HDMI cables

[GQgeek]

Originally Posted by imageWIS

What difference did you see and over the course of what length? HDMI is digital, no? If all the 0 and 1's get from the source to the destination intact, how could you tell the difference?

The biggest issues you'll get as you move to longer lengths are handshake issues, so you can end up with a cable that kinda works. Sometimes you'll switch devices and it'll go fine and other times the receiver/display and source won't handshake so you'll get nothing. Also -- and i'm going off memory of a rather long article read years ago -- because of the way the signal is encoded or transmitted or something, you can actually get horizontal lines across your screen.

Generally, it's pretty obvious whether it works or not. And ya, the 40ft cables i had from mononprice are stiff like garden hoses. You can buy hinged or 90deg hdmi couplers so that big thick heavy cables don't put too much tension on the connectors.

 

[imageWIS]

Originally Posted by GQgeek

The biggest issues you'll get as you move to longer lengths are handshake issues, so you can end up with a cable that kinda works. Sometimes you'll switch devices and it'll go fine and other times the receiver/display and source won't handshake so you'll get nothing. Also -- and i'm going off memory of a rather long article read years ago -- because of the way the signal is encoded or transmitted or something, you can actually get horizontal lines across your screen.

Generally, it's pretty obvious whether it works or not. And ya, the 40ft cables i had from mononprice are stiff like garden hoses. You can buy hinged or 90deg hdmi couplers so that big thick heavy cables don't put too much tension on the connectors.

Most people who aren't setting up major pieces of equipment and / or have everything near to the TV won't have any issues with less expensive and shorter cables, no?

In Boca my 60" TV was hooked up to devices which were directly underneath it, at lengths no longer than 3'. Surely, at 3' it really doesn't makes sense to buy an expensive cable....?

 

[A Y]

What you see with longer cables that aren't quite up to spec are sparkles: little dropouts that appear randomly around the screen as individual bits and packets are dropped.

--Andre

 

[pg600rr]

dont want to highjack, but along the HDMI lines, I need a 45-47 ft. (so prob. will have to do a 15M/50ft. cable). I thought it was going to have to be 60 ft. but I overestimated!

Anyway, I am having a hard time finding a reliable/reasonably priced High-Speed HDMI for that 50 ft. run. I went on Monoprice, they dont have a High Speed (only up to 25 ft.) and Blue Jeans has one (but only up to 25 ft., thereafter it is Standard HDMI).

Any suggestions?

I will be running 3-4 Cat 6's with it, as back up, future expansion, etc.

 

[GQgeek]

Originally Posted by imageWIS

Most people who aren't setting up major pieces of equipment and / or have everything near to the TV won't have any issues with less expensive and shorter cables, no?

In Boca my 60" TV was hooked up to devices which were directly underneath it, at lengths no longer than 3'. Surely, at 3' it really doesn't makes sense to buy an expensive cable....?

No, it doesn't. At those lengths you want something thinner (but still up to spec) and more flexible. I think BJC sells quality cable without getting into the ridiculous audiophile stuff.

 

[GQgeek]

Originally Posted by pg600rr

dont want to highjack, but along the HDMI lines, I need a 45-47 ft. (so prob. will have to do a 15M/50ft. cable). I thought it was going to have to be 60 ft. but I overestimated!

Anyway, I am having a hard time finding a reliable/reasonably priced High-Speed HDMI for that 50 ft. run. I went on Monoprice, they dont have a High Speed (only up to 25 ft.) and Blue Jeans has one (but only up to 25 ft., thereafter it is Standard HDMI).

Any suggestions?

I will be running 3-4 Cat 6's with it, as back up, future expansion, etc.

don't know what to tell you, but test the cable with the source/receiver before doing the run through the walls or whatever.

 

[Artisan Fan]

Originally Posted by pg600rr

dont want to highjack, but along the HDMI lines, I need a 45-47 ft. (so prob. will have to do a 15M/50ft. cable). I thought it was going to have to be 60 ft. but I overestimated! Anyway, I am having a hard time finding a reliable/reasonably priced High-Speed HDMI for that 50 ft. run. I went on Monoprice, they dont have a High Speed (only up to 25 ft.) and Blue Jeans has one (but only up to 25 ft., thereafter it is Standard HDMI). Any suggestions? I will be running 3-4 Cat 6's with it, as back up, future expansion, etc.
You might try the Belkin products for longer lengths but ideally you don't want such a long run. Is there another way to go? If you can make shorter runs, you will generally get better audio quality and lower cost. I also think you can easily get too fancy by trying to hide cable in the walls. In my experience, this just limits your options for cable upgrades and complicates installation.

