't get much cheaper than that. Even with €3-4 post, it's still a good deal.