Great HDMI cable

[ChadTower]

You can't be serious...

I am serious.  Thank you for not calling me Shirley.

[fallacy]

All Hdmi cables produce the same quality picture. If you want to argue, the amount of difference is not noticeable to the human eye so your argument is fail.  If you did not pick up a HDMI cable for $10 or less from Amazon then you’re an idiot.

[SNAAKE]

[Donkbaca]

of course they are all the same, after I run them through my 500 dollar power cleaner...

[shmokes]

Is that actually true?  I'm no electrical engineer, but . . . cables matter in the digital world too.  A gigabit signal can't be reliably passed over regular CAT 5 wire.  You need CAT 5e or better for that.  Even though the connectors are the same and they all have the same number of wires running through them.  And digital signals are not always necessarily all the way on or all the way off, it seems to me.  You might just have packet loss, for example, which if minor can be compensated with error correction algorithms or resending packets, etc.  I have seen digital video degraded a bout a hundred bajillion times.  You have a scratched DVD and it might stutter and artifact, but you don't necessarily lose the signal entirely.  I would imagine, and keep in mind that I am a layperson, that a poor quality HDMI cable might use too small a gauge of wires, or poor shielding that could introduce dropped bits especially in longer cable runs, leading to artifacting (i.e., image degradation), but not necessarily a complete loss of signal.

I'm not saying that you should buy expensive cables.  I buy all my cables from Monoprice and have never had a problem.  But is the case really as absolute as y'all are presenting it?  Or am I misunderstanding something?

[shateredsoul]

maybe there is a difference, but I guess the point is that most ppl wouldn't really be able to tell the difference. In all my visits to best buy and other stores, only once did I feel the quality of the tv changed the experience.. but not sure if for the better. They were showing the fist pirates of the Caribbean and you could see all the make up, the hairs and stuff on their face, you could even tell which of the props were fake (i.e. fake wood).

I can't stand tvs that look grainny or too dark though =/ that I can see, but I can't see the diff between a super duper hdmi and a monoprice hdmi on the same tv

[Samstag]

It's definitely not true that all hdmi cables will give you the same picture.  Most of the time a cheap cable will be fine for normal runs, but when you start getting into longer runs (or if you just have a really terrible short cable) you can get intermittent glitches.  They may show up as full picture glitches, but it's also possible that you'll lose only partial data and start seeing some pixellation.

But you still don't need expensive cables.  I buy monoprice cables, but will go for higher gauge cables with torroid filters for longer runs or devices that are really picky (like my PS3).

[DaveMMR]

From CNET: http://reviews.cnet.com/2719-11276_7-226-1.html?tag=page;page

Some key points from that post:

And if you get nothing else from reading this guide, you should remember one simple fact: There's no reason to pay extra for HDMI cables. (pp 1)

You should never pay more than $10 for a standard six-foot HDMI cable. And despite what salesmen and manufacturers might tell you, there's no meaningful difference between the $10 cable and the $50 cable. Unless you see something obvious, such as dropouts or a flashing screen, the digital information transmitted by both cables is exactly the same--no cable can make the picture any better or any worse. (pp 3)

If you feel better spending a few more bucks, go for it.   But it may just be a placebo from what I've read.   My three dollar cables have done me quite well so far.

By the way, cables in general made #4 on the list of this list:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19022_5-ways-hi-tech-retailers-are-secretly-screwing-you.html

[ChadTower]

I'm not saying that you should buy expensive cables.  I buy all my cables from Monoprice and have never had a problem.  But is the case really as absolute as y'all are presenting it?  Or am I misunderstanding something?

I think you have the cable part pegged.  What you're not accounting for is the fact that the movie on your disc, even if it's Blu Ray, is not of sufficient quality for the error rate of a cheap HDMI cable to be of real impact.  We're talking about consumer hardware.

