drewliuscaesar

[www.cabletrain.com]

econo2

hdvison

TimBrown

morgan888

thebike45

I totally agreed a quote from a popular on-line cable website: "Cables shouldn't cost more than the equipment you're connecting." I am not endorsing the website even I brought from them, so I keep out the name of the website here.

I am a semiconductor design engineer, I use lab equipments, I care about Signal Integrity, and design IC as well, so I am looking the cable more from the point of an engineer. Making a digital HDMI cable is NOT a rocket science, and I don't see how a Chinese manufacture can't make the same quality of cable, which is selling for as little as 10% of the Monster cable. Why Monster cable cost that much? You tell me. Monster Cable located just 30 miles from where I live and work, but their cables would have traveled around the world, and touched by many middleman before I get it. And the big Monsters are getting pretty good paid!

The BOM (Bill of Materials) of $15 NO-Name cable could be same or better than a $150 Monster HDMI Cable as long as they both are: "Certified by HDMI.org". Now, even the cables are HDMI certified, they may be at different specification. In other words, your $99.95 Monster cable (they called The Original Line in Monster's website) could be NOT as good as my $12 HDMI cable because the $99.95 Monster cable might not be HDMI1.3a, nor Category 2 certified. Nevertheless, when choosing the HDMI cable, paid attention to:

1) Do your equipments need HDMI1.3a cable or not;
2) Is the cable "Category 2 certified"?
3) If in-wall installation, then need the UL's "CL-2 rated";
4) Does the cable has Gold-Plated connectors at both ends?

That is it, but after all, it is your money! To me, an expensive HDTV is absolutely OK to go with a cheap HDMI cable. As long as you paid attentions to the items above. Good luck, and enjoy your Monster or no-name cables.

JackJO

stevejeff

[www.cmple.com]

transoda

brian1cj

DONT WASTE YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY ON SOME EXPENSIVE CABLES! LITTLE TO NO DIFFRENCE!!!

here's some specs on Phillips's HDMI Cable

24-carat, gold-plated connectors
Flexible PVC jacket
High-purity copper composition
Rubber strain relief
Braided shielding
Easy grip
Protective metal shielded connectors

absoluteboss

Can someone tell me if this is a TV problem, a cable box problem, or something to do with the 'generic' cable that I purchased? Is there anything I can do to fix this without swapping out one of these 3 components? Thanks...

HDMI_Novice

Frello

1m - 69UKP ~140USD
3m - 79UKP ~160USD
5m - 99UKP ~200USD

There's probably a big bag or magic beans in the box.

They're also selling cheaper cables for about half the price, but it's still way out of my budget. Can anyone recommend a decent 1m cable that will work with my PS3 (in the uk)?

hifidave

[www.amazon.com]

I just ordered 4 of them this past weekend, and after shipping the total was about 15 bucks. I'll be happy to provide details on the quality of them once I receive them if anyone is interested.

It seemed like the only logical way to go, as even the mid priced cables (at 25-35) get extremely expensive when you need them to run from the receiver to the TV, ps2 to receiver, cable box to receiver, etc.

exo

chase421

Also, a lot of larger items don't come with the cables you need. For example, printers (regardless of brand) do not come with USB cables. Period. Not to mention that printer ink can cost you more than the printer (HP is getting better about this, but most printers cost upwards of $60 to replace all of the ink cartridges).

SuperTim

hannah88

dkmon

DavidT

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

rower30

cattmann

thecableguy

BigGVa

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.

lwall

areallygoodname

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."

BruceHDTV

LM4139

sheed

ruby2zdy in Olympia WA

ruby2zdy

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.

5 Cent

Nyle

s4zando

schapman43

ORD

mattyice11

T-man