I just ordered 3x 1.5 ft HDMI cables from Monoprice and hope I made the right choice? My setup is a Sony HT-SS2300 home theater system which has three HDMI inputs, one HDMI coming into it is my Sony BDP-S350, another HDMI coming into it is from my Time Warner HD cable box. I am not using the third in HDMI input yet. Then one HDMI cable comes out from the Sony HT-SS2300 home theater system and directly into my Sony KDL-40S4100 1080p tv. So I need 3 HDMI cables total and short ones will be better in my setup. Will the 1.5ft HDMI cables from Monoprice work in my situation and let me see and hear full features of my setup? here is a link to one of them: I am worried b/c they don't say category 2, but they are only 1.5ft long so maybe they are ok? http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2
Thanks
Last edited by MaximusBlu; 02-16-2009 at 03:04 AM.
I'm after the same thing MaximusBlu, but I'm going to wait till tomorrow so the black ones are in stock. The catagory 2 thing is still freaking me out, but I've been assured on this very thread that I'll be fine, even with the 3 foot cable I plan to get. Catagory 2 seems to be more popular with longer runs. Please report after you get your cables and get them hooked up.
I'll be sure to post back when I get them. I like the idea of the colored cables so I can use a different color for each hookup and I like the price even more. Obviously a blue cable makes sense on my blu-ray player lol. I already have a couple longer cables, one a 8ft. Sony cable that cost me about $50 , and another one that I don't even know the brand, but it is 6.6 ft I believe and I bought it at Blockbuster for $25. I have a ton of cable left over with these long ones, but once I hook up the short HDMI cables from Monoprice everything will be tidy. I will use the 8ft Sony HDMI cable I have for when I want to hook up my laptop into the setup and a longer cable makes more sense here. I only wish I found this forum sooner than I did, but better late than never.
I just ordered 3x 1.5 ft HDMI cables from Monoprice and hope I made the right choice? My setup is a Sony HT-SS2300 home theater system which has three HDMI inputs, one HDMI coming into it is my Sony BDP-S350, another HDMI coming into it is from my Time Warner HD cable box. I am not using the third in HDMI input yet. Then one HDMI cable comes out from the Sony HT-SS2300 home theater system and directly into my Sony KDL-40S4100 1080p tv. So I need 3 HDMI cables total and short ones will be better in my setup. Will the 1.5ft HDMI cables from Monoprice work in my situation and let me see and hear full features of my setup? here is a link to one of them: I am worried b/c they don't say category 2, but they are only 1.5ft long so maybe they are ok? http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2
Thanks
I have 2 of those (6' version) that are linking my Amp, one S350 and one Xbox 360 work great
so I just got my 1.5 foot and 3 foot HDMI cables today from Mono. Now of course, it would seem the 1.5 foot is a very tight fit from my PS3 to my receiver, but should be fine for now, I just don't like that it seems to short, but a 3 foot would leave me with cable dangling on the ground. The 3 foot from receiver to plasma is perfect, and yes, everything operates perfectly, even though it is not catagory 2. I was also able to replace all of my Cat 5 with Cat 6 cables, and get a very solid coax audio cable to run from my HTPC to receiver...all of this for just under 20$, and that's with the shipping! Monoprice is my new best friend.
so I just got my 1.5 foot and 3 foot HDMI cables today from Mono. Now of course, it would seem the 1.5 foot is a very tight fit from my PS3 to my receiver, but should be fine for now, I just don't like that it seems to short, but a 3 foot would leave me with cable dangling on the ground. The 3 foot from receiver to plasma is perfect, and yes, everything operates perfectly, even though it is not catagory 2. I was also able to replace all of my Cat 5 with Cat 6 cables, and get a very solid coax audio cable to run from my HTPC to receiver...all of this for just under 20$, and that's with the shipping! Monoprice is my new best friend.
Why do you say that? Just because it doesn't state Cetegory 2, doesn't mean it isn't. It's listed as v1.3a compliant, passes a 1080p signal and rated up to 4.6Gbps. It's a category 2 cable. I don't believe I've seen any Cat 1 cables on Monoprice.