[shmokes]

That makes sense.  But I always see it presented as an absolute, like it would be impossible for a cheap cable to produce an inferior picture.  Specifically people say that your picture will be either perfect or non-existent because it's digital.  And that doesn't make sense, at least academically.  Cos I've seen artifacts and stuttering in digital feeds.  Often.  So it seemed that while it may be true in practice, cos HDMI has plenty of extra bandwidth or whatever, maybe people are actually misunderstanding the technical reasons that cheap cables are fine.  In short, they're good enough, but not just as good.  And, technically speaking, inferior cables can produce an inferrior digital image, it's just not something you have to worry about when it comes to HDMI.  Because the HDMI spec is apparently robust, not because of the difference between analog and digital signals.

At least that's how it makes sense in my head.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

If we're talking academically and in theory, the all-or-nothing view of digital IS correct, but the time domain in which it happens is not the same as how we perceive it. Stuttering sound and artifacted pictures are because most of it was there, and some of it was not versus analog where there is a procedural loss of signal which above some threshold we don't really notice.

[shmokes]

I think not, because by all or nothing we mean all of the picture or none of it, when in fact the existence of artifacting means some, aka not all or nothing.  Of course when talking about bit by bit it is all or nothing, but that's not what most people mean when they claim that with digital it's all or nothing.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Err, that's kinda what I meant. 

[Howard_Casto]

Because the HDMI spec is apparently robust, not because of the difference between analog and digital signals.
At least that's how it makes sense in my head.

Kinda Sorta.....  I'm by no means an expert when it comes to hdmi, so some of my details could be wrong but.....

Understand that hdmi is both a digital format (like a CD, versus a record) AND a digital transmisson protocol (like TCP vs... an analog tv broadcast).  Both make a significant difference, but the second one is the one that makes cable quality pretty irrelevant aside from a defective cable that simply doesn't work at all.  Much like data streamed over TCP, the hdmi protocol is a "smart" protocol that streams data via packets.  Even if you lose packets, the device simply re-sends them and thus it doesn't effect image quality at all, it effects transmission rate.  Fortunately the transmission rate on a hdmi signal is way faster than needed (it's future-proofed for possible post-processing of the image) so even if a cable is so crappy that it loses a bunch of packets (which in and of itself is next to impossible)  all the packets are going to get sent to the display eventually and in a timely enough fashion.

So yes, the robustness of the hdmi signal makes quality degredation pretty much impossible.  Even so, given the digital format of the video and the short cable lengths we are dealing with, this redundancy is unnecessary as you aren't going to see any signal loss even in a streamed, non-buffered transmission.

[shmokes]

That makes sense.  Thanks.

[Vigo]

maybe there is a difference, but I guess the point is that most ppl wouldn't really be able to tell the difference. In all my visits to best buy and other stores, only once did I feel the quality of the tv changed the experience.. but not sure if for the better. They were showing the fist pirates of the Caribbean and you could see all the make up, the hairs and stuff on their face, you could even tell which of the props were fake (i.e. fake wood).

The Fist Pirates of the Caribbean? Is that some gay porno movie Best Buy was showing you? 


You bring up a good point about things looking too clear sometimes. I remember a setup that they had at Best Buy where they were trying to sell BluRay and had a comparison between the BluRay quality and DVD quality of a battle scene. The BluRay shot you could see every little person in perfect detail in the background, as clear the main characters fighting each other in the foreground. I ended up preferring the DVD grade because I didn't know what I was suppose to focus on in the BluRay shot and ended up getting a bit dizzy from all that was going on. It looked pretty, but I lost some enjoyment trying to catch every detail.

[MonMotha]

HDMI cable quality is a big deal.  You're talking 4 signals which have to be synchronized to within a fraction of a bit period running at potentially a GHz or so for 1080p60.  Double that for 3D.  That is surprisingly hard to transmit over a wire of any appreciable length (more than a few inches).  The quality of the cable will affect all sorts of things and could result in bit errors or clocking errors.  The effects of bad cabling also get worse on longer runs.  For a typical 6-10ft home A/V center run, the cheap $3-5 cables are generally fine.  For a 100ft run, you probably need to spend more than 10x what the short one costs.

However, the nature of the problem is such that, in general, while the possible error is small, any given bit is just as likely to be affected as any other bit since each bit is sent one after another (this is simplification as TMDS symbols are actually sent, but that doesn't really change things much).  An error in the MSB will cause a majorly wrong pixel color (changing it by half its total possible value) while an error in the LSB will likely be imperceptible except on a deliberately rigged test image (e.g. a perfect gradient).  Clocking issues will be immediately apparent as image or line jitter.

