Retailer Calls Rivals' Bluff On "HDMI Scam" 664
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."
But the Best Buy guy said it does (Score:5, Funny)
You mean the oxygen-free wiring and gold-plated connectors don't make for an "extra dynamic picture" and "much better sound resolution"?
Re:But the Best Buy guy said it does (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But the Best Buy guy said it does (Score:5, Funny)
I'd have thought it was the other way around - ultra slim cables will let a 1 pass through, but a 0 will get blocked.
Unless those 1's are sideways. Why doesn't the manual for my new HDMI cable specify this?
Re:But the Best Buy guy said it does (Score:5, Funny)
They are European style 1s with long tails. They can get confused with Anglo Saxon style 7s.
That's why the directional indicator is so important.
Re:But the Best Buy guy said it does (Score:4, Funny)
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Semi-seriously, among all the jokes, beyond a point you reach pretty quickly, thicker wire only helps survive abuse. At high frequencies, all the conduction is in the conductor's skin ("skin effect", wikipedia), so thickness is no electrical benefit. Conductor pairs tend to be twisted so that any large scale magnetic interference (e.g., a speaker, or a motor) is cancelled across twists, and the twists in turn occur at different rates for different conductor pairs to avoid crosstalk ("cat 5 cable", wikiped
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No, but it stands for better slarvardation, higher image snognation and improved kaplast!
Re:But the Best Buy guy said it does (Score:5, Funny)
Just make sure you don't connect your golden cable backwards - the bass always sounds thin and reedy when the electrons are forced to flow 'uphill'.
Re:But the Best Buy guy said it does (Score:5, Funny)
PS: Don't forget to "break-in" your cables by playing music at full volume for 150 hours when new, and for another 10 hours or so every time you disconnect/reconnect them.
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$80 for a eight foot HDMI cable from Monster here in Canada. For comparison, the same place that sells Monster for $80 has a house brand that's $30 for the same length.
For those prices, I would move my equipment 2 feet closer and get the $4 cable.
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It can get a LOT worse than that when you connect a premium cable in reverse!
http://www.amazon.com/review/RF074827BNTI6/ref=cm_cr_pr_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B000I1X6PM&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=#wasThisHelpful [amazon.com]
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http://www.lessloss.com/dfpc-signature-p-199.html [lessloss.com]
I bet you didn't know you needed a $1149 power cable to make your music sound better? The "how-it-works" section explains why you do (Noise always works from top down). This same guy has a lot of other products you should look at if you need a good laugh. The "blackbody field conditioner" is my personal favorite.
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And "truer reds". The salesman wouldn't shut up about how much better Monster cables were at improving reds.
I bought my cables at Radio Shack, but I regret not having walked away from that idiot salescreature on the spot.
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I just asked the salesman if he was actually ignorant enough to believe that, or if the best buy job was really worth ridding himself of all personal integrity.
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Heh, I had a similar experience at Radio Shack, complaining about the "gold cable scam," since all their cables were gold.
The sales guy tried to say that gold was the best, and I should trust him on this. I tried to explain that both copper and silver have better conductivity than gold (by a significant percent, greater than gold beats aluminum), and he more or less told me to shut up, because he was educated in these matters.
Re:But the Best Buy guy said it does (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed on the bulk conductivity, but the advantage of gold plating on contacts is the fact that gold doesn't tarnish or corrode, reducing conductivity over time.
Gold plated connector contacts are widely used on industrial/military gear, particularly in low-level signal applications.
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Re:But the Best Buy guy said it does (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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But does having gold connectors cause an increased rate of corrosion of the connection between the copper and the gold? In my experience, putting two different elements of metal next to each other causes them to corrode badly. Even worse when there is an electric current running through them. Admittedly in the case of HDMI, the electrical effect is surely pretty darn small.
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That's why "gold plating" is rarely just gold over the base metal. Gold over copper has reactions and wear issues, but gold over nickel over copper is fine.
Electronics will typically use nickel plating between the copper and gold. Brass musical instruments that are gold plated usually use silver plating between the brass base metal and the gold plating.
