Hopefully TinkFist will approve of this thought provoking thread

CHECK IT...

 

Interesting and thought provoking. Bottom line, over long distances it probably is better to have the "higher end" cables, but less than a few meters an HDMI certified cable won't make any difference at all.

 

Monoprice is where I go for HDMI cables.

 

Anyone who would pay $100 for a 4 foot Monster Cable has way too much money.

 

HDMI is the same signal going to the same source as composite but with the addition of sound channels.

it was developed to reduce the number of wires needed for wall mounted flat panels.

Until something truly new comes along, HDMI is a waste of money unless you are wanting to reduce wires

 

Don't you sell these cables, wantone? I like your anti-business propoganda. I hate money too!

 

IMHO, that link contained misleading information, and nowhere in that link was anything that might be considered useful data. However, the conclusions were valid, IMHO.

There is a very real difference in sound when you go from the crappy 18 gauge wire that comes with most lower-end speakers to something like 8 gauge copper. And the more power you are pushing, or the longer the run, the bigger the wire ought to be.

Digital audio and video don't have the same issues. Yes, the longer the run, the bigger the wire should be, but that crappy speaker wire that came with your $50 6x9's would be overkill for digital. You're not pushing any power through the wire, so you don't need anywhere near the gauge you'd need for high-powered speakers. Regular cat5 would make horrific speaker wire, but can easily transmit huge volumes of digital data over fairly long distances. You WILL NOT see any difference between cheap high gauge cable and the most expensive low gauge, unless you are running your cabling over long distances. But standard Cat5 networking cable will be adequate for distances up to 100 meters, so you can see that high-buck low gauge cables are really not necessary even for long distances.

Basically, the cabling demands for digital signalling are extremely modest. Shielding is necesary, but since the signal is restricted to alternating positive and negative charges, all you require is a cable that is capable of maintaining enough separation between the positive and negative for the equpment on either end to distinguish the difference. Exceeding this minimum limit will not result in any improvement of the image.

External and internal noise can cause degradation of the signal, something that would be called "dropped packets" in the PC world. In digital video, these are missing elements of the picture, or "digital noise." If your current image exhibits this behavior, check to see you aren't running your cable over a power supply or other source of electromagnetic interference. The only solution might be a longer cable or a more heavily shielded one. Or your current cable could be wearing at the connectors, with internal shorting. You might just need to buy a new cheap cable if the problem gets worse when you wiggle the cable near the connectors.

I have to say that if you spend $5K on your TV, you really shouldn't be complaining about spending $120 on some cables. Whether you need to or not is a different story.

 

not even CLOSE to true.

 

How about HDMI vs. Component cabling? Over on avsforum I always read experiences where someone said component cabling has a better PQ than HDMI. HDMI's single cable of audio and video is a benefit in reducing wires but I am skeptical of their improved PQ claim.

 

care to elaborate???

Ok so I misspoke and said composite instead of component

you can prove that the signal of hdmi is any better than component?

let me clarify: HDMI is basically the combination of component signal and sound information in one wire. there is no decernable difference between paying for and using HDMI as opposed to using the the component and fiber optic for sight and sound.