Why do you say that? Just because it doesn't state Cetegory 2, doesn't mean it isn't. It's listed as v1.3a compliant, passes a 1080p signal and rated up to 4.6Gbps. It's a category 2 cable. I don't believe I've seen any Cat 1 cables on Monoprice.
just because the ones I purchased were not in the section of "catagory 2" cables. All that means is that they were not tested to catagory 2 specs, no big deal. Works just as fine, and a very solid cable if I might add!
so I just got my 1.5 foot and 3 foot HDMI cables today from Mono. Now of course, it would seem the 1.5 foot is a very tight fit from my PS3 to my receiver, but should be fine for now, I just don't like that it seems to short, but a 3 foot would leave me with cable dangling on the ground. The 3 foot from receiver to plasma is perfect, and yes, everything operates perfectly, even though it is not catagory 2. I was also able to replace all of my Cat 5 with Cat 6 cables, and get a very solid coax audio cable to run from my HTPC to receiver...all of this for just under 20$, and that's with the shipping! Monoprice is my new best friend.
I recently got all my HDMI cables from Blue Jeans Cables. My reason was two-fold. They did not have the shorter sizes I wanted (2, 3, 4 footers) and I did not want to wait.
I received my 1.5 ft HDMI cables from Monoprice and got them hooked up and I am happy to report that they work great. I am only using 2 of the 3 cables right now, but the picture and sound show no difference using these cables from my other more expensive cables so I am happy. Now my setup looks cleaner with the short cables and I like to use a different colored cable for each device. Thanks to the folks here for opening my eyes about all this.
Last edited by MaximusBlu; 02-24-2009 at 04:27 AM.
I too would like to take the time to thank the great people here for suggesting monoprice.com. Just received my HDMI cables and banana plugs and WOW, they are great build quality. I would even put these above monsters build quality. Banana plugs are amazing as well. Satisfied 100%. These will go nice with my new Onkyo 606 I just picked up at CC for $299. Had to throw that in there .
HDMI Cables:"The Need for Speed" (April 2009 Home Theater Magazine article)
HDMI Cables:"The Need for Speed" (April 2009 Home Theater Magazine article) (source p.30,32,33 of April 2009 Home Theater Magazine)
Only comments in quotes are from the magazine article. The following are a mixture of my comments with a summary of parts of the article.
In the April Home Theater magazine is an excellent article about HDMI cables. HDMI cables cost anywhere from under $2 to over $200. There are 6 different speed rated cables and for most consumers Category 2 rated Cable with a speed rating of 10.2 Gbps is all that is needed to transmit 10802p/24 and 1080p/60 video signals with 7.1 PCM audio. In the analog world more expensive higher quality cables are much more important compared to the digital world. In the digital world a cheap under $5 HDMI 1.3a Category 2 Certified cable that is 10.2 Gbps certified will sometimes at short distances offer the exact same picture and sound quality as a Monster Cable brand for over $200. Some of the cheap under $5 HDMI cables use very thin wires (high gauge number) that can break easier compared to a Monster Cable brand that has a thicker wire (lower gauge number). Higher quality more expensive cables also have quad layer shielding to protect against EMI/RFI interference. More expensive higher quality cables generally last longer compared to under $5 brand lower quality cables. For consumers that have high-end BLU-RAY players like the Pioneer Elite BDP-09FD that upconverts 24bit color to 48 bit Deep Color then a faster HDMI cable is needed over a slower cable. Monster Cable makes a M1000HD HDMI cable that handles speeds above 14.9Gps that should handle most future unreleased versions of HDMI. Monster Cable just announced a M2000 Hyper-Speed cable that can handle speeds greater then 21 Gps which should in theory work with 480Hz refresh rate 3D TV's as long as the HDMI interface is still in use.
With the future planned release of the Monster M2000 cable that handles over 21 Gps the suggested retail price is $200-$1,800 depending on cable length. Now for an in wall installation of a flat panel or ceiling mounted Front Projector it is very wise to purchase the fastest speed rated cable from a company that makes good quality cables. No one wants to replace a cable in the wall once it goes bad or does not offer enough speed for future technologies that require higher speed. For the average consumer that extra expense for a 14.9Gps or 21 Gps cable might not be worth it. It is possible that in the future that HDMI standard could be replaced with another interface and the consumers that paid for expensive high speed cables might never take advantage of the higher speed cable. I have been using the Monster Cables current top of the line cable the M1000HD for all my connections since I like the quality of the cable construction and it reduces my chances of having to purchase a new cable in the future if I plan on adding a upconvert Deep Color BLU-RAY player to the existing Pioneer Kuro monitor I watch.
