HDMI Cables

[cinefan indian]

Originally Posted by xneox

If I could use the straight-in style, I would have ordered two already at that price.

gotttcchaaa

Thanks buddy ordered them right now

[Cr00zng]

Originally Posted by Y3k Bug

How do you propose that a cable makes ones "one-ier" and zeroes "zero-ier"?

It's digital, as long as the signal gets there it will look exactly the same.

The more I read about this, more confused I am

While it's true that the signal is zeros and ones, they may not look the same when they get there. Here's a picture of the pretty much perfect eye pattern:



The eye, shown in the image as a longated hexagon, separates the ones and zeros in the signal. In the image above the ones and zeros look pretty much the same at the receiving end as they did on the sending end. The receiving end has no issues with differentiating between the ones and zeros.

Here's another eye pattern from a "not-so-good" cable:



The "not-so-good" cable's eye pattern test failed and the separation between the zeros and ones isn't there. The signal did not arrive in the same condition as it had been input by the transferring unit. The ones and zeros are there, but the spacing between them disappeared. The receiving end cannot differentiate between the ones and zeros and this can cause snowy pictures, color misrepresentation, and in extreme cases cable failure.

It seems that it isn't just zeros and ones, there is an eye in the cable that determines the how these ones and zeros arrive at the other end. Unfortunately, you cannot see the eye when you buy the cable and it is a pretty much a gamble buying one. Pick your poison as they say...

Cr00zng

[mjbethancourt]

Rded, Chizzap, Naturephoto, and now Xneo and Croozing: trying to explain this issue to people is basically like trying to change their religion; it's a waste of time. Once someone has bought into that old "it's digital, it's just ones and zeros" parsimony, it doesn't matter what science or experience you bring into the conversation, they're not really listening to you anymore, they're just looking for the next semantical point of contention. Look through this thread: how many times have various people explained how even in an HDMI cable, a 1 or a 0 can be changed into the other or lost entirely, through material defect or other source of error (just like in any other type of cable)? How many times has it been pointed out that we've always been dealing with 1's and 0's, and that did not begin with HDMI? And yet you always get the same rebuttal, "a 1 can't be a better 1", or something like that, (which seems to be based on the faulty assumption that as long as you are using any HDMI cable, you're positively, certainly getting a perfect signal with absolutely no loss or error); or in some cases, you may get a more practical but equally misinterpreted recourse to side-by-side signal analysis studies. There is no prevailing in this discussion, because people do not listen, their minds are closed to the fact that when dealing with billions of 1's and 0's, some of them can and will get corrupted or lost, even in the best cables, because we're not dealing with superconductor materials; it will have an effect on the ultimate output, and materials and construction do matter. HDMI cables are not all equally perfect, and that is not marketing hype, it is physics... and Monster is not the most expensive, not by a longshot; they're just the most expensive brand at Best Buy, and I thought we were all too cool to shop there anyway.

[gearyt]

guys.... I wish I knew how to photoshop your pic's
imagine that there is a scale from 1 to 10 on the left side
draw a line at the 7 mark all away across...
anything above the 7 is a one
anything below the 7 is a zero
holes are imaterial

[rded]

Originally Posted by gearyt

guys.... I wish I knew how to photoshop your pic's
imagine that there is a scale from 1 to 10 on the left side
draw a line at the 7 mark all away across...
anything above the 7 is a one
anything below the 7 is a zero
holes are imaterial

Gearyt: please expound...I must have read your post 10x but have no idea what you're implying Must have had too much beer last night.

[mjbethancourt]

Originally Posted by rded

Gearyt: please expound...I must have read your post 10x but have no idea what you're implying Must have had too much beer last night.

It's not even accurate, there's a "dead zone" between the one and zero signal... something falls into that, and it's lost.

[crackinhedz]

mj, im curious as to your thoughts on what happens after these bits fail or disappear, (lost) as you put it... What happens to the picture on the TV?

[My_Two_Cents]

Originally Posted by crackinhedz

mj, im curious as to your thoughts on what happens after these bits fail or disappear, (lost) as you put it... What happens to the picture on the TV?

