I've tried the DVI to HDMI cable from Monoprice and it works a-ok. Shipping to NYC was quite cheap.

I don't specifically know how to test it, but Monster Cable in general is a total rip off. As a matter of fact, almost any company in the "audiophile cable" game is a total rip off and largely fueled by their marketing team. Don't believe the hype.... and if you do, then go out and buy 3 different cables and get somebody to test you blindfolded (figuratively if you're speaking of HDMI cables).

Way back in the day when DVI was newfangled, I was affronted by the same thing with cable prices... I decided to look online, and found a 6 ft DVI-D cable to hook my Mac Mini up to my Sony Grand Wega tv. Phenominal quality... for $12. I decided to do a side-by-side comparisson between that and a $75 cable. No difference.. even on high bandwidth video tests. I then alternated between both cables for some HDTV feeds as well. No difference. This makes sense, when you remember that DVI (and HDMI) are digital cables. If they have a solid connector on the end (and a nice ferrite bead), then the signals should be virtually indistinguisable. In the Analog world, an Oxygen free, pure copper, yadda yadda yadda cable may make a difference that an oscilloscope could detect, but in the digital world, with all the error correcting protocols and whatnot, I just don't see the point.

Monster Cables are overpriced lengths of copper...This is news..??? Best Buy gets you in the door with bargain prices and mail in rebates and then reams you on accessories...Oh, stop the presses. HDMI is a digital signal. As long as the cable is so bad that there are intermittent breaks in it, the signal is going to get through. Buy 'directional' cables and such if you like, but I'd rather spend the money on the hardware at each end.

I've purchased exactly one Monster product: an expensive S-VHS cable whose prongs broke off the first time I disconnected it from a device. That's never happened to me with any other S-VHS cable so I haven't had any inkling to test any of their other products.

CompUSA, Best Buy, Circuit City and the like all over inflate their cable prices. I used to work in operations at CompUSA and I know that at the time some printer cables were a 3000% markup. These guys don't make money on the hardware, computers, and such - all profits are received from extended warranties and accessory markups.

I actually do own some monster cables and like them. However I purchased them when I actually worked at Best Buy and got them at like 25% of their normal price. They are no better, and generally no worse, then any generic cable you would buy at ratshack or an online discount place.

As everyone said, big shocker that cables are a ripoff. If you want high quality cables at a decent price check partsexpress.com and pccables.com. You can get decent 'certified' cables for a reasonable price, shipping is *very* fast and customer service is outstanding on both (IMHO). Not sure what is in the 'certification' process but we have not had any problems whatsoever with cables from either company. Partsexpress in particular also has great pricing on speaker wires (another over priced cable from the retail stores). It was cheaper for me to order high quality (oxygen free) 10ga cable from parts express, have it shipped to Canada, pay duty (and shipping) than it was to buy 12ga cable from futureshop. The total price from parts express (all in) was about 35% less than purchasing locally.

Anyone who buys those cables pushed on them at places like Circuit City (they are infamous for it) has no backbone or tons of cash. I love telling a store employee that the cables are a waste and that I'm going home to rip apart a few rca cables to make my own component cables. They act like I'm drinking a $200 bottle of wine out of a Solo cup. Chances are they don't even own an HDTV themselves.

I've also heard good things about Blue Jeans Cable. http://www.bluejeanscable.com

I've bought all of my cables from Monoprice since I discovered them last year. Everything has been good quality, and the cables cost what you think they should cost.

Not only isn't there $143.62 worth of quality difference, there isn't $.01 worth of quality difference. PCWorld did a great article on cables awhile back that is worth a read if you think otherwise: http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,121777,pg,1,0...

has anyone ever looked to see what cables are on the display models at the showrooms?

Even Target has the 6-ft Monster HDMIs for $69. Ridiculous. I'll tell you, my eight-year old home theater receiver and refurbished JBL speakers sound better than one of our local movie theaters, and my system is wired with speaker wire from the dollar store.