In other words, if it looks right and isn't "snowy", it is right; your $5 cable is sufficient (and they always seem to be for me).  In fact, the HDMI guys won't let you sell the cable with their connector (it's patented) unless it passes the relevant tests.  I'm sure that not every cheap fly-by-night cable maker in China abides by this regulation, but I suspect most do since the penalties amount to "your products can no longer be imported into the USA".  The tests include quite a bit of margin from the spec, and most receivers beat the requirements of the spec, anyway (they're more tolerant than they need to be)

This is contrasted with analog transmission methods: with analog transmission methods (component YPbPr video, RGB, S-Video, Composite), errors, which tend to be small, will always have a small effect on the received video.  This means that you may not notice, but you have a "suboptimal" picture.  Honestly, for short runs on reasonable cable, the error introduced by the ADC and its power supplies in your TV is probably worse, but inordinately bad cable is unsuitable for anything above 480i (and barely suitable for that).

A few notes to correct some incorrect information that's shown up in this thread:
HDMI does not include error checking or correction (though some errors can be detected in a non-robust way as an invalid TMDS bitstream).
HDMI does not include retransmission of bad data: it doesn't know it's bad in the first place, and there's no real reverse channel to request a retransmission, anyway.
The bitrate on HDMI is based on the resolution you run it at (unlike DisplayPort or SDI), and frames are not really packetized beyond the SAV/EAV framing that's present for blanking/sync information, anyway.  Audio is inserted during the blanking period.

And yes, I am a EE (well, Computer - similar qualifications).

[shmokes]

Heh, that makes sense.  Thanks.  Btw, if there's no reverse channel, how do various devices turn each other on and off?

[ChadTower]

Heh, that makes sense.  Thanks.  Btw, if there's no reverse channel, how do various devices turn each other on and off?

Stuff like that is the crappy side of HDMI.  When I got the only TV I have with HDMI I tried to set it up with a DirecTV DVR.  HDMI, brand new DVR, one cable, woo!  Except not woo.  Every other time I used the remote's "all on" macro button I would get no sound on the TV.  I spent an hour debugging, an hour on the phone with DirecTV, until finally I just switched to component/AV audio.  The problem never occurred again.  Searching AVSForum turned up many places where people can't use macros on their remote with HDMI but they can with other wiring types.  I didn't mind going with AV audio because I don't have a receiver for that TV but if I did I'd still have to turn everything on separately and in a specific order.

[MonMotha]

There's the "CEC" ("consumer electronic control") channel allows the various interconnected devices to turn themselves on and off, set inputs, etc.  It's a single wire bus that predates HDMI.  It's known by the name "Anylink", "VieraLink", and similar names by various vendors.  Its operation is 100% independent of the video signals.

There is also the DDC channel.  This is the VESA comm channel also used by DVI and VGA connections to identify the monitor's capabilities.  It can in theory be run in both directions, but in practice, only the source sends data to the monitor.  DDC operation is also 100% independent of video signals.

Neither channel is fast enough for any sort of acknowledgement/retry system, even if you wanted to use it for such a thing.  DDC is run at 100kHz (optionally 400kHz) and has substantial overhead resulting in a usable bit rate of typically <75kbps.  The CEC channel is even slower, IIRC.

The DisplayPort auxiliary channel is quite a bit faster, but there's still no ack/retry on DisplayPort, at least not that I remember from reading the spec.

Oh, and if the HDMI CEC stuff bothers you (it bothered me when my TV randomly turned on in the middle of the night), many devices will let you disable it.

[SavannahLion]

Sketchy? I like how you assume what I look like PBJ.

However, I've heard they have a new (unwritten) policy that if the receipt isn't "tagged" (I assume with that ---smurfy--- highlighter) then they'll refuse any sort of exchange or return on that item. Even if you have the ---smurfing--- receipt from their store.