I'm just holding-out for the professional reviews and evaluations that prove (visually) that there are significant differences between quality cables. We've got evaluations that show essentially no difference in signal quality (at shorter lengths). We've got blind tests showing people cannot tell the difference in picture between $200 cables and $10 cables. Yes, I don't think anyone will argue that different build quality will affect the ability of the cable to pass a signal, but what does that equate to in picture quality? Picture degredation, sparkles, etc. are understandable, but I have yet to see any credible evidence that proves some cables will give you better colors, contrast, sharpness, etc... If this were true, we'd have seen the repots and evaluations by now. The fact that we haven't says a lot.

[crackinhedz]

HDMI Myths and Misconceptions:

4. "Because HDMI is a digital signal, it doesn't degrade when run over a long distance like an analog signal does, because it's just ones and zeros." Yikes! Not true at all. To explore this issue calls for a bit more detailed discussion.

First, it's true that if a digital video signal stays intact from one point to another, there's no degradation of the image. The digital signal itself can degrade, in purely electrical terms, quite a bit over a distance run, but if at the end of that run the bitstream can be fully and correctly reconstituted, it doesn't matter what degradation the signal suffered--once that information is reconstituted at the receiving end, it's as good as new.

That's a big "if," however. Ideally speaking, digital signals start out as something close to a "square wave," which is an instantaneous transition from one voltage to another; these transitions signal the beginnings and ends of bits. (In practice, such transitions aren't strictly possible, and trying to achieve them can generate harmful noise; consequently, high-order harmonics are usually filtered out which results in the wave starting out squarish but not-quite-square.) A square wave, unfortunately, is impossible to convey down any transmission line because it has infinite bandwidth; to convey it accurately, a cable would have to convey all frequencies, out to infinity, all at the same level of loss ("attenuation"). What happens, therefore, in any run of cable is that a digital signal starts out looking relatively nice and somewhat square, and comes out the other end both weaker and rounded-off. The transitions that mark the edges of bits get smoothed and leveled to the point that, far from that ideal square wave, they look like relatively gentle slopes. Portions of the signal lost to impedance mismatch bounce around in the cable and mix with these rounded-off slopes, introducing an unpredictable and irregular component to the signal; crosstalk from the other pairs in the HDMI bundle also contribute uneven and essentially random noise. As a result, what arrives at your display doesn't look very much like what was sent.

Now, as we've said, up to a point, this won't matter; the bitstream gets accurately reconstituted, and the picture on your display is as good as the HDMI signal can make it. But when it starts to fail, it starts to fail conspicuously and dramatically. The first sign of an HDMI signal failure is digital dropouts--these are colloquially referred to as "sparklies"--where a pixel or two can't be read. When these "sparklies" are seen, total failure is not far away; if the cable were made ten feet longer, there's a chance that so little information would get through that there would be no picture on the display at all.

...the bitstream gets accurately reconstituted, and the picture on your display is as good as the HDMI signal can make it.

I fail to see how an overpriced cable will give you a better picture??

[crackinhedz]

Long HDMI Cable Bench Tests

What I expected to see on failed cables was something like this, or worse:



What I got was this - but only after connecting two very long cables end to end:



When I finally got a result, sparkles abounded on the screen, even shooting horizontal lines across parts of the picture in frequent intervals. But this was only after traversing over 65 feet of HDMI cable. So far, my theory on longer-run HDMI cables was a near-bust. Sending 1080p content through this 25 meter juggernaut from an HDMI 1.3-capable player (the Playstation 3) yielded this:



What was occurring was real-time video, but with frequent, rapid-fire areas of snow on the picture which made the movie pretty much unwatchable. Periodically, the entire picture would turn to snow or flicker off for a moment before it came back and attempted to render itself to the best of the double cable's potential. This was significant as it demonstrated to me the importance of pre-emphasis which is available via HDMI 1.3 sources and not present on older HDMI 1.0 devices (remember, with the HDMI 1.0 source we got nothing on the screen at all at 1080p).

...plenty of valuable info on post 1 of this thread. You guys should check it out.

[rded]

Originally Posted by crackinhedz

HDMI Myths and Misconceptions:


...the bitstream gets accurately reconstituted, and the picture on your display is as good as the HDMI signal can make it.