This is why you only go to these ridiculous chain stores to look around - and then scope out froogle or eBay to actually buy this stuff.

you asked how to test - well, testing digital cables is really easy. 1) Plug in cable. 2) Turn on devices etc 3) Are you consistently seeing a picture/hearing a sound/whatever the cable is supposed to transport? if yes then the cable works. if no then it doesn't (well, or something else is wrong). there are no in-betweens, no image quality variations, no '8 out of 10' or whatever. it works or it doesn't. that's it.

I've had a good experience using parts express (partsexpress.com). It's true you can get cables that look exactly like monster cables (minus the logo) and they are dirt cheap. By 3 or 4 and it will still be cheaper than 1 from best buy.

This doesn't apply to HDMI or DVI, but for analog cables like audio and component video, I bought a reel of RG-6 coax, some crimp-on F-connectors, and some F-to-RCA adapters. The adapters were necessary because crimp-on RCA connectors were too rare or expensive. Voila! As good or better than anything you can buy (I imagine), and cut to the exact length I need, to boot.

Hell you should look at the cables used on the trucks and in the studios used to create the shows and music your watching. I can tell you there is no Monster cable there. You are right, Digital is digital. Either you got the signal or you don't. The only time you need to spring for better cable is if you are doing long runs or in an area with alot of RFI. And if your home has alot of RFI, you need to see a doctor more than reading this post.

There's a way to test. It's called TDR (Time Domain Reflectometry). This test sends a pulse (Voltage) down the cable and measures any discontinuities from poor manufacturing of cables and connectors. We characterize our test boards with TDR to create models for simulating our line driver ICs. Using TDR equipment would be too expensive for a lot of people. But, we can get a pretty good idea of what we need if we analyze the HDMI requirements. HDMI has a bandwidth (BW) of around 5Gbps (likely 2.5GHz if DDR). If we divide the BW (2.5GHz) by the number of bits used (24), we get the actual frequency of the signal being transmited: 105MHz. We now take into account that most TVs and set-top boxes are not utilizing even half of the Bandwidth set for HDMI, the required signal frequencies drop to 50MHz or less. So what does it all mean? If you use a CAT5 cable (or even CAT5e if you want to splurge), you'll be more thab ok. How much are those cables at Home Despot?

I get all my cables from http://www.bettercables.com great cables and prices are ok.

Monoprice is very good, and very cheap. There is a big discussion about the merits of cables at AVSForum and a lot of people swear by Monoprice.

uh... The joy of moving from the analog world where there is considerable variation in the rf carrying properties of various kinds of coax, to the digital one where if you put bits in one end and they come out there other and they're the same bits, then they look the same when they're decoded on the screen, is indescribable. assuming the cable was manufactured to comply with properties spelled out in the relevant specification dvi-d or hdmi the should be no difference between the most and lesat expensive cable. Now hdmi is sort of a horrible connector from a mechanical perspective, dvi at least screws down and has bladed pins, but that sort of travesty is perpetrated on the consumer electronics world all the time, (think speaker connectors, firewire, toslink the mini-jack, etc)

In the analog audiophile realm cables do actually make a difference, but my understanding is that this doesn't apply in the digital realm. With digital signals you either get it or you don't. A digital signal on one cable will be the same as a digital signal on another... so when it comes to DVI, HDMI, Toslink, and digital coax there isn't really an advantage to buying an expensive cable over a cheap one. Monster cable is very special to distributors... the markup and pay-off on them is huge. That's why companies like BestBuy and Circuit City, etc push the sales on them so hard. Keep in mind that we're talking digital here. If you're dealing with analog audio or analog video (i.e. component / composite, etc) then it actually is in your best interest to get a good quality cable if you care about getting the most out of your system.

"I get all my cables from http://www.bettercables.com great cables and prices are ok." Uhhh, they are charging $90 for a 3ft HDMI cable.......

I've gotten dozens of cables from monoprice and enjoyed each one. THere can be no difference in digital signals especially because if a few bits are lost along the way, error correction takes care of it. MC is a total rip off.