For most any combination of base metal and plating there's a map of what bonds well with which. This is also why you'll see the gold plate quickly flake o
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Point is that *NOTHING* about a digital cable can change some particular group of frequencies of the output. A digital cable can't possibly give you "more air" or a "warmer, more controlled bass" (as I've actually read in Audiophile magazines). It either gives you perfect sound or errors that the most cloth-eared nitwit can spot. There's no grey area.
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Not a question for you, but for the consumer society: Where will we get the gold (or other metals) after having thrown it all away? Mining landfills?
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Actually, there is still a difference, durability.
And, as far as my experience goes, Radio Shack's cables are pretty damn well near the bottom of that list.
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Actually, there is still a difference, durability.
Err, how often do you move those cables around behind your TV set, anyway?
Even with a missus who love re-arranging furniture once a month or so, the HDMI cabling on mine never gets unplugged, kinked, or twisted. Plus, I'd have to buy at least three or four cheap cables before I'd match the price of the (typical) high-end/cost ones. Given the rarity of breakage/degradation, I think I can live with that.
I mean, seriously - we're talking about a TV set here, not the connective wiring on an F-16 missile rack.
No
Re:But the Best Buy guy said it does (Score:5, Interesting)
Err, how often do you move those cables around behind your TV set, anyway?
its not always what you think.
one 'guy' that moves things around is heat. heating and a/c and humidity in the house. cables expand and contract and fit (and don't fit!) the connectors and this slow bounce, if you will, causes things to lose connectivity, even if just 1 wire in a bundle. seen it plenty of times. multi conductor cables are a NIGHTMARE (which is why I hate the hdmi designers. what a bunch of losers! 2 opto cables would have done it better but NOOOO they had to have multiple metal-to-metal's and lots of wire and twists and interference. idiots!!! please, if you currently have an hdmi designer in your employ, fire him now. fire him. now.)
hdmi cables are not even locking cables. (same with older sata cables; dont' get me started on THAT nightmare we call a cable ...). hdmi cables fall out of alignment since the connector is VERY cheap and so are the cable males. cheap and cheap are not a good way to ensure success.
look at older db9, db25 style connectors. those things were strong enough to lift a house! ;) THOSE were connectors made by visionary men. keyed, robust, cheap to make and they never fell out on their own. compare to hdmi and you'll see the night/day diff in how cables used to be designed vs how they are designed today.
sometimes you have to re-flex the cables or pre-strain them before you install them. the flex of the cable is not enough compared to the stiffness of the so-called strain relief they use. again, as an analogy, look at an ide cable and how well it stays in (even if you hang the drive UP by it!) vs a sata cable. compare the molex power cables of yesterday to the sata power cables of today. all steps backwards!
I really hate the backwards move in cable design and quality. its like they are TRYING to make things bad on purpose, refusing to use what worked well in the past - out of spite?
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compare the molex power cables of yesterday to the sata power cables of today
I was a body builder for nearly 3 years and could bear hug 600 pounds and carry it downstairs. Almost burst a blood vessel trying to remove a molex power cable from a hard drive it had been connected to for years. It was ridiculous and I almost considered hooking it up to a car and my tree in the front yard :)
That was NASA level type connectors there. Designed to keep connected when the Klingons were having a bad day with you and red shirts were bouncing around the walls.
I totally agree with you. Those D
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But the "snow" and flashes etc are very visible and it's obvious you have a problem. That's what's meant by "you either get a picture or you don't".
Re:But the Best Buy guy said it does (Score:4, Interesting)
And "truer reds". The salesman wouldn't shut up about how much better Monster cables were at improving reds.
Possibly a relic of the RCA / S-Video days, where a good S-video cable (I had a monster cable which worked well) really would keep the red from bleeding noticably onto neighboring pixels. I dont remember whether there was a significant difference between standard S-video and monster's, other than that I liked the build quality of the cables better (less likely to get shredded due to thick sheathing).
Its very possible that the salesperson thought that that same issue persisted to this day even in HDMI-- ignorance, not malice.
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I will only buy high speed HDMI cables from now on. I bought a regular one, but eventually got sick of the 10 minute delay when watching a movie, and my PS3 was just unplayable. Thank god the salesman set me straight. Also I really recommend Monster cables because they produce whiter whites, blacker blacks and the coloriest colors while preventing bits from static cling and creating the softest fuzzies.
