HDMI Cables

[crackinhedz]

Originally Posted by 1878

I'm thinking that I would have to change at least 2 (PS3>Onkyo & Onkyo>LCD) to see a difference...probably wrong

no, youre correct.

But if your TV is not 1.3 compliant then it wont matter.

Not to mention, there is no real source for deep color...so its not much of an issue at the moment. Your older cables should be just fine.

[susanrc]

I have a 2 year old Sony (conventional tube) TV. It doesn't have an HDMI input, just a DVI one. I've been running an HDMI to DVI cable from my BD player to the TV. I'm fairly sure you're going to tell me that it isn't possible to get to 1.3 with this set up. But I thought I'd ask.

[Jordahn]

Almost three years ago, I bought this cable before there was HDMI 1.3...

Monster® 400 for HDMI® to DVI High Definition Digital Video Cable

Since May of 2007 and Jan. of this year, I have a PS3 and an SXRD both that are HDMI 1.3 compliant. I've tried doing the research, but have yet to find if the cable I bought (I also have the adapter) have the sufficent bandwidth. Does anyone know and how so??? If the cable doesn't have the needed bandwidth, I'm ordering one from Monoprice.

[Bango]

Haha...I was one of those consumers that took what Best Buy's Associates said to me and said "well...they must be telling the truth...I need this cable" and bought a 6 ft. MONSTER ULTRA 1000 cable for $149.99....::sigh:: I could have picked upa $10 one and it would have done just the same...how emberassing!

[crackinhedz]

Almost three years ago, I bought this cable before there was HDMI 1.3...

Monster® 400 for HDMI® to DVI High Definition Digital Video Cable

Since May of 2007 and Jan. of this year, I have a PS3 and an SXRD both that are HDMI 1.3 compliant. I've tried doing the research, but have yet to find if the cable I bought (I also have the adapter) have the sufficent bandwidth. Does anyone know and how so??? If the cable doesn't have the needed bandwidth, I'm ordering one from Monoprice.

...If your cable doesn't work, you will notice it immediately. I would put money that it works.

When deep color becomes more readily available, thats when you might see a problem. Until then, Im sure the cable you have now will be sufficient. If not, you can always go to monoprice.

[Jordahn]

Originally Posted by crackinhedz

...If your cable doesn't work, you will notice it immediately. I would put money that it works.

When deep color becomes more readily available, thats when you might see a problem. Until then, Im sure the cable you have now will be sufficient. If not, you can always go to monoprice.

The cable does work because it's what I'm using right now, and I get a great picture. But if the Monster 400 series does not have the bandwidth for HDMI 1.3, I'll take the chance of spending a few bucks on a Monoprice with the bandwidth to see if there is a difference when playing PS3 games and watching Blu-ray.

[emacs]

Originally Posted by Jordahn

But if the Monster 400 series does not have the bandwidth for HDMI 1.3

i doubt there's any media source, currently, that takes advantage of the increased bandwidth for video that HDMI 1.3 provides. it should be noted that even HDMI 1.0 has sufficient bandwidth for audio to transport DTS-HD and TrueHD.

reference: http://www.hdmi.org/pdf/HDMISpecInfo...nalVersion.pdf

[crackinhedz]

i doubt there's any media source, currently, that takes advantage of the increased bandwidth for video that HDMI 1.3 provides.

Camcorders.

[emacs]

Originally Posted by crackinhedz

Camcorders.

i should have clarified my original post by referring to pre-recorded media

[Flea77]

OK, I have a few questions and this thread seems to be the place where all the cable experts are so here we go. Lets start with the fact that I think Monster cables are nice, but wayyyyyyy overpriced. Then lets move on to I will never own cheapo cables like the monoprice ones and here is why:

The company I work for (and am part owner) runs a lot of digital data cable, and certifies it. I have been doing this kind of work for 10+ years. I started running ARCnet for those in the business who can remember that far back. Now of course we run a lot of CAT6 gigbit over copper.

The cheap cable proponents state that either the digital data will get there intact, not at all, or full of errors. I have to disagree strongly with this as I have personally witnessed variations on this many many times over the years. Sometimes you get a signal and it is great, sometimes you cant get one, sometimes it works most of the time, sometimes it doesnt.