Digital isn't as clean cut as some of you make it sound. I worked as a MPEG2 Compression Engineer for Echostar Satellite for close to 6 years. So I have a little background in this. A corrupt digital signal can cause chirping in the audio and a number of video issues such as pixilizing, digitizing, black banding, etc. However, I do agree with most of you here. Overpriced cable is just that, overpriced cable.

I use blue jeans cable too. They have color and quality posts, good build quality, and a price that is fair. They are in my opinion the best product vs price ratio.

Even in the "analog world" high-end cables are an utter ripoff. THe simple fact of the matter is that a fully shielded well-constructed 75 ohm RCA cable [suitable for composite video, component video, digital coax audio, analog audio, subwoofer cable, etc.] contains under ten dollars in parts at best. Wire, PVC and RCA plugs are cheap. Period. Esoteric geometry, silver connectors, inline filters, "directional" cables and the like have never, not once in the history of the industry been shown to make any audible difference in a scientifically controlled test. This is why many high end audio forums forbid discussion of double-blind testing. If you want more information on this look for Usenet articles by John Dunlavy or an old article I mirrored on my blog where a guy uses expensive professional mastering equipment to measure a cable made from a coathanger.

gold plating is for marketing purposes only.

i myself would not trust my eyes in this situation. First of all i would need to have a display that is capable of being limited by a cable. Then in order to have a proper test, i would employ the use of some educated eyes. Someone who works every day developing HD content for a TV network. Basically someone who is trained at finding fault in videofeed. My eyes accept the shitty quality of DVD. I'm pretty sure whatever i saw in HD even if it were not true-HD would impress me. What i'm saying is that the majority of these cable to cable tests are not done with the proper setup (both TV and Eyes) and i for one am not going to bother thinking about it (past what i have for this post obviously) until i have a TV that i know will be capable of good enough picture quality to warrant the effort of caring.

The premium analog cable market was/is a way for audiophiles to say "My ears are so refined that I cannot stand the imperfections in any cable priced at less than $100/ft." In most cases you cannot tell the differences on an oscilliscope, let alone audibly. Especially when you consider age as a factor. People's hearing range goes down as they age. Digital cables are a holdover from that. As Barnum said, there's a sucker born every minute.

Consumers are being charged over $100 for several meter HDMI cable simply because their HDMI compatible TVs cost them a lot already and according to major retail's researchers potentially they will spend premium on pheriperals in an effort to get the best picture out of their brand new TVs. Companies like Monster, Audio Quest (hand in hand with major retail) simply set and establish a perceived value for these digital cable products and unfortunately retail cables that cost them single digit at three digit price points. To add insult to injury they bring in the analog cable selling points on digital cable packaging. An HDMI cable that is gold plated has NO advantage over a silver plated one just because conduction quality is irrelevant when you are carrying "Ones and Zeros" from one point to the next.

Best Buy is so TOTALLY the best way to go! Not only will the employees lie to you about the hardware, and quality of the accessories, but the last $150 DVI cable I purchased from them came with a FREE tube of lube! FREE!!! you CAN'T beat that!!!

I remember reading an article about a year ago in one of those "super Hi-Fi" mags (you know the ones with $15,000 turntables to play the vinyl that you picked up at a neighbor's yard sale for $0.99) -- anyway -- Here's a similar "expose'" by Roger Russell on premium wire versus 16 gauge lamp cord. http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm "...So what do our fifty hours of testing, scoring and listening to speaker cables amount to? Only that 16-gauge lamp cord and Monster cable are indistinguishable from each other with music and seem to be superior to the 24 gauge wire commonly sold or given away as 'speaker cable.'" So there ya have it. :)