IF the best buy guys don't sell hours cut (Score:3)
IF the best buy guys don't sell up sells and ripoff cables they get there hours cut and geek squad is filled with sales men and not techs. Staples is just as bad.
And don't even think of hhgregg has they are 100% commission and if you buy some thing on sale the sales guy can lose money from his pay so they can be very pushy.
Not entirely false (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not entirely false (Score:5, Funny)
MOnoprice wants 96 bucks for an HDMI cable! They are NOT cheap.
Granted the HDMI cable is 131 feet, but how else am I supposed to watch NASCAR if not through a very long hdmi cable to my neighbor's DirectTV receiver?
The emperor has no clothes! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The emperor has no clothes! (Score:5, Funny)
The monster has no clothes!
FTFY.
NO it depends... (Score:5, Interesting)
its a bit like saying you can plug in a CAT 5 cable and get gigabit...
the answer is it depends...
the longer the cable the more the signal degrades and just because its digital does not mean it will produce the same results..
have a read of this
http://www.audioholics.com/education/cables/long-hdmi-cable-bench-tests/evaluation-conclusion
I guess the Kogan cables are not very long... dont get me wrong I think they are right most HDMI cables are a scam... but someone needs to actually test them before commenting...
but honestly who is going to listen... they are after fast bit of press... slashdot used to be about technical things..
regards
John Jones
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That's why one should use Cat5E becuase it is specced to 1gbps
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Sorry, BS about "exactly one cable factory in China". I've personally dealt with a couple of them, so you have no clue here. If you're a serious business purchaser (I'd think anything over 100 employees would qualify), you need to do your own acceptance testing on any sort of cabling, whether patch cords or premise wiring. Renting a tester is way cheaper than having to rewire a whole fucking office. I do agree about the type of a tester that has to be used: the tester need to verify whatever specs the IEEE
Re:NO it depends... (Score:5, Interesting)
Network speeds will degrade with poor quality cables. This is because data will become corrupt and be re-sent. Speeds "appear" to decrease because the ratio of data:noise will decrease.
With HDMI there is no "re-sending" of data. So when the corrupt data comes through, no picture comes through.
You _will_ _not_ get a lower quality picture from a cheap HDMI picture. You will get no picture at all.
Re:NO it depends... (Score:5, Interesting)
Unlike analog interference, though, if you are in sparkle territory, you can pretty conclusively declare the system "broken".
Re:Data rate negotiation (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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I dislike Audioholics as they are not very scientific in a lot of tests.. Just take a look at that graph, with the axis labelled Cables > 3m while they are referencing Cables 3m ... Anyway.. =)
Re:NO it depends... (Score:4, Insightful)
Thing is, they claim better colour reproduction, sharper images and so on. When in reality a HDMI cable can only degrade when it is producing errors in the signal. But such a cable is *faulty* not just average in quality.
It would be like saying a higher quality USB cable results in better print outs when connected to your printer.
What about the internal wiring of the TV? surely it is pointless using a £100 interconnect when the internal wiring of the TV is using fairly cheap wire?
HDMI certification is for the WHOLE cable (Score:4, Insightful)
Whatever the length of your cable, either it works and display a perfect picture and earns its HDMI certification or it does not work properly and its NOT a valid HDMI product. And you get a refund for this deceptive product.
I don't care that with a longer cable, it requires higher quality cable parts. I want a Normal Speed HDMI cable or a HighSpeed HDMI cable.
I buy a certified product, not raw components to solder myself.
Re:NO it depends... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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...is essentially what Kogan is saying...and they're right!
I remember a Dutch tv-program that tests different consumer products (Tros Radar [trosradar.nl]). They did a blind test with a bunch of HDMI-cables, from €3 to €140, with a panel of professional video-editors. They chose two cables as the best, the cheapest and the most expensive. Their conclusion was that the most expensive was probably better for the professional who had to change the cables a lot. The connector was of better quality. Then for cables longer than 5 meters, a more expensive cable could be bette
An HDMI cable is not just an HDMI cable (Score:4, Informative)
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Refund (Score:2)
"Returned them"
Sure you returned them : they were deceptive products ! To bear the HDMI logo, a cable needs to be certified.