Think on that for a second - does that even make sense to you?  You need your receipt tagged when you walk into the store with a return.  All the bigbox places do it now.  It's to keep you from buying something, coming back a week later with your receipt, walking inside and grabbing another one off the shelf, and 'returning' it to the store.

Re-read my post. I'm not talking about the tag/mark they put on the receipt when you walk in. I'm talking about the tag/mark on the receipt when you walk out. Some stores are refusing returns if that mark is not on the receipt.

[SavannahLion]

Interesting response. Whatever. 

Moving along. Just a humorous thread illustrating the flip side: http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=60877.0

[ahofle]

An interesting epilogue to this thread...
My wife ended up winning a 'bag of crap' on woot.com (bunch of random stuff that won't sell thrown into a box for $3).  One of the items in the box is pictured below.  If you look closely, you will see that the original price was $99.99.  On the back it actually says: "Supports the next generation 1440p high definition!"   

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Well you can use all the money you saved to buy this
http://www.guru3d.com/news/nec-multisync-pa271w-27inch-1440p-professional-display/

[MonMotha]

4 or 5 years ago, I could reasonably readily get monitors with 1600 lines of resolution.  My my how far things have progressed to get to 1440, now.  It's amazing, I tell you.

[whammoed]

4 or 5 years ago, I could reasonably readily get monitors with 1600 lines of resolution.  My my how far things have progressed to get to 1440, now.  It's amazing, I tell you.

LOL.  I had a sony CRT monitor back then that could do that.  Looked like hell at that resolution though.  I'm sure there were larger sets that looked fine though.

[MonMotha]

I'm talking about LCDs.  There were several 26" models on the market (likely all using the same panel) about 3-4 years ago sporting that resolution.

I have a GDM-FW900 from the early 2000s that can do 2304x1440 at 85Hz and looks decent doing it, assuming you have a good video card.  My laptops have trouble keeping up, probably due to aggressive EMI control components on their analog outputs, but some of my discrete graphics cards look pretty good.  I usually run it at 1920x1200 @ 85Hz.  While it can go higher refresh at that res, getting a good enough signal source for it to not be blurry is tough.

It could in theory do 1600 lines at 75Hz.  I've not tried it, so I don't know how it would look.  The pixel clock at 2560x1600 @ 75Hz is a whopping ~320MHz.  I'm guessing many video cards' DACs can't really keep up (even if they can be clocked that fast, they probably don't have sufficient analog bandwidth), and the EMI control components will also start to cause a problem (though they're easily bypassed).  Cable quality is VERY important at that point on an analog line.

[whammoed]

I'm talking about LCDs.  There were several 26" models on the market (likely all using the same panel) about 3-4 years ago sporting that resolution.

Ah.  Don't see any 26" models on newegg anymore but they have some 30" ones in that res.
What kind of price were those 26" models fetching?

link

[MonMotha]

My recollection is in the $1100-1500 range.  Prices have certainly come down on LCDs, but sadly often so have the specs

I bought a 19" 1280x1024 S-IPS 5:4 LCD in 2003 for $800 (after $100 rebate), and I think you'd be hard pressed to get me to sell it now for that price.  The viewing angles are superb, the screen protector is amazingly rugged (though it can glare a little bit), good black levels, and the resolution is just about impossible to beat at that size.  My only real complaints are a couple of stuck pixels in the corners (normal and accepted at that time), and it's a little dim (partially due to age, and partially because new models have gotten brighter but usually at the expense of black level).  Response time is a bit long (IIRC, it's about 20ms B-W), but that's not a huge deal for my normal usage.  If want to game, I do it on my CRTs at 90+Hz

[fallacy]

Is that actually true?  I'm no electrical engineer, but . . . cables matter in the digital world too.  A gigabit signal can't be reliably passed over regular CAT 5 wire.  You need CAT 5e or better for that.  Even though the connectors are the same and they all have the same number of wires running through them.  And digital signals are not always necessarily all the way on or all the way off, it seems to me.  You might just have packet loss, for example, which if minor can be compensated with error correction algorithms or resending packets, etc.  I have seen digital video degraded a bout a hundred bajillion times.  You have a scratched DVD and it might stutter and artifact, but you don't necessarily lose the signal entirely.  I would imagine, and keep in mind that I am a layperson, that a poor quality HDMI cable might use too small a gauge of wires, or poor shielding that could introduce dropped bits especially in longer cable runs, leading to artifacting (i.e., image degradation), but not necessarily a complete loss of signal.