I can offer some expertise in this field and help cut through what is smoke and mirrors and what makes a real difference that's worth paying for. Specifically for HDMI cables, there are compliance and performance tests (g**gle eye diagram aka eye pattern tests) that would help skeptics determine if a cable is good enough to work or perhaps even "very good". Digital signal transmissions are going to have a certain amount of errors, the sum of which can cause a failure. Some cables will transmit the signal with fewer errors, and some devices can correct errors. Although RFI and and cable lengths do play a significant factor on how many errors occur, there are additional (and variable) factors that occur to be aware of. There are 19 copper conductors in an HDMI cable, their gauge size, the way they are twisted, and shielded is different from one manufacturer to another and effects performance. Ultimately performance and price should be related, so hook it up and see if it works, just know that having it work the first time doesn't mean it will work every time. Variable factors such as adding new components to your system can take a cable that is near the threshold of failrure and push it past the point of displaying a signal. As a general rule - cables that are particularly high or low on the price range are worth being skeptical about. For starters, consumer should demand that their HDMI cables are HDMI compliant (look for the HDMI Logo). Going one step further, consumers should be aware that eye diagram tests exist and should be able to receive them upon request from the manufacturer so that they can make their own judgments on whether the cable is worth the price tag or not. If the cable barely passes the test you could be subject to a failure under variable conditions. Gold vs. Silver and the specific percentage of such metals present in the connector have limited impact on these tests. I'm in the process of developing HDMI cables at my company, and we plan on including eye diagram test results with the packaging of the products themselves. We believe that rising tides bring up all ships. By educating the consumer on the ways these cables can be judged, and taking it one step further by offering the test results of our cables we believe that other manufacturers will be forced to offer better quality cables at competitive prices.

I've bought several HDMI cables from these guys and they even threw in free shipping on the first one because it was out of stock when I ordered it. eHDMI.com Totall reputable, friendly and selling a good quality product for a reasonable price. I've seen HDMI cables as high as $300 for a Monster cable. Because we all know that copper coducts video better when it's 1nm thicker and called Monster. ;^) I think for $300 versus say $20, I'll take a little video quality loss. ;^)

Since I can't edit my last post. eHDMI states the following about their HDMI cabkes-> "Certified to perform at standards set by HDMI™ - Supports 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p" My picture quality is just fine with my upscaling Panasonic DVD player. $6.50 for a 3ft - $41 for a 35ft(Wow is that TV far from the device.) I've used PartsExpress for a lot of items as well. Very reputable company with good service. I think that I found their HDMI cables were only about twice as expensive as eHDMI. Just my two cents worth.

As an ex best buy dude I can say that the truth lies in the middle.

Audio cable quality does make a difference in sound quality - not as much as monster says - but it's also not negligible as suggested by many comments seen here. (Although I do have a problem with the HDMI pricing)

My favorite monster products are their clean power power strips which I have seen first hand their effectivness in cleaning up a picture on an HD TV.

Is anyone still reading this thread? I just upgraded my satellite receiver to HD-DVR and I want to get an HDMI cable. THANKS to all here who enlightened me about expensive vs. just-as-good cheaper ones. Question: Should I go for the larger dia. cable? I've never delved into electronics (though am not a complete idiot -- I was a computer system admin before I retired), so don't know whether a larger dia. cable would trasmit a better signal than a smaller one. I hope someone's still reading this & can give me an answer. BTW, when I clicked on "Subscribe to comments on this post" I got a full page of HTML code for all the postings. Thanks.

ruby2zdy in Olympia WA

how can i purhase these cables

I am sorry to be the wet blanket, but I read several reports and comments about inexpensive versus very expensive HDMI cables and decided to buy the inexpensive ($7.74 6' and $4.56 3') and hooked up my new Samsung 61" HDTV 1080p, these cables suck. My 6' cable constantly needs to be reseated or I get a blue or green screen. I went out and purchased a medium priced 6' (Phillips $34.99) and now it works perfectly. Stay way from the cheap, cheap stuff!!!

Beware of eHDMI.com... only after your order do they disclose there will be a delay in shipping. As long as a THREE WEEK DELAY!!!

Too bad they don't divulge that before you buy. Something to consider when you go cheap.

I'll post again to let you know how long it actually takes. Today is 12-05-2006.