No signal : those were not HDMI certified cables and you should get a refund.
So, taking a dirt cheap cable is a no risk situation : either it works or you get a refund.
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To bear the HDMI logo, a cable needs to be certified.
Actually, to bear the HDMI logo, a cable maker needs to have a .png of the HDMI logo. Just like to make a Coach Purse, you need to have a copy of the Coach logo (cheap HDMI cables and imitation Coach purses come from the same place...). To legally bear the HDMI logo, you need to be certified. But makers in the $2-$4 market often break the rules. Not saying that the cable won't work, but buyer beware. Don't trust the logo if it doesn't look like the HDMI association could figure out where to mail a ceas
Re:An HDMI cable is not just an HDMI cable (Score:5, Insightful)
Why in gods name are you running >50 foot HDMI runs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Cables
you know they're out there... (Score:3)
Why in gods name are you running >50 foot HDMI runs.
Signal source in one room, display in another. Some Slashdot users seem to think that's the best way to run a home theater PC.
That way, you aren't subjected to the godawful din made by the cooling fans, let alone the whine from spinning disks.
Re:An HDMI cable is not just an HDMI cable (Score:5, Insightful)
That's exactly what he's saying. You either get a signal, or you don't. It's not like an analogue system, where there's a wide spectrum between perfect and nonfunctional. Either the error rate is below the correction threshold, in which case a better cable won't make a difference, or it's above and you can easily tell because there's no picture.
For some uses, such as long runs, you really do need a better cable. For most, you don't.
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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.
Having some trouble parsing this sentence... But I'm going to assume that you're saying that over a short run, a $2 cable is just fine. Though I don't think I'd call 50 feet a "short run"...
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.
Most people aren't going to be going more than about 10 feet from their DVD/bluray/roku/satellite/whatever to the TV.
There is certainly going to be a difference in build-quality between a cable that costs $2 and one that costs, say, $20. And I don't generally use the ultra-cheap cables because they tend to fall apart
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All HDMI cables should have a certification on the packet:
Category 1 - 720p or 1080i
Category 2 - 1080p
$30 is a complete rip-off for a normal length Category 2 cable.
These days it would have to be a *really* cheap-ass cable to only work at 720p.
This one wins the prize (Score:5, Funny)
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And that's why I'd mock anyone who buys ANYTHING by Denon. If they're going to lie this bad about their cables, who knows what other lies they told about their amplifiers, tuners, or other gear?
It's a Boolean state: as long as they maintain this lie, they're nothing but liars.
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All that info and they don't even mention if it is CAT5 or CAT5E.
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Only $499 for a CAT5 network cable? What a bunch of amateurs...there's people charging more than that for replacement volume knobs.
Still too much? (Score:2)
According to Google, UK£ 4 = $6.42800 which is still at least double what an HDMI cable goes for on Monoprice (depending on length that they are selling)
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Most of the time the real exchange rate is $1 = £1 to actually buy stuff. Yes, we basically pay twice as much for everything as you do. Yes it sucks.
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Future Shop does it too now (Score:4, Informative)
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Power conditioning power strips are worth while for the protection against over and under voltages as it seems they do extend the life of electronics. For a while there I was going through a DVD player every 6-8 months and I wasn't buying the cheep crap ones (you know the $5 ones) but was purchasing decent ones. About 2 years ago I bought a power conditioning power strip at the hardware store for $24 haven't any issues with electronics since. The computers are connected to a UPS so I never noticed issues th
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Surge suppression is important for certain electronic devices, and in certain areas. A relative had a workshop out in a Minnesota prairie where summer lightning storms are common, and they blew phone line suppressors at least monthly. (They were the internal fuse type devices that had to be physically replaced, so he had the phone guy leave him a dozen so he could get through the year without a service call.) They used surge suppressors on all their computer equipment.
My electric company sells and instal
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Dirty power can affect audio output quality, especially in cheaper amplifiers that don't have their own power filters.
You wouldn't plug your computer straight into the wall, so why would you plug your very expensive home theater equipment directly into the wall? They are far more sensitive to power fluctuations than your PC.