I fail to see how an overpriced cable will give you a better picture??

Man Crakinhedz, this topic rally gets you hot under the collar. Don't look this way, I only bought 1 hdmi cable($7 @ Frys and its not very good) my entire life and the rest are freebies. Hence I made my coment about the degraded signal. Besides, you can never really stop anyone from buying more expensive HDMI cables-its their money

Originally Posted by Ricshoe

Carefull, Crack. As was mentioned earlier "it's a waste of time" trying to explain real-world studies and data to some folks who refuse to accept the facts and insist they "see" differences that just are not (and technically cannot) be there. You'll just be labeled ignorant because you elect to believe hard data rather than members' opinions.

Its a waste of time bothways

[naturephoto1]

Originally Posted by Ricshoe

Carefull, Crack. As was mentioned earlier "it's a waste of time" trying to explain real-world studies and data to some folks who refuse to accept the facts and insist they "see" differences that just are not (and technically cannot) be there. You'll just be labeled ignorant because you elect to believe hard data rather than members' opinions.

I really do not think that we have enough testing on some of this particularly with more sensitive equipment that may pick up on differences and nuances in color, contrast, sharpness, jaggies, noise, etc. There is a lot of evidence that HDMI may not be the best medium to carry the best performance for audio and the same may well be true for video.

Rich

[crackinhedz]

Originally Posted by rded

Besides, you can never really stop anyone from buying more expensive HDMI cables-its their money

My goal is not to interfere with the enjoyment of ones own money.

[Uncle Leo]

Then THE QUESTION IS,

IF you CAN afford it, HOW MUCH SHOULD YOU SPEND on an HDMI Cable?

[rded]

Originally Posted by naturephoto1

I really do not think that we have enough testing on some of this particularly with more sensitive equipment that may pick up on differences and nuances in color, contrast, sharpness, jaggies, noise, etc. There is a lot of evidence that HDMI may not be the best medium to carry the best performance for audio and the same may well be true for video.

Rich

Rich, this debate will rage on like speaker wires and other analog cables. From the countless threads and articles I've read about HDMI, even though its called a "digital medium", it is not purely DIGITAL as we are still talking about square and sine waves which inherently are still analog in the smallest and most minute scale...BUT its as digital as digital can get.

Originally Posted by crackinhedz

My goal is not to interfere with the enjoyment of ones own money.

Hahaha! Same here my friend. No matter if you spend big or a little these days, its still helping the economy.

[rded]

Originally Posted by Uncle Leo

Then THE QUESTION IS,

IF you CAN afford it, HOW MUCH SHOULD YOU SPEND on an HDMI Cable?

No more than $200 for 2m. But I don't feel the itch to do that right now or in the near future.

[naturephoto1]

Originally Posted by rded

No more than $200 for 2m. But I don't feel the itch to do that right now or in the near future.

I did; my top of the line Wireworld Silver Starlight 5 squared HDMI cables are much more than that. They are the nicest HDMI cables and HDMI connectors that I have ever seen though.

Rich

[crackinhedz]

I did; my top of the line Wireworld Silver Starlight 5 squared HDMI cables are much more than that. They are the nicest HDMI cables and HDMI connectors that I have ever seen though.

And to put it into perspective...


HDMI Cable Test Results

1080p 8-bit 120Hz HDMI
4.98 Gbit/s

$249.95 Wireworld Silver Starlight 5 (2 meter) = Pass

$9.52 Monoprice (6ft) = Pass

[crackinhedz]

...and with the way HDMI v1.4 is looking, our cables will become obsolete anyways.

Will any of the new HDMI 1.4 features require a new cable?

The HDMI Ethernet Channel feature will require a new cable that supports this functionality, either a Standard HDMI Cable with Ethernet or a High Speed HDMI Cable with Ethernet, depending on the maximum resolution to be supported.

[naturephoto1]

Originally Posted by crackinhedz

...and with the way HDMI v1.4 is looking, our cables will become obsolete anyways.

Will any of the new HDMI 1.4 features require a new cable?

That is providing you have equipment to utilize the HDMI 1.4 standards. I doubt that I will be replacing anything for awhile that will require 1.4 HDMI cables unless the Projector that I get next year will require it.

Rich