A great example is take 10BaseT on standard plenum cable and run it over a old fluorescent light fixture. The first thing you will notice is when you run your certification for the run you will see way too much SNR on the cable. If you ignore that and try it anyway, you are probably going to see intermittent failures on the run. This could be as small as a file copy fails because one bit fails the CRC, or as bad as the connection just drops.

Now replace that cable with a CAT6 cable (better insulation, more twists, pair segregation, minimal exposed wire on connections) and watch as that SNR drops to 0% and your connection problems disappear. All this because of the cable used.

OK, digital means it is either on (0) or off (1). So let us assume that your digital data connection is 0vdc for off, +5vdc for on, with a threshold of +4vdc. What this means is that any voltage over +4vdc indicates on, +3.9999vdc and below is off. So what happens when the sending unit sends 0vdc and a outside noise source such as a leaky amp, power supply, fluorescent light, etc injects +4.1vdc into the signal for a split second? Or a more likely scenario, what happens when the voltage is +5vdc from the sending unit and the noise source injects -1.2vdc dropping the voltage below the on/off threshold?

When this happens, the bit or bits in question are now scrambled, and we now rely on the error correcting protocol (assuming we have one) to correct this problem. If the problem is persistent and frequent the EC may not be able to fix it, and falls back to either displaying the errors on screen or shutting off the picture completely.

Now I am by no means an expert on HDMI or the protocols used to transmit over it, but I can tell you that if you are copying 500 files over a 100BaseT TCPIP connection and you have one persistent CRC error that will fail the one file in question, not the whole transfer. Now the OS may fail the whole transfer, but TCPIP will not. Following this logic I would say that the error would be transmitted to the screen for display, and depending on the severity of the failure it could range from one pixel displaying blue instead of black, to the whole screen being scrambled, just like interference in an analog signal.

This of course leads me to the point that in the computer world, you always run the best cable possible (CAT5e or CAT6) to increase the reliability of the connection. Why would HDMI be any different? If I make cables out of cheap junk (CAT3) my network connections will stink, would it not be fair to assume that if I used cheap junk in my HDMI cable the same thing would happen?

Allan

[Tyler2106]

Cheap cables are cheap because they don't advertise them as the best so in turn all the advertising means higher cables prices which means you get ripped off...bluejeanscable.com!!!

[crackinhedz]

I will never own cheapo cables like the monoprice ones and here is why:

...instead of trying to make your case without ever actually trying a monoprice cable, why not fork over ten bucks and see what you come up with.

[BluRay Rulez]

I believe you pay for what you get. If it cost $10 then you might not be getting the best product out there. That's like buying a ferrai and putting sears tires on it. Why invest so much into HDTV & Blu-ray, yet to have a $10 cable make your picture look like magic? I prefer to stick with Monster. Have had great results with them. Yes....I've tried other cables and for the money and piece of mind, I will just stick with Monster.

[Flea77]

Originally Posted by crackinhedz

...instead of trying to make your case without ever actually trying a monoprice cable, why not fork over ten bucks and see what you come up with.

Because, like you, I would prefer not to throw money away(You on Monster cables, me on Monoprice cables). Unlike you however, I asked questions about how they work instead of just putting a link to some obscure article in a newsgroup in my sig.

Allan

[crackinhedz]

Originally Posted by Flea77

Because, like you, I would prefer not to throw money away(You on Monster cables, me on Monoprice cables).

...i'll loan you ten bucks.

Unlike you however, I asked questions about how they work instead of just putting a link to some obscure article in a newsgroup in my sig.

Becaus im a down to earth fella...I won't take this statement personally.

But I take it you didn't even bother to read the 'obscure article in a newsgroup' that I have in my sig? Or maybe I should have posted my dvd collection instead?

[Flea77]

Originally Posted by crackinhedz

...i'll loan you ten bucks.


Becaus im a down to earth fella...I won't take this statement personally.

But I take it you didn't even bother to read the 'obscure article in a newsgroup' that I have in my sig? Or maybe I should have posted my dvd collection instead?

Yes I read it, and found many faults. For example, the article alludes to digital signals being immune to any interference that does not completely destroy the signal, this is of course ridiculous. Digital signals are no better than analog and in some cases inferior to analog, without error correction. Analog signals can carry vastly more information in a given time segment than digital, but unfortunately error correction is much easier to put on digital, and once you do that, digital becomes faster by increasing the delivery rate and of course more accurate.