My message after my order for two 6-ft. HDMI cables goes as follows:

"We are experiencing heavy volume due to the holidays. Shipments are running about 1-2 days delayed. You will receive a shipping/tracking confirmation as soon as your order has been processed. We apologize for the delay.

Thank you for your payment.
Please allow standard U.S. shipping times: Typical shipping times are 2-3 business days, but please allow up to 15 business days for shipping."

If anyone is going to buy an HDMI, there should at least be a ton of features. Accell and Gefen have both made pretty decent long distance cables. The new Gefen ones are CL3 rated installation standards, and have built in active repeaters so 1080p signals can be sent the entire length of the long distance cable. ( since HDMI signals are lost at about 15 ft.)
They come in 50 ft. 75 ft. 100 ft. 125 ft. and 150 ft. cable lengths.

The comments about you "either get a digital signal" or you don't are not quite right in my experience but they are close enough from a practical perspective. When I run a digital video signal over a very long distance (100 ft or more) with several low quality intereconnects and a few lower quality splitters in between I first experience blocking artifacts and then black areas start showing up in my picture and then I loose the picture altogether. So at least in my case I was able to see a sort of gradual degredation in quality but I had to introduce like 20 dB of signal loss to get thier. I agree that for 6' runs there will be no difference between cables. I also think that for very long runs with several hundred feet of cable there will be no difference either (blocking, followed by intermitent and then total loss of picture). Note these tests were run from the signal source to my cable box. HDMI cables between the box and the TV may in fact fail more abruptly. I suspect that the signal to the cable box has various error correcting schemes in the protocol that cause it to fail more gradually which HDMI may not have.

As for analog audio cable science says there should be no difference but my experience is that thier is a slight difference. I have run the same length of two different 12 gauge cables side by side - one name brand for a couple dollars per foot and the other the cheapest I could get from home depot at about $0.40 per foot. One sounded a little crisper and the other had slightly more bass. I was actually very suprised by the result being a fervent believer that science argues there would be no difference. However the difference was very very slight and could only be detected listening to both cables side by side on a mid-priced stereo system (~$5000). For my <$2000 home theatre system I could have found a lot of better ways to spend $200 to improve the sound quality - $200 on better speakers would have made the biggest difference by far followed by $200 on a better amp or reciever.

Finally monster cable dupes people into believing that thier cable is far superior by setting up apples to oranges comparison tests in big chain electronics stores. They do a comparison of 50" of 12 Gauge monster cable against 50" of 20 gauge or worse generic cable. Science says that at 50" 20 gauge cable will result in significant loss in signal strength and alter the filtering characteristics of the crossovers in the speakers. But this would be like Pepsi doing a blind taste test against castor oil. The most important characteristic of speaker cable is gauge - not brand name. Unless you have a very expensive system (say $10000+) you can get sound improvements for less by by spending more money on core components not cable.

I am stacking components for a home theatre system. I don't need 15 foot lengths of hdmi cable or 6 foot lengths. Heck I don't even need 3 foot lenghts (perhaps one). 2 questions: does anyone sell hdmi to hdmi cable in one foot sections? At these shorter lengths, is 28 gauge sufficient. Is there any possible reason at short lengths to get 24 or 26 gauge? Thanks

Just to answer your question, I am the lead designer for a Cable Company (Cobalt Cable), and I have designed multiple versions of HDMI Cables, and I don't know of anyone who sells HDMI Cables under about 18" or so (for the 18" length, Monoprice is probably the cheapest option). For any length under 3', there is no reason to go any larger than 28 gauge. Ours is 22 AWG (the biggest conductor size out there, by my knowledge), but it is built to pass 1080p at lengths up to 10M with perfect quality. I hope that helps.

Hi I am in the process of setting up my HD TV and I also was browsing ebay for HDMI cables.I noticed that one seller was bragging up his 19 pin cable.He stated that most cheap cables on ebay are only 18 pin and the sellers are not telling this to customers.Is there an issue here with the number of pins in the plugs?