Word for word select quotes from the article:
"The transmission medium is most often a cable, but if it can't relay the data fast enough, one of the three things will happen. You may see colored speckles in the image, which is a sign of data loss. The image may break up intermittently as the system waits for more data arrive, either going completely blank periodically, becoming blocky, freezing up, or stuttering. Or you may get no picture at all. Factors that can significantly affect the data rate and possibly trigger these failure modes include the resolution of the source (1080i or 1080p, for example), the cable's overall length, and its construction (including the cable-to-connector junction, strain relief at that junction, and precisely equal length for all the individual signal wires within the cable jacket)."
"To test an HDMI cable's ability to carry the amount of data the source requires in a timely fashion, you can use sophisticated and expensive test gear."
"Still, even without true Deep Color at the source, there are oversampling Blu-ray players that output higher than 24-bit video over HDMI. For example, Pioneer's new Elite BDP-09FD can output up to 48 bits (16 color). This will increase the bit rate the HDMI cable must carry just as much as will true, 48-bit Deep Color."
"Less convincing, for now, are claims that you need special 120-hertz capable cables for today's 120-Hz sets (or tomorrow's 240-or 480-Hz designs). Currently, there are no 120-Hz sources. Today's 120-Hz (or higher) sets produce the 120-Hz frame rate entirely within the set from sources that are 60 Hz, at most. So there are no requirements for HDMI cables to carry more than 60 Hz. Furthermore, there are no 120-Hz (or higher) sets on the market that even accept an input frame greater than 60 Hz."
"Finally, what about a possible future move to even higher resolution, such as 4,000 by 2,000? That would likely require a whole new HDMI standard. For example, Meridian's new 4K projector requires four DVI cables (each with the same data-carrying capacity as HDMI) to send a 4K digital video signal to the projector. My crystal ball tells me that a widespread move to 4K for consumer applications is unlikely in the foreseeable future. (The Meridian projector will run you $185,000.)"
"If you want to cover yourself for any of these possibilities, especially if you are running long HDMI cables through the walls, by all means knock yourself out and buy the best HDMI cables you can find. But always test them at the required length outside the walls before you commit to the installation. The best scenario, of course, would be to test them with today's most bandwidth-hungry consumer HD resolution, 1080p/60. Perhaps you might want to do it from a player that can challenge it with a higher video bit rate, such as the Pioneer Elite BDP-09FD."
"The rest of us have less bit-dense sources and short HDMI cable runs. For us, almost any well-made HDMI cable of 2 meters or less should be able to carry any of today's consumer sources with no problem, although it might still be occasionally challenged by 1080p/60. But there is no native 1080p/60 consumer program material."
"I've had experiences in which one quality 5-meter cable worked reliably and another didn't."
"You should also look for cables with the heaviest gauge-usually 22 AWG. These will likely be more reliable at longer lengths."
Last edited by HDTV1080P; 03-08-2009 at 07:21 PM.
Reason: UPDATED WEB LINK SINCE LINK CHANGED
Excellent prices on the current top of the line Monster M1000HD-8 cable
With many high-end dealers and retail stores going out of business there are some excellent deals available on the top of the line 14.9Gps Monster Cable M1000HD-8 cable. The M2000 21 Gps cable has not been released yet by Monster Cable Inc.
Also there have been dealers on EBAY clearing out of new genuine certified M1000HD-8 cable for around $51 and sometimes with free shipping. This cable price most likely is below what it costs Monster Cable to make the cable for. Paying $219.99 at Best Buy versus $51 online for the same cable is a big difference.
I am afraid some of the high-end cable manufactories are going to go out of business in this economy since many consumers are buying the off brand $1.95 HDMI cables instead.
Just got a Pioneer BDPLX71, I was reading the instructions manual & it mentions I should use a HIGH SPEED HDMI cable, I didnt even know these cables existed.
Can anyone tell me if it's worth spending the extra cash for a high speed HDMI cable ???
What exactly does it do, enhance the sound or picture quality ???
thanks
Last edited by Yautja; 03-08-2009 at 12:06 PM.
Reason: spelling mistake
I am afraid some of the high-end cable manufactories are going to go out of business in this economy since many consumers are buying the off brand $1.95 HDMI cables instead
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bye monster cable. 
, and another one that I don't even know the brand, but it is 6.6 ft I believe and I bought it at Blockbuster for $25. I have a ton of cable left over with these long ones, but once I hook up the short HDMI cables from Monoprice everything will be tidy. I will use the 8ft Sony HDMI cable I have for when I want to hook up my laptop into the setup and a longer cable makes more sense here. I only wish I found this forum sooner than I did, but better late than never.
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