Another falsehood in the article is the assumption that a corrupt piece of digital information will be blatantly obvious to the end user, like the mosaic picture used to illustrate the point below the original post. A digital error can manifest itself as one pixel being one shade off, to the whole screen being scrambled. Most of this depends on the EC being used, which is why I am curious about it. I see these types of defects on video displays at work, so why is HT different?

Allan

[LennDawg]

I was like you as well. I always made fun of those cheap Monoprice cables and everything. I always bought the expensive Monster cables. Then i bought one of thoe "Psyclone" HDMI cables that you would find near the PS3 stuff. The thing crapped out on me in a week. To me, that proved my point about them cheap cables. I have had my Monsters for years.. But recently I just bought a Monoprice HDMI cable and going to be testing it out on my new Onkyo 705 since i need another HDMI cable. I didn't want to spend more money on Monster, and since everybody on here talks so highly about the Monoprice products, i figured why not? So I'll let you know how it goes, because I think the same way you do..

[crackinhedz]

I believe you pay for what you get.

what if I paid for a coat hanger?

[JasonR]

http://pcworld.about.com/magazine/2309p111id121777.htm

Again, I find myself posting this article. Flea77, both of us being in the computer world, I have bought many different brands of Cat6 (Belkin, Black Box, etc.) and haven't had a problem with any of them. You are speaking of different categories, we are speaking of different brands. What "brand" of Cat6 do you use?

[gearyt]

Originally Posted by Flea77

The cheap cable proponents state that either the digital data will get there intact, not at all, or full of errors. I have to disagree strongly with this as I have personally witnessed variations on this many many times over the years. Sometimes you get a signal and it is great, sometimes you cant get one, sometimes it works most of the time, sometimes it doesnt.

A great example is take 10BaseT on standard plenum cable and run it over a old fluorescent light fixture. The first thing you will notice is when you run your certification for the run you will see way too much SNR on the cable. If you ignore that and try it anyway, you are probably going to see intermittent failures on the run. This could be as small as a file copy fails because one bit fails the CRC, or as bad as the connection just drops.

Now replace that cable with a CAT6 cable (better insulation, more twists, pair segregation, minimal exposed wire on connections) and watch as that SNR drops to 0% and your connection problems disappear. All this because of the cable used.

OK, digital means it is either on (0) or off (1). So let us assume that your digital data connection is 0vdc for off, +5vdc for on, with a threshold of +4vdc. What this means is that any voltage over +4vdc indicates on, +3.9999vdc and below is off. So what happens when the sending unit sends 0vdc and a outside noise source such as a leaky amp, power supply, fluorescent light, etc injects +4.1vdc into the signal for a split second? Or a more likely scenario, what happens when the voltage is +5vdc from the sending unit and the noise source injects -1.2vdc dropping the voltage below the on/off threshold?

When this happens, the bit or bits in question are now scrambled, and we now rely on the error correcting protocol (assuming we have one) to correct this problem. If the problem is persistent and frequent the EC may not be able to fix it, and falls back to either displaying the errors on screen or shutting off the picture completely.

Now I am by no means an expert on HDMI or the protocols used to transmit over it, but I can tell you that if you are copying 500 files over a 100BaseT TCPIP connection and you have one persistent CRC error that will fail the one file in question, not the whole transfer. Now the OS may fail the whole transfer, but TCPIP will not. Following this logic I would say that the error would be transmitted to the screen for display, and depending on the severity of the failure it could range from one pixel displaying blue instead of black, to the whole screen being scrambled, just like interference in an analog signal.
This of course leads me to the point that in the computer world, you always run the best cable possible (CAT5e or CAT6) to increase the reliability of the connection. Why would HDMI be any different? If I make cables out of cheap junk (CAT3) my network connections will stink, would it not be fair to assume that if I used cheap junk in my HDMI cable the same thing would happen?

Allan

I absolutly agree with you, also coming out of the Infrastructure world ..
BUT... here in HDTV land, is it important to see one, maybe "off" pixel and pay monster pricing for it ?? The consencus you will find here, is that on a short HDMI cable of almost any brand, you will get your picture or not, no in-between