HDMI cable capabilities are no different than any other digital cable. But, they do need to have capability. Cables are living, breathing mechanical things in that the length of the cable you select (longer means changing performance), and the way in which you handle the cable (physical geometry changes change the cables performance), will reflect (pun intended) on cables performance.

The two main culprits in cable performance for HDMI, or ANY digital link, are return loss performance and resistance.

Return loss is the signal reflection back towards the transmit end, caused by periodic perturbations (physical dimensional inconsistencies) in the cable. Dimensional inconsistencies can be built in to the insulation with poor manufacturing quality (cheap cables that are not sweep tested for RL performance limits) or put into the cable with harsh handling or fragile cable design (twisted pairs lay lengths that are too long to manage bending stresses, but the cable is cheaper to make).

Resistance is important, and needs to be kept to a value that proportionally matches the imaginary components of the digital signal. If a cable is twice as long, you want the resistance per foot to be half as much. But, this only balances the reactive (inductive, capacitive and resistive components) signal characteristics. It doesn't remove signal attenuation. The longer the cable, the more likely you are to attenuate the signal from resistance limit margin violations with small AWG cables. Less resistance isn't as important as not going over the limit of resistance, so don't over do it on short runs. It won't help once you are comfortable in the limits of the requirement. Signal quality will still be attenuated from the insulations dissipation factor and dielectric constant no matter what the resistance component is, or the cable's length. Cheap cables use SR-PVC, which has terrible dielectric constant stability with respect to frequency, and high dissipation factors. Polyethylene (PE), or Teflon is excellent with regards to dissipation factor values and dielectric stability with respect to frequency. Why do you want good dielectric stability? To insure that the cables reactive vector sum yields constant impedance with respect to frequency to minimize back reflections (RL) in the signal. Why do you care about dissipation factor effects? Because high dissipation factors will attenuate signals above DC with respect to frequency. Don't be fooled with Teflon, it is very expensive, and it's real attribute is for flame resistance, not performance. Unless you listen to home theater in rooms hotter than 80C (towering inferno anyone?) look for polyethylene (PE) or high-density polyethylene (HDPE). You would be better to go for improved RL performance, which is important at any length, than to worry about Teflon.

Gold verse silver verses tin-plated interconnect is an easy answer. Silver has the lowest contact resistance till it oxidizes, and it does so readily. Once it oxidizes it has terrible contact resistance. Tin is the cheapest stable contact resistance material available and has reasonable oxidation resistance. Gold, has excellent oxidation resistance, and maintains the most stable contact resistance over time. So gold is a good compromise on resistiveness to oxidation and low contact resistance.

It is funny that people, who know nothing about a subject, are so smitten to pronounce that there are no differences between products. Speaker cables come to mind. This is an easy answer, too. The majority of difference in speaker cables is related to the damping factor of the power amplifier the speaker cable is hooked up to. Again, change the length or AWG size of the cable will change the damping factor of the amplifier, as will the speaker's reactive components. Tube verses transistor verses MOSFET type amplifiers circuits have varying degrees of sensitivity to cable resistance, and the changes it instills in the damping factor. It is important to understand that the amplifier "circuit" doesn't stop at the screws at the back of the receiver, but concatenate all the way to the speaker's inductively driven voice coil. This includes the cable, speaker cross-over (some are a stable impedance, some vary with frequency) and speaker inductive characteristics and back electromotive force (EMF) reflections. What is EMF reflection? Hook a volt-ohm meter to a speaker lead and push the speaker diaphragm in and out. You will see an induced voltage at the speaker's leads. This varying voltage is superimposed onto the driver signal voltage from the amplifier moving the driver. It doesn't just go away. If you have a driver circuit that is sensitive to resistance, you will hear much better bass response as the damping factor improves with lower resistance. If your speaker cable leads are suitable short, and you have a less sensitive driver circuit, you will hear little to no real change. There is no magic here. Change the AWG or length of the cable till you can't hear any difference. Then move on.

Rower30@comporium.net