HDMI Cables

[Kali157]

I was going to start another thread, but I saw this sticky. I was able to try some "high end" cables this past week. My friend just got a 58 inch Panasonic Plasma from BB a few weeks ago and the sales person gave him a "deal" on some Audio Quest Chocolate cables (funny, when I saw the cables, they actually made me want some chocolate... weird). Since he was the first of my friends to actually have "higher end" cables, I arranged a comparison against my spare 10 ft Bluejean cable and my 3 ft monoprice that ran from my AVR to PS3 in exchange for letting him borrow my Spears & Munsil calibration disc. I have always been curious if I can tell the difference... but have been too cheap to buy some.

For testing, we used the 10ft BJ cable to connect his new plasma to his AVR (Marantz SR7002) and the 3 ft Monoprice btwn the AVR and his PS3 slim. On the Audio Quest side, he has 2 meter and a 1 meter, both Chocolates. After calibrating his plasma, we used various blus for the test including Avatar, Toy Story 3, Inception (which I still have not seen entirely), and How to Train Your Dragon. I did the cable switching, and we played the scenes back to back. There were 4 people in the little test. We played various fast scenes, paused scenes, even watched scenes up close to the plasma. We could not tell the difference btwn the two. At one point when I was supposed to switch cables, I kept the same cables plugged in just to eliminate any placebo effect. Everyone still admitted that they could not see the difference. I wanted to do a double blind test w/ his wife doing the cable switching (she wasn't part of the test). But my friend didn't want to. Understandably, he was not enjoying the test.

Anyway, so after about 2 hrs comparing my BJ and monoprice cables against Audioquest's Chocolate HDMIs, our group could not see the difference. We didn't test audio b/c he didn't have Audioquest speaker wires, and we wanted to make sure they are ALL Audio Quest wires to have a fair test.

I may try to ask for a double blind test after the holidays...

Originally Posted by PUsokrJosh305

Now you nicely told me your experiences without chocking me by the neck, I just wanted to put my input in, not get chewed up. I would however like to know if anybody done this with a 65" tv and has or has not found any difference. But I'm glad I bought cables that work with my tv, sure the others might have, but my experiences so far with these new cables have been amazing.

I have not tried a 65 inch, but 58 inch above. I have stood very close to the TV to try and see any difference.

Originally Posted by nickrodriguez

Yes digital is 1's and 0's and its either there or it is not. That is a true statement. But it is possible for a cheep cable to loose some of the 1's and 0's on its way to your TV or AV Receiver. Then you have your TV creating part of the picture that it didn't get from your Blu-Ray play. I don't know about you guys, but when I pay for a Blu-Ray Disc I want that picture showing up, not something my TV has to fill in the blanks for. Same goes for audio...

...My thought is...If you've just spend well over 1K on your fancy new LED/LCD TV why connect it with cheap cables?

I don't think your TV has the ability to create part of the picture. It is either there or not. If the signal does not go through, you get snow, blanks, etc. The TV does not fill in the blanks. At least to my knowledge.

I also think there is a confusion btwn cheap cables (as in inexpensive) and cheap cables (as in poor or inferior quality). I think buying poor quality cables DOES affect the output. As an example, I had bought some "cheap" (inexpensive) HDMI to DVI adapters for the 4 HTPCs in all the bedrooms. I bought them from dealextreme.com, which is overstock from various manufacturers in China. Well, apparantly these adapters were cheap (inexpensive) and cheap (poor quality) b/c one of them had some snow on the upper part of the screen (weird I know). Two had pictures cutting out intermittently. One worked perfectly.

But based on my experience w/ the Audioquest cables against my monoprice and BJ cables, you can have buy cheap (inexpensive) cables while retaining quality output on par w/ "high end" cables like Audioquest and Monster. Buying an expensive piece of equipment like a plasma or LCD doesn't mean you should blindly buy expensive components. It also doesn't mean you should buy cheap (poor quality) components. In the end, be honest w/ yourself: can you see/hear/taste (hmmmm chocolate) the difference when doing an A/B or side by side comparison? From our experience, we could not see a difference.

I have to admit though... those Audioquest Chocolates did look good. Especially compared to my BlueJean HDMI that was inside the wall and had white drywall dust on it.

[crackinhedz]

Originally Posted by nickrodriguez

Also with a lot of premium cables you are getting a "cable for life". If it ever breaks or is outdated it will be replaced for free.

Monoprice guarantees their cables for life.

