Retailer Calls Rivals' Bluff On "HDMI Scam"

nk497 writes "Retailer Kogan is offering customers of rival stores free HDMI cables to highlight the 'scam' of selling the cables for £100, saying its own £4 cable works just as well. 'An HDMI cable is an HDMI cable,' Kogan said. 'It's a digital cable. You either get a picture or you don't. Don't get conned into buying a 'fancy' HDMI cable because it will make no difference!' Rival retailers Currys and John Lewis said they preferred to offer customers a 'variety' of cables. 'Each of our HDMI cables offers excellent quality and value for money, and by providing our customers with a range of different cables which offer different specifications, we are able to help them find one to suit their specific needs, with features such as different cable lengths, ultra slim and high speed,' said a spokesman for John Lewis, which sells cables for £20 to £99."

An HDMI cable is not just an HDMI cable

[master_kaos]

Sure a cheap $2 HDMI cable is just as good as a more expensive one for a short run (50') they sure as hell do matter. I used to think the same thing, and I needed to do 3x60' runs. So I bought some cheap hdmi cables and ran them, no signal. Tried other 2.. same issue. Returned them, bought better quality ones (no monster cables, but better quality ones), and they ran perfect.

Future Shop does it too now

[canajin56]

After Future Shop in Canada got bought up, they've dumped their non-monster cables and stuff. "Oh, you want an HDMI to go with that TV? That'll be $80. Do you want a fucking $400 god damn power bar? It cleans the power gremlins out of your filthy filthy wall socket. Without the filter the gremlins will take a hammer to the inside of your TV, and eat all your bags of chips. It also somehow makes the sound one hundred times crisper because resonance waves from your dirty power account for a huge portion of the signal noise from home amplifiers and receivers. It also has a display to show the current voltage, so you know just how dirty your power was before we made it sparkling fresh!"

Definite answer: Normal or HighSpeed (w ethernet)

[AwaxSlashdot]

Directly from HDMI.org :
http://www.hdmi.org/manufacturer/hdmi_1_4/finding_right_cable.aspx [hdmi.org]
http://www.hdmi.org/manufacturer/trademark_logo_pub.aspx [hdmi.org]

Since 1.4, there are only 5 differentes cables and correctly labelling them is REQUIRED by HDMI (there is a grace period until the end of 2011).

It's simple : 2 speeds (Normal or HighSpeed) and a feature (with or without Ethernet).
Basically, Normal supports up to 1080i and HighSpeed supports above.

The last category is about automative cabling so we can forget about it.

At last, it is FORBIDDEN to make reference to a HDMI version number for cables ("upgrade your 1.3 cables to 1.4" : those are the same - except for Ethernet but your pre-1.4 devices did not support it).
And for products, if you want to use a version number, the manufacturer have to specifically list the feature added in this version supported by its product.

Not entirely false

[PraiseBob]

The gold plated connectors do make a difference, but only after many years. Gold is the least reactive of all metals, and resistant to corrosion. So, in 20, 30, 40 years from now, that cable will still make a solid connection. But of course the $5 cable can come with gold plated connectors too, and the big box stores overcharge by 1000% either way. I recommend Monoprice.com for cables.

Re:But the Best Buy guy said it does

[compro01]

Gold wiring wouldn't be useful, but gold plating on the connectors is useful because gold doesn't oxidize (under normal conditions), unlike copper and silver.

Still, you're only talking milligrams of gold, about 100mg for a pair of HDMI connectors, or about $5 worth.

Re:Data rate negotiation

[Lumpy]

Wrong. I have a 100 foot cable install that will do 1080i and 720p fine. 1080p fails.

It's a fault of the signal strength of the Crap Sony Bluray player sending the signal at a lower voltage than is the HDMI specification. but you can have a "lower quality" signal because the display will fall back to a lower resolution and tell the player to do so as well.

Re:Small blocks of uncorrectable error

[uglyduckling]

Those noise bars are clearly obvious, and picture drop-outs would noticed by a two year-old. If that happens, the cable you bought is faulty and should be taken back for a refund. That is not an excuse to sell people $50 cables. Any cable sold as an HDMI cable should work perfectly for normal domestic use, otherwise it is defective and should be returned. That is no justification for moonshine magic cables, which is what this story is about.

Re:NO it depends...

[itsdapead]

its a bit like saying you can plug in a CAT 5 cable and get gigabit...

No. Its saying that one CAT5 cable is as good as any other CAT5 cable for any application that requires a CAT5 cable. If you're running 100BaseT in a normal environment with regulation-length cable runs then any honestly-labelled CAT5 cable will do. Buying CAT6 won't make your 100BaseT run any faster or make your photo collection look warmer. Nor will buying a super-deluxe CAT5 cable hand-woven by virgins from copper that Steve Jobs has pissed on - which is what these high-street stores are trying to pull.

There are various grades of HDMI cable for different task. If you're running a 1920x1440 monitor or a 3D telly then you should get the high-speed flavor rather than bog-standard but you can still get those for a fiver from reputable online suppliers. The problem is not stores telling people that they need a $10 high-speed HDMI cable rather than a $5 normal speed one, they're telling people that a $100 super-deluxe high-speed cable will give them a better picture and sound than the $10 high-speed HDMI cable. Which is BS.

...and the victims of this are usually people wanting 6' cables to connect their BluRay to their TV, not slashdotters wanting to run 60' cables past their homemade van-der-graff generator, in front of their Pringles-can long distance WiFi link, under the Farnsworth fuser and down to their experimental video wall.