You ever seen a flatscreen with a line drop? Not a pretty sight, and often caused by power surges. Plasmas used to have this problem we used to call "the sparkles" when a power surge
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I would plug by computer straight into the wall if I didn't have it on a 6 way power strip plugged into a 3 way switched strip. Unless you have a really shitty PSU it won't make any difference, except perhaps to have some surge protection.
Computers use switch mode PSUs, and all the critical voltages are generated and filtered on the mobo anyway. Switch mode PSUs should not be letting any of this crap through if they are even half competently designed. Most quality audio gear uses linear power supplies which
Re:Future Shop does it too now (Score:4, Funny)
You wouldn't plug your computer straight into the wall,
Wait, what? Why wouldn't you plug it straight into the wall? I've been doing that for almost 20 years now.
You fool! You need to plug it into the ceiling, how else are the electrons supposed to drain into your computer?
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never ordered from Cisco? (Score:2)
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Yeah, sounds stupid. However, not having to argue hours with Cisco tech support that "yes, our non-Cisco cables are working perfectly fine" also has a price, unfortunately...
Speaking from experience, you only need one genuine Cisco cable per facility, to swap it in and prove its not the cable. It only takes a couple minutes. Also speaking from experience, you can get into arguments with mgmt about that "only a couple of minutes" of downtime costing the company about a thousand genuine cisco cables, so just buy the darn cisco cable.
And Cisco used to smartnet the cables, sorta, such that a failed genuine cisco cable would be replaced by the smartnet tech if necessary, so stocki
How about £9,936 for a 2.5 meter HDMI cable! (Score:2)
Thats nothing. How about £9,936 for a 2.5 meter HDMI cable! - http://goo.gl/VMECV [goo.gl] - Now that is pushing the envelope to the maximum. Sadly there will always be idiots with too much money in their pockets who buy this stuff. Everyone should do Digital Electronics 101.
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High speed! (Score:2)
with features such as different cable lengths, ultra slim and high speed,
There's two HDMI cable specs, supporting 720p/1080i or 1080p. What you mean is "high resolution", but since people don't know what a resolution is because all you do is sell them shiny gold plated voodoo cables you can call it "high speed" and bilk them some more. The price difference is $2 on Monoprice. Incidentally, this doubles the value of the cable. But you wouldn't know that since your cables start at twenty pounds and go up to the stratosphere from there.
Unfortunately... (Score:2)
An old coat hangar works best (Score:2)
Un-twist and gently hammer both ends in place. Great picture quality at a fraction of the price. Best of all it's made from recycled components.
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You might want to invest a little bit more to get reliable connections on the end and an impedence somewhere in the ball park.
They are to be 4 twisted pairs, each pair shielded.
Every manufacturer's HDMI cable is built to meet a nominal 100 ohm characteristic impedance, The best one can do is to hold impedance within a range, centered on 100 ohms; the official HDMI spec calls for 100 ohms plus or minus 15%, which for a coax would be horribly sloppy. The tighter that tolerance can be kept, the better the perf
Best Buy tried to sell me an HDMI cable... (Score:5, Interesting)
When I went to buy a new TV, Best Buy tried to sell me a HDMI cable. I actually needed one so I said sure how much? $35. I got in to an argument with the sales rep about how it would do nothing for my picture quality. I told him I'd give him $10 for it, and I knew that was about 700% profit for him so it works out for both of us.
So he told me he couldn't do that and I asked for a manager, maybe he could. Manager says he can't do that and this is an amazing HDMI cable and will make the picture better than any cheap cable I could buy. I told him I'm an electrical engineer and I know he's lying straight to my face to make a couple extra bucks. At that point I was pretty fed up so I said you can keep your $1000 TV. I guess the real mistake was thinking I'd get an honest sell at Best Buy
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Okay thing is that they where probably not lying to you. Lying is when you know what you are saying is not the truth. They have been told by people that it is the truth and where just repeating what they have heard. They where ignorant. It is the same kind of mentality I get from people when it comes to things like anti virus. They believe if it is free that it can not be good. The people at Best Buy where told these cables are better, the box says they are better, and they cost more. It is only logical tha
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These are people who are supposed to be experts in what they sell.