[rpneuss]

Originally Posted by Kali157

I was going to start another thread, but I saw this sticky. I was able to try some "high end" cables this past week. My friend just got a 58 inch Panasonic Plasma from BB a few weeks ago and the sales person gave him a "deal" on some Audio Quest Chocolate cables (funny, when I saw the cables, they actually made me want some chocolate... weird). Since he was the first of my friends to actually have "higher end" cables, I arranged a comparison against my spare 10 ft Bluejean cable and my 3 ft monoprice that ran from my AVR to PS3 in exchange for letting him borrow my Spears & Munsil calibration disc. I have always been curious if I can tell the difference... but have been too cheap to buy some.

For testing, we used the 10ft BJ cable to connect his new plasma to his AVR (Marantz SR7002) and the 3 ft Monoprice btwn the AVR and his PS3 slim. On the Audio Quest side, he has 2 meter and a 1 meter, both Chocolates. After calibrating his plasma, we used various blus for the test including Avatar, Toy Story 3, Inception (which I still have not seen entirely), and How to Train Your Dragon. I did the cable switching, and we played the scenes back to back. There were 4 people in the little test. We played various fast scenes, paused scenes, even watched scenes up close to the plasma. We could not tell the difference btwn the two. At one point when I was supposed to switch cables, I kept the same cables plugged in just to eliminate any placebo effect. Everyone still admitted that they could not see the difference. I wanted to do a double blind test w/ his wife doing the cable switching (she wasn't part of the test). But my friend didn't want to. Understandably, he was not enjoying the test.

Anyway, so after about 2 hrs comparing my BJ and monoprice cables against Audioquest's Chocolate HDMIs, our group could not see the difference. We didn't test audio b/c he didn't have Audioquest speaker wires, and we wanted to make sure they are ALL Audio Quest wires to have a fair test.

I may try to ask for a double blind test after the holidays...



I have not tried a 65 inch, but 58 inch above. I have stood very close to the TV to try and see any difference.



I don't think your TV has the ability to create part of the picture. It is either there or not. If the signal does not go through, you get snow, blanks, etc. The TV does not fill in the blanks. At least to my knowledge.

I also think there is a confusion btwn cheap cables (as in inexpensive) and cheap cables (as in poor or inferior quality). I think buying poor quality cables DOES affect the output. As an example, I had bought some "cheap" (inexpensive) HDMI to DVI adapters for the 4 HTPCs in all the bedrooms. I bought them from dealextreme.com, which is overstock from various manufacturers in China. Well, apparantly these adapters were cheap (inexpensive) and cheap (poor quality) b/c one of them had some snow on the upper part of the screen (weird I know). Two had pictures cutting out intermittently. One worked perfectly.

But based on my experience w/ the Audioquest cables against my monoprice and BJ cables, you can have buy cheap (inexpensive) cables while retaining quality output on par w/ "high end" cables like Audioquest and Monster. Buying an expensive piece of equipment like a plasma or LCD doesn't mean you should blindly buy expensive components. It also doesn't mean you should buy cheap (poor quality) components. In the end, be honest w/ yourself: can you see/hear/taste (hmmmm chocolate) the difference when doing an A/B or side by side comparison? From our experience, we could not see a difference.

I have to admit though... those Audioquest Chocolates did look good. Especially compared to my BlueJean HDMI that was inside the wall and had white drywall dust on it.

Great work my friend! I've done similar tests on 55 inch TV's and couldn't tell a lick of difference. I also agree with the "cheap" cables vs inexpensive "quality" cables. I've bought about 30 HDMI cables from Monoprice for various equipment around my house, my in-laws house, and many friends houses and have never had an issue with ANY of them!!

[oppopioneer]

I think the best bang for the buck and best company that is similar to how Oppo runs it's company is Bluejeans, a U.S. based company, most of their Belden cable is made in the U.S. and around 80% of the profit stays in the U.S. and they use the broadcast industry Belden bonded-pair design while most use the twisted pair design. They're a honest company that sells cables for a very fair and generous price for what you get. Also, Bluejeans took on Monster's threats and didn't back down so on a moral stand point I support them financially too. Bluejeans is a official HDMI certified adopter.

http://www2.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/s...1059587&EDATE=

http://www.jaycor.co.za/belden.html

AudioQuest are not made in the U.S., they are not part of the HDMI.org official adopter list of companies to get HDMI certified and authorized seal, so they aren't officially a HDMI wire company, their cables were not CERTIFIED by HDMI testing labs, so just like buying a Monster cable or any of the cables sold in the Walmart, Best Buy, Staples, Office Max stores they're just ripping you off with marketing hype. For what AudioQuest and Monster are charging they should be made 100% in the U.S. by engineers.
There are many companies out there selling HDMI cables but they aren't official adopters and aren't recognized by HDMI and didn't get tested by HDMI's labs. Only buy HDMI from the list of companies below:

