The $6.99 HDMI is Certified 1.3a, Category 2, 10.2Gbit, 28AWG gold-plated.
Radio Shack is trying to tell me that fast motion will stutter if I use anything less than the $130 Monster HDMI cable.
I just bought some $10 premium HDMI cables from Amazon and they worked just fine on my HDTV and components. No fast motion stuttering at all. I wouldn’t spend a ridiculous amount for the Monster cables.
Sure. There’s a lot more markup on the Monster. But you’re right, they’re functionally identical. As a rule of thumb, if a digital link works at all, it works as well as it possibly could.* Paying extra for HDMI, DVI, or optical fibre patchcords is a complete waste of money. If the cheap one has the certification markings, it’s entirely adequate.
*Not quite true - there’s some small range in which there is enough signal degradation to cause visible artifacts but not quite enough that things don’t work at all. The only time an ordinary user might run into this is if pushing the length limits of a signal format. In such a circumstance better cable might actually get you further - but you’d still be better off with a signal amp than an expensive cord.
IANAEE, but: HDMI is a digital signal - you’re not transmitting a complex analog waveform (where high-quality cable really does matter), but a bunch of 1s and 0s. They’re not gradually degraded, they make it or they don’t.
Radio Shack is is BSing you.
Errands to run today:
Grocery store
Radio Shack for a return
Thanks, people!
This seems like a fine place to put this link:
And Monster Cable’s business model is to a large extent built around BSing you.
See any number of stories regarding the infamous coathanger test:
and
http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/12/17/hdmi-cable-scam-used-to-fool-in-store-customers/
http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/11/28/report-reminds-us-dont-get-burned-by-overpriced-cables/
oh and
That’s not entirely accurate. Over wires, both digital and analog signals are fundamentally time-varying voltages. The advantage with digital is that the specific voltage level is unimportant, within certain parameters; it need only be high enough to unambiguously represent a “1” or low enough to unambiguously represent a “0” (or vice versa, in some cases.) Digital signals are therefore more resistant to signal degradation due to various losses than analog. However, digital signals can still degrade progressively to the point where more and more information is lost. Most digital information transfer systems incorporate some sort of error correction, so that the loss of a few bits here and there can be fully compensated and losses, while present, have no effect. At some point, the error correction scheme breaks down, and as more and more information is lost, the effects become noticeable. Cable quality is important, to some extent; super-cheap cables are often poorly designed and poorly manufactured and suffer from significant losses due to stray capacitance and inductance. These manifest themselves as distortions in the digital waveforms and increase with both increasing cable length and increasing transfer rate.
That said, yes, I absolutely agree that Monster cables are vastly overpriced and while they’re significantly better than the cheapest cables available, they’re no better than almost all the rest. Put your money into equipment, not cables.
This website has come up in a couple of threads I’ve read recently. How do I pronounce it? In my head I’ve tried “Giz-MOE-doe” and “GIZ-moe-doo” and neither really works for me.
I always think of it, and have heard it referred to, the former way. Not grating on my ears, but YMMV.
There’s another good reason not to buy Monster Cables, and it’s because of their business practices. For several years now they’ve been suing any and all business that use the word “Monster,” even if they have nothing to do with audio or cables.
Their latest target is Monster Mini-Golf: http://www.electronichouse.com/article/monster_cable_sues_monster_mini_golf/C157
I’m suprised by that Denon cable; I thought they were a reputable company.
One thing I have to say in defense of Monster:
Every year, at the Consumer Electronics Show and at CEDIA (the custom installation show) Monster throws the best parties! Open bar, excellent entertainment, great food. Of course they get the money to throw the parties by ripping people off, but that’s OK.
I can tell you right here, the two most profitable items in any electronics store are:
[ol]
[li]Extended Service Contracts[/li][li]Cables[/li][/ol]
They are almost pure profit. A store like Best Buy can lose money on the electronics, as long as they make it up on the service contract and “interconnects”. One well-known way to get an unreasonably good price on a system is to let the sales-weasel drop the price on the equipment in order to get the extended service contract into your budget, buying it, then returning it for a refund (along with that $300 pile of cables and that completely worthless “power conditioner”).
With an analog bandwidth of 340 MHz and a TMDS bandwidth of 10.2 Gbit/s, not just any 'ol cable will do. The cable must meet certain requirements such as attenuation per unit length, capacitance per unit length, inter-channel skew, crosstalk/isolation, etc. else you’ll get dropped bits.
A cable will either meet the requirements or it won’t. As long as the cable manufacturer says the cable meets or exceeds HDMI 1.3+ requirements, then you’re good to go regardless of what the cable costs (assuming the manufacturer is honest).
I plead guilty to severe oversimplification, citing only my hangover as extenuating circumstances.
(I’ve been in enough Cat5, 5e, 6 arguments to know that digital encoding isn’t a magic bullet that takes away all cable requirements.)
The absolute best deal I’ve seen on HDMI cables is $.25 each, from Amazon about a year ago. I bought six. They work just fine.
Not to hijack, but coaxial cable runs from my satellite dish into my house and through the wall to the back of the satellite box. If there was any signal degradation, wouldn’t it occur there?
Why do I need a 2 foot expensive cable to run from my satellite box to my TV?
CNET on the topic - “You should never pay more than $10 for a standard six-foot HDMI cable.”
Yes. As noted by both me and Crafter Man, the amount of degradation is proportional to the cable length, at least as far as degradation due to losses within the cable itself goes.
I was just about to buy a cable to run from my DVD to my new TV, and the only ones I had seen at a glance was the expensive one. (No accident there.) Now I don’t have to think about getting a cable. My satellite box doesn’t even have an HDMI output (we don’t pay for HD satellite feeds) so I use coax for that connection.
Thanks all, for making my life easier. You just paid for my subscription fee.