Have your say & ask the experts

Hi there, I'm thinking of buying a panasonic TH-42PZ81B and a panasonic DMR-EX768EBK DVD recorder. The shop assistant tried selling me a HDMI cable which I think was called a monster cable to get the best possible picture. Is it worth spending that amount of money or is there a cheaper cable which would give similar results? Many thanks.

There are always many opinions on this subject! Personally, in my experience, I have trouble telling the difference with the free cable that came with my Virgin V+ box and a £50 QED HDMI-P lead.

Take from that what you will..........

(Just ensure any lead is 1.3 spec)

Wasn't Currys or Dixons by any chance??

Worth spending some money but not silly money. £20-25 should get you a decent QED or Chord (if it''s only a 1metre length your after).

Yeah, it was dixons. thanks for the advice.

grdunn123:

Wasn't Currys or Dixons by any chance??

Worth spending some money but not silly money. £20-25 should get you a decent QED or Chord (if it''s only a 1metre length your after).

 

In my opinion, even £25 is about £10 too much.If it is a short legnth, a £5/10 cheapo HDMI lead will do as good a job as a £100 fancy one.

My feebie cable that came with SkyHD is no different to my QED cable that I wasted £50 on, no difference in PQ at all.

I have just spent £186 on 3 VDH flats 1.5m, dam there thick

I have three HDMI cables, from a freebie up to a £50 job. I was excited about getting the £50 QED, until i plugged it in. No difference from the other two. My advice would be to not be seduced by the claims of the companies making the expensive cables, cos it's bollocks. £20's plenty, mate.

.  

The Gadget Show did a test with a £20 HDMI Lead and a £120 HDMI Lead on the same tv and guess what?they saw no difference at all !

Surely there must be some difference? Years ago when I thought my DVD player was the newest thing on the planet, I used a £40 IXOS cable. Then I heard that it really doesn't make that much difference if you get a cheap one - what a load of doggy do! The cheap one (about £7, I think) was so much worse. Colour bleed, washed out display and no edge definition at all. When I got my new LCD TV and PS3 I got a QED HDMI-SR lead (£72) without pausing for breath. I just like to think that by using better quality components, I'm giving my equipment the best chance to display the best it can. Or am I just deluding myself? This is a topic which really bothers me, but no-one seems to have a definitive answer to. The way I look at it is - How much did you spend on your TV? Blu-Ray? PS3? XBox 360? Stand? Sky/Virgin HD? and then you want to buy a cheap, crappy lead to connect it all together? Why?

I also have 3. Ranging from £10 to around £60.

They give identical results.

I did have a really cheap one that gave me bad artifacts on screen (since binned). My conclusion. Get a good quality, cheap one that works. The only possible difference between 'working' cables is the theory that the better cable relies less on the error checking in the receiving device. How much processing power can error checking possibly have these days (and effect on the resulting signal) when a mobile phone is as powerful as a PC from 10 years ago?

Go online, look at professional quality non-branded for around £15 to £20 tops, and it will perform just as well as an expensive branded cable IMHO. 

Barkerwoo,

I agree that in the arena of scart or component, I found that you did 'get what you pay for'. I, like you, had IXOS scarts and they completely outperformed the freebies that were supplied with the equipment. However, HDMIs dont seem to follow the same logic. I'm not a techie, so I don't get why this is. I really feel that the people that have bought the really expensive cables are subject to the placebo effect and are seeing improvement because they want to, not because it's there. If you know anyone with a cheaper cable, borrow it plug it in and look with an objective mind and you'll see there's no difference at all.

Barkerwoo:

Surely there must be some difference?

Another online review site did some very extensive objective testing using a range of cables from different manufacturers.  IIRC some of the cables retailed at over $1000.  They also compared different lengths using five bandwidth test levels i.e.742.5(Mb/s),1.65Gb/s, 2.23Gb/s, 3.4Gb/s and 4.98Gb/s in addition to real world observation. It was interesting that some of the lower cost cables passed certain tests at certain lengths whilst some expensive cables failed the same test at that length.  Price is not a good measure or guarantee of a HDMI cables performance.  

 The review was very detailed with regard to cables specification and testing. The reviews made no silly claims about better colour, smother motion etc that some of the less credible rags claim.

"This is the equipment they used to objectively test the cables

• Tektronix DSA 8200 Digital Serial Analyzer,
  
• 2 x Tektronix 80E04 TDT/TDR Sampling Modules,
  
• Anritsu MP1763C-1 Pulse Pattern Generator,
  
• Digital Serial Waveform Analysis Software,
  
• HDMI Test Fixture Calibration Kit,
  
• 2 x HDMI Test Fixture TPA-R adaptors,
  
• 4 x 20" RF Coaxial test cables with SMA connectors,
  
• 2 x 36" RF Coaxial test cables with SMA connectors,
  
• 18 x Precision SMA 75-ohm Terminations,
  
• Agilent GPIB/USB Interface,

Grand Total = $205,500 (not including the laptop to run the software)"

"Your take-away from all this should be the following:

At lengths less than 4 meters you can just about use silly string (OK, not really) and get HDMI to pass at any current resolution. At less than 3 meters you'll even extend that to 12-bit color and possibly the next crazy idea HDMI Licensing decides to throw at consumers. Don't spend a lot on these cables and if you want to save money you won't let anyone at a big box store talk you into buying from them.

At long lengths (over 10 meters) you really need to pay attention to the manufacturer if you don't want to risk running into potential problems with 1080p and future formats such as Deep Color. With that said, just about any cable at or under 10 meters will pass 720p/1080i and nearly everyone will pass 1080p at 8-bit color as well.

If you have an existing HDMI cable and are running into problems, we'd suggest at least attempting the insertion of an active component at the sink (display) side. This is going to be far cheaper than ripping out your walls and re-running new cables - and likely just as effective.

HDMI has proven to be a moving target and there is no telling what crazy (likely unnecessary) format they will try to push down the cable next. Due to this, it's always good to "overbuild" your cable install, especially if it's a longer distance and going to end up behind drywall.

If you're not prone to upgraditis and think 1080p will be your maximum resolution for the life of your install, don't sweat it...

There are going to be exceptions to all these "rules" but in the end I'd have to say that I really thought I'd see more differences in the real-world performances of longer-length cables."

Sorry I can't publicly link to the site as unlike other forum What HiFi? ban user linking to certain other sites.  Qdos and credit to Clint DeBoer.

Dasp