HDMI.org adopter's list: http://www.hdmi.org/learningcenter/a..._founders.aspx

When I had Comcast HD CATV installed, they installed a COPARTNER HDMI wire which is a official HDMI adopter company, Copartner HDMI cables are CERTIFIED by HDMI testing labs, made in China, very cheap but performs fine, I would buy another. You can get them on Amazon for under $5 bucks. I would bet that Corparnter make the cable stock for AudioQuest, Monoprice and Monster. Copartner is the worlds largest Raw Cable Manufacture. They only make the raw HDMI Cable. They do not terminate the HDMI Cables.

http://www.copartner.com.tw/index_en.php

http://www.amazon.com/Copartner-Ultr.../dp/B001NW757K

[Kali157]

Originally Posted by Kali157

I was going to start another thread, but I saw this sticky. I was able to try some "high end" cables this past week. My friend just got a 58 inch Panasonic Plasma from BB a few weeks ago and the sales person gave him a "deal" on some Audio Quest Chocolate cables (funny, when I saw the cables, they actually made me want some chocolate... weird). Since he was the first of my friends to actually have "higher end" cables, I arranged a comparison against my spare 10 ft Bluejean cable and my 3 ft monoprice that ran from my AVR to PS3 in exchange for letting him borrow my Spears & Munsil calibration disc. I have always been curious if I can tell the difference... but have been too cheap to buy some.

For testing, we used the 10ft BJ cable to connect his new plasma to his AVR (Marantz SR7002) and the 3 ft Monoprice btwn the AVR and his PS3 slim. On the Audio Quest side, he has 2 meter and a 1 meter, both Chocolates. After calibrating his plasma, we used various blus for the test including Avatar, Toy Story 3, Inception (which I still have not seen entirely), and How to Train Your Dragon. I did the cable switching, and we played the scenes back to back. There were 4 people in the little test. We played various fast scenes, paused scenes, even watched scenes up close to the plasma. We could not tell the difference btwn the two. At one point when I was supposed to switch cables, I kept the same cables plugged in just to eliminate any placebo effect. Everyone still admitted that they could not see the difference. I wanted to do a double blind test w/ his wife doing the cable switching (she wasn't part of the test). But my friend didn't want to. Understandably, he was not enjoying the test.

Anyway, so after about 2 hrs comparing my BJ and monoprice cables against Audioquest's Chocolate HDMIs, our group could not see the difference. We didn't test audio b/c he didn't have Audioquest speaker wires, and we wanted to make sure they are ALL Audio Quest wires to have a fair test.

I may try to ask for a double blind test after the holidays...



I have not tried a 65 inch, but 58 inch above. I have stood very close to the TV to try and see any difference.



I don't think your TV has the ability to create part of the picture. It is either there or not. If the signal does not go through, you get snow, blanks, etc. The TV does not fill in the blanks. At least to my knowledge.

I also think there is a confusion btwn cheap cables (as in inexpensive) and cheap cables (as in poor or inferior quality). I think buying poor quality cables DOES affect the output. As an example, I had bought some "cheap" (inexpensive) HDMI to DVI adapters for the 4 HTPCs in all the bedrooms. I bought them from dealextreme.com, which is overstock from various manufacturers in China. Well, apparantly these adapters were cheap (inexpensive) and cheap (poor quality) b/c one of them had some snow on the upper part of the screen (weird I know). Two had pictures cutting out intermittently. One worked perfectly.

But based on my experience w/ the Audioquest cables against my monoprice and BJ cables, you can have buy cheap (inexpensive) cables while retaining quality output on par w/ "high end" cables like Audioquest and Monster. Buying an expensive piece of equipment like a plasma or LCD doesn't mean you should blindly buy expensive components. It also doesn't mean you should buy cheap (poor quality) components. In the end, be honest w/ yourself: can you see/hear/taste (hmmmm chocolate) the difference when doing an A/B or side by side comparison? From our experience, we could not see a difference.

I have to admit though... those Audioquest Chocolates did look good. Especially compared to my BlueJean HDMI that was inside the wall and had white drywall dust on it.

So as a F/U to the test we did above, I called my friend to try to convince him to set up a double blind test. I even wrote up a procedure to minimize variables, started isolating scenes we will use, etc. He wasn't home, so I spoke to his wife. Apparently, he was sooo... disenchanted(???) by our last test that he returned ALL the cables (he also bought interconnects) the following day. I completely understand that, but there goes my chance to fully test these cables out. I was a little pissed at first b/c all I asked in return for calibrating their plasma was the opportunity to test these cables.