Ah there's your mistake. They are actually supposed to be the cheapest people they could find who wouldn't screw up more than say, 90% of the sales to 90% of the population.
When I was a kid, I stocked shelves at a local supermarket. No one expected me to be a world-class expert chef. I still have no idea what to do with canned squid, or giant cans of ground allspice, or chitlins.
It sounds like you think you have a business owner - contractor relationship, but you're actually getting a (platonic) housewif
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It sounds like you think you have a business owner - contractor relationship, but you're actually getting a (platonic) housewife - shelf stocker relationship.
Yet I bet you never got up in anybody's face trying to sell them canned squid, or prattled on about the exquisite black ink it was packed in.
I might actually go to Best Buy if they just had shelf stockers!
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No the real mistake was thinking you could haggle with service-level employees at a multinational company. That's the dumbest thing I've heard in a while.
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Cables are a scam (Score:2)
There are so few things affect the quantify the quality of a cable. Not the least is the current, frequency, and voltage of the signal. Too high a current? You need more metal. Too high a voltage? You need better insulators. Too high a frequency? Then you need noise immunity and impedance matching with coax or twisted pair. Yes, I know this is an over simplification, but a little bit of research will show how nonsensical the high quality cable claims are.
This is my favourite audiophool scam:
"Simply put thes
Does the high end cable have comparison specs? (Score:2)
My main background is in Radio. This is the same thing that was repeated for High End Audio, then for USB for printers. I used to sweep test cables for phased antenna arrays.
I was able to sweep many audio patch cables. Most would work fine for short runs of video. Very few had high dielectric loss at video frequencies. Most were about 70 ohms impedance. The rest were between 60 and 85 ohms. Most old VCR stereo audio and video cable used the exact same wire for audio and video. It was all about 75 ohms
Definite answer: Normal or HighSpeed (w ethernet) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Just runa VGA cable from your computer (Score:2)
Yes it matters - error correction, protocols, etc. (Score:2)
The protocols used in HDMI data transfer have mechanisms that handles loss of data or minor errors in the stream. So yes - a cheap cable will seem to work even if there is semi-severe interference and signal degradation. The damage sound and image will be auto-corrected in the receiving end, and the user will be none the wiser. Same goes for common network protocols uses in LAN and WLAN. If a packet is lost underway, or its integrity check reveals data
Re: (Score:3)
You know what, you're absolutely right. With a higher quality cable, the ones are just so much more oney, and the zeroes are so much more zeroey. The difference really is quite amazing.
Some people say that as long as the peak of the signal wave is above the receiving equipment's sensitivity rating you're good, but I want that sine wave peak to be WAY above the required sensitivity level. I want it to be so god damn far above that I can see the ones hitting the back of the TV!
Re:Small blocks of uncorrectable error (Score:4, Informative)
a fool and his money... (Score:2)
The problem is, the box stores use the $100 cables as an excuse to sell the $2 cables for $30+... So now, when I have a cable go bad, there's no place in town to get a replacement at a reasonable price and I have to wait 3 days for it to arrive fro
Digital Foundry has the proof (Score:2)
Best Buy Loves Selling Snake Oil (Score:4, Interesting)
I literally just had an argument with a Best Buy employee over this the other day. Me and a friend went to the mall because I needed some emergency thermal paste for a PC build I was doing (I was visiting friends 5 hours from my house and had forgot some). I went to Best Buy because they had some for $10 (probably the cheapest thing in the store). After buying the paste, we hung around in the store while my friend's brother went and got a haircut. My friend and I went to the cable section and he asked me about HDMI cables for his HDTV. He showed me the cable he bought (Insignia for ~$40) and asked if it was good. I said it was fine, but that he over paid even for that. I then proceeded to pick up a Monster cable that was only 4 feet long and cost $129 and explain to him that this cable and that cable were the same. A Best Buy employee then came over and started a conversation with me.
Best Buy Employee: "Can I help you with anything?"
Me: "No, I'm all set."
BBE: "I see you have a Monster HDMI cable there. What kind of TV do you have?"