I'm not saying that you should buy expensive cables.  I buy all my cables from Monoprice and have never had a problem.  But is the case really as absolute as y'all are presenting it?  Or am I misunderstanding something?

Let’s put it this way. When you buy a new monitor which I am sure we all have, do you go out and spend $80 or more for a new DVI cable that has a box picture of flying through space attacking aliens? (I’m sure DaveMMR does) or do you just use the one in the box that comes with the monitor. You saint's note - don't try to get around the auto-censor please. I put it there for a reason. use the one in the box! Why? Because as long as your text comes in sharp there is no problem to begin with.

Well guess what; DVI and HDMI use the same standard. The only difference is HDMI has audio and DVI does not. So if you don’t care about the DVI cable when you hook up a monitor then why the F would anyone think a HDMI cable is any different?

[SavannahLion]

Let’s put it this way. When you buy a new monitor which I am sure we all have, do you go out and spend $80 or more for a new DVI cable that has a box picture of flying through space attacking aliens? (I’m sure DaveMMR does) or do you just use the one in the box that comes with the monitor. You  use the one in the box! Why? Because as long as your text comes in sharp there is no problem to begin with.

Just a note. You might not want to bypass the filter like that. It's not really necessary. If you want to say ---fudgesicle---, just say ---fudgesicle--- without doing anything to try and trick the filter. Let the filter do its job and keep the site somewhat family friendly. The rest of us, who choose to, can turn off the filter and see that you say ---fudgesicle--- and we wouldn't give a flying ---fudgesicle--- about it otherwise.

In any case... I'm impressed you're still able to buy monitors with cables.... HDMI and DVI cables even, packed in. Can't remember the last time I bought a monitor with anything other than the power cable packed in.

[fallacy]

Just a note. You might not want to bypass the filter like that. It's not really necessary. If you want to say ---fudgesicle---, just say ---fudgesicle--- without doing anything to try and trick the filter. Let the filter do its job and keep the site somewhat family friendly. The rest of us, who choose to, can turn off the filter and see that you say ---fudgesicle--- and we wouldn't give a flying ---fudgesicle--- about it otherwise.

You can turn off the filter?

In any case... I'm impressed you're still able to buy monitors with cables.... HDMI and DVI cables even, packed in. Can't remember the last time I bought a monitor with anything other than the power cable packed in.

I have been working at computer support centers for the last 8 years and I don’t think I have ever seen a boxed monitor come in that did not come packed with VGA/DVI cables.

[shmokes]

Yeah, monitors always have cables.  And of course no monitor manufacturer is going to pack in a cable that was not high enough quality to work with that monitor.  That would be retarded.  HDMI cables, on the other hand, are almost without exception not packed in with devices that use them.  HDMI cables have to be purchased separately, so you can't trust that they will work with your device the same as you could a pack-in cable.  Of course, you can trust it in practice because HDMI cables in general have a reputation for working fine regardless of cost.  But that still doesn't mean that they will always work either 100% perfectly or not at all on account of being digital. 

[DaveMMR]

Let’s put it this way. When you buy a new monitor which I am sure we all have, do you go out and spend $80 or more for a new DVI cable that has a box picture of flying through space attacking aliens? (I’m sure DaveMMR does) or do you just use the one in the box that comes with the monitor. You f.ucking use the one in the box! Why? Because as long as your text comes in sharp there is no problem to begin with.

Wait, huh?  The cables I buy come in plain brown box.  

And yeah, every piece of electronic I've purchased (TV, PS3, etc.) comes with the worst possible connection.  Even many printers can't even bother to throw in a USB cable.  That's why the overpricing of said cables is such an issue to begin with.

[shateredsoul]

Yeah, I don't use the av cables that came with the xbox 360 or ps3, I bought an hdmi cable for each (thank you monoprice!)

Monoprice is also great for printer cables, If monoprice were a person or a thing.. i'd marry it.