Wonder if BB would allow me to borrow some... maybe even test audio too...

[oppopioneer]

Originally Posted by Kali157

So as a F/U to the test we did above, I called my friend to try to convince him to set up a double blind test. I even wrote up a procedure to minimize variables, started isolating scenes we will use, etc. He wasn't home, so I spoke to his wife. Apparently, he was sooo... disenchanted(???) by our last test that he returned ALL the cables (he also bought interconnects) the following day. I completely understand that, but there goes my chance to fully test these cables out. I was a little pissed at first b/c all I asked in return for calibrating their plasma was the opportunity to test these cables.

Wonder if BB would allow me to borrow some... maybe even test audio too...

Oh man! I hope he's doing ok. Well you saved another one, it's good to get the word out about HDMI wire scams and false advertising, it stings at first for some but Bluejeans and Monoprice win for being honest.

[Kali157]

Originally Posted by oppopioneer

Oh man! I hope he's doing ok. Well you saved another one, it's good to get the word out about HDMI wire scams and false advertising, it stings at first for some but Bluejeans and Monoprice win for being honest.

He is fine... I have spoken to him since. He said he just wanted to make sure he still can return it w/out any re-stocking fees, hassles, etc.

I know my logical side of my brain and our initial (though not as thorough as I would like) tests are telling me that good quality cables will perform identically, especially concerning HDMI. But there is still a small part that wants to confirm it w/ a double blind... eliminating any bias. I would also like this with sound. I may just break down and buy some since BB didn't hassle my friend about the return.

[AxelSmith]

This post about HDMI cable is very useful and it's really helpful thanks a lot.. I found it very interesting.

[Blu-Micka]

I always buy budget digital cables(HDMI, optical, USB Etc) and QED speaker and analogue cable.

[snooker]

Just curious but how good are those cables from bestbuy and future shop ?
Are these worth 20 bucks >>> Rocketfish advanced series high speed 13.8 Gbps ?

[My_Two_Cents]

Originally Posted by snooker

Just curious but how good are those cables from bestbuy and future shop ?
Are these worth 20 bucks >>> Rocketfish advanced series high speed 13.8 Gbps ?

They're fine if you need a cable immediately. If you can wait, order from Monoprice or Blue Jeans Cable.

[snooker]

Originally Posted by Ricshoe

They're fine if you need a cable immediately. If you can wait, order from Monoprice or Blue Jeans Cable.

Are Monoprice or Blue Jeans Cables better towards picture TV viewing ? Thanks

[caliblue15]

Originally Posted by snooker

Just curious but how good are those cables from bestbuy and future shop ?
Are these worth 20 bucks >>> Rocketfish advanced series high speed 13.8 Gbps ?

rocketfish cables are name brand cables (monster), rebranded under best buy's rocketfish brand.

[My_Two_Cents]

Originally Posted by snooker

Are Monoprice or Blue Jeans Cables better towards picture TV viewing ? Thanks

They are all the same. Read through the thread.

[snooker]

Originally Posted by caliblue15

rocketfish cables are name brand cables (monster), rebranded under best buy's rocketfish brand.

Ok , thanks

[snooker]

Originally Posted by Ricshoe

They are all the same. Read through the thread.

Thanks again . I will but boy is it a long thread lol

[caliblue15]

Originally Posted by snooker

Thanks again . I will but boy is it a long thread lol

The cheapest ones I would buy at a Best Buy are the insignia ones. The Dynex ones I have no faith in, as the brand as a whole is horrible. Monoprice.com will be your cheapest place for cables.

[snooker]

Originally Posted by caliblue15

The cheapest ones I would buy at a Best Buy are the insignia ones. The Dynex ones I have no faith in, as the brand as a whole is horrible. Monoprice.com will be your cheapest place for cables.

Thanks again ... I just took a look at their online site and I'm going to get a few of these

6ft 24AWG CL2 High Speed HDMI Cable w/ Net Jacket - Black

Thanks

[crackinhedz]

Originally Posted by snooker

Thanks again ... I just took a look at their online site and I'm going to get a few of these

6ft 24AWG CL2 High Speed HDMI Cable w/ Net Jacket - Black

Thanks

You should consider the 28AWG, as the 24AWG is pretty thick...and for only 6 feet, the 28AWG is a bit more flexible.

[Nosrednug]

Originally Posted by crackinhedz

You should consider the 28AWG, as the 24AWG is pretty thick...and for only 6 feet, the 28AWG is a bit more flexible.

and the 28AWG's come with two ferrite cores. and pretty colors