Me: "Oh I am just explaining to my friend that there is no reason to spend over $100 on a 4' cable when a $5 online will do the same thing"
BBE: "Well that isn't true. That cable will give you superior sound and video quality. It also has Ethernet over HDMI capability and compatibility for 3D"
Me: "Well I'm sure it does all of that, but any cable will do that for you as long as it is rated for HDMI 1.4 spec."
BBE: "It will but that cable will give you better picture quality because it has gold connectors and better shielding"
Me: "No, it really won't. Unless you have your TV inside a power transfer station with unshielded electrical cables, you will not really need to worry about interference. And picture quality will not be better regardless of what cable you are using."
BBE: "You are giving your friend bad advice. This cable is better and will give you better -"
Me: *interrupting him* "If I hooked up the same exact TVs to the same exact source with my cable and this cable, not only would they be the same quality, but my cable would be 15' longer and be able to connect across the room where as this is only capable of connecting to a device close by, and my cable will have cost around $5-20 and this one costs $129. I'd bet you any amount of $ that the difference in picture and sound quality would be indistinguishable."
BBE: "I'd take that bet, but only if I saw the cable you were going to use first"
We then went to the computer in the department and I went to Newegg and showed him this cable [newegg.com]. He said "Right but that is a nice shielded cable like this one". And I said "Yea, but look at the length and the price." He then basically dismissed what I was saying and said that the Monster cable was still superior.
I wonder if they train people to be this ignorant? Or could places that sell cables for this price just attract people who buy into the BS?
1.3 brought certification - 1.4 ethernet (Score:2)
Until 1.4, all cables were the sames but had different qualities. This quality was not "certified" until 1.3.
In 1.3, they defined cable Categories :
- Category 1 (renamed Normal in 1.4) was certified for 1080i
- Category 2 (renamed HighSpeed in 1.4) was certified for higher resolutions and frequencies (like 3D)
Category 1 is certified for displaying 1080i but would generally work for 1080p 2D content.
Category 2 is required for 3D. In 2D, it is required for insane resolutions or frequencies no consumer video so
Re:I don't know how the salesmen go to bed at nigh (Score:4, Interesting)
I seriously heard some "sales associate" at Best Buy tell someone that documents would print faster if they bought a parallel cable with gold connectors. While it wasn't the first time I'd heard Best Buy's sales people spouting blatant lies (1998: "You'll want the best CPU you can buy if you want to run Word", 1999: "Sound cards fail all the time. I'd never buy one without the extra warranty." 2000: "WindowsME is way faster than Windows98, and if you don't upgrade now, you'll never be able to.") it is still the winner for sheer absurdity and blatant attempt to bilk another $10 from a customer.
I was just passing by on my way to find a new printer, but when the guy said it, I couldn't help myself. I broke out laughing. Pretty loud. The guy and his two gullible customers looked at me. I was in an odd mood, so I asked the guy how fast electricity traveled in gold. Then I asked how fast it traveled in copper. He didn't know either. I told the customers that he was lying to them. Pointed at one of the cheapest cables on the shelf, and told them that was the one they wanted. The sales guy looked pissed. A few other people nearby were watching. As I walked away, some manager-looking guy asked if I needed help. I told him that I came to buy a printer, but that Office Max was only a few blocks away and their sales staff didn't lie to their customers.
Since then, I probably spent only a couple hundred dollars in Best Buy, almost entirely on DVDs. When given the choice, for any piece of hardware (even cables) I'll go to any other store. While I'm sure that in the long run, Best Buy makes decent money off lying to customers, I'd easily estimate that its lost a few thousand dollars of sales just off me. At the very least, it lost about $160 ($150 printer + $10 for uselessly-upgraded cable) that day for that guy's stupid attempt.
I have found gold helps in the long run (Score:3)
It's purely because gold doesn't corrode. I had some old RCA cables that were looking pretty bad and couldn't make much of a connection because of the corrosion, but the gold-plated ones still work perfectly. The corrosion on the aluminum connectors on the cheaper components became the problem, you want gold there too.
But less than a gram of gold plating doesn't add much to the cost of a cable.
However, in this throwaway age you might not have your components or even a certain cable standard long enough for