 

[Artisan Fan]

Here's what the head of Audioquest says about the differences in HDMI performance: Dear Ms. Jacobson ... and Mr. Merson, Your pieces, Mr. Merson's HD Guru article about HDMI Cable Makers and Ms. Jacobson's passing-on & packaging of that piece in CE Pro ... make me smile and make me wince. The smile part is that I'm delighted to see deception taken to task, and I'm proud of how carefully I balanced responding to market pressure with only telling the truth. And, I wince at the less than perfect muckraking which is unfairly tarnishing AudioQuest. In the real world, people are confused. The world of this month's video buzz word comes from the hardware side. "LED" is being used to describe LCD monitors with LED backlighting. These are not LED TVs! LCD monitor manufacturers are shouting about their 120Hz, 240Hz and 480Hz refresh rates, often implying frame rates of 120, 240 and 480 ... it's downright difficult to figure out if a given TV with a 240Hz refresh rate is displaying a frame rate of 24, 30, 60, 120 or 240. "Refresh rate" and "frame rate" are being purposefully jumbled up by some hardware suppliers. As HD Guru points out out, there are no monitors which need to be fed more than a 60p signal for 2D video, though 3D does require the equivalent of 120p (60p x 2), no matter what the monitor's refresh rate, and no matter whether the set includes the computational ability to interpolate 120 or 240 frame rates. As for the 600Hz refresh rate of a plasma set, well, that's only a relevant number in that it's divisible by 24, 30, 60 and 120 ... and that having a high refresh rate is part of why plasmas have been the go-to technology for many of us. Because of the confusion in the general market about refresh rates and about frame rates, because salespeople are also sometimes confused, because no warrior wants to go into battle unarmed ... AudioQuest received great pressure to put 120/240/600 on our boxes, or risk losing business. Being who I am, my first reaction was "no way!" Then, with more pressure, and more time to think about how to balance the need and the truth, I came up with the line quoted in the article, and shown on the photo of the AQ Cinnamon HDMI box in the HD Guru piece. I chose the words very very carefully: "Delivers 100% of the data required for 120Hz, 240Hz and 600Hz displays" Who can read that and call it a lie? I carefully use the refresh rates as adjectives modifying "displays." The cable "delivers 100% of the data required" totally true, not a shred of BS. If someone thinks this is misleading advertising, rather than simply harmless self-defense, then take a look at laundry soap commercials, much less diet plans. And, every model of AQ HDMI cable, starting at $25/1m carries the same statement. We don't down-rate some models in order to make a more expensive model falsely appear to be more desirable. AQ makes 8 quality levels of HDMI cable, and all carry the same phrase about supplying data to a monitor. We also don't play a numbers game. All AQ HDMI models up to 8m are High-Speed ... and that's all that anyone needs to know. However, there is a major flaw in HDMI LLC's Standard-Speed rating because Standard-Speed only guarantees a 1080i performance level, whereas much of the world is actually in-between. For example a 16m AQ cable carries 1080p and Deep Color, and yet because of HDMI LLC's guidelines (which AQ follows to the letter), the customer is actually misled into believing that the cable is less capable than is actually the case. Wanna hit be for under-claiming the cable's ability? It's easy to make ... well, it's easy for a really good high-speed data cable manufacturer to make a 10m High-Speed HDMI cable (HDMI's difficult 4 pair are essentially standard data cables). AQ doesn't make 10m HDMI cables, we jump from 8m to 12m ... and 12m doesn't pass the eye-pattern test for High-Speed, so we rate it as Standard-Speed, even though it's good for Blu-Ray 3D (broadcast 3D is only the equivalent of 1080i). There's another numbers game which HD Guru refers to; the shenanigans about data rate or speed rating. I'm mocking the game, but I would also defend that there's no lie in claiming a particular data rate for a particular cable of a particular length. Because length is the enemy of data rate, 1m cable and 2m cable using the same construction have different data rates. So, what's to be gained from bragging that a cable exceeds the bandwidth required in order to qualify as a High-Speed or Standard-Speed HDMI cable? For exceeding High-Speed, there's the implication of more capability results in better performance within the bandwidth required. This is often true for other products. We all want more horsepower than we need in our cars. Amplifiers should have bandwidth way beyond the 20-20,000Hz that is consider the audio band. Our experience at AQ is that past a point, past not much more than HDMI's High-Speed requirement, higher bandwidth has no effect on audio or video performance ... but it's not criminal for others to believe differently. I would also defend other cable manufacturers' claims about 4K. The HDMI LLC 1.4 specification includes 4K. Yes, I agree that 4K doesn't exist in the consumer marketplace ... but whether it ever will or not isn't the point, the spec exists and all High-Speed HDMI cables meet the 4K spec. However, we disagree a bit more strongly with scaring people into higher data rates being necessary in order to future proof their system. We don't know, but for now we do believe, that if and when data rates greater than the current HDMI spec are required, the plug and cable will change. Dual-link HDMI already exists, but isn't used in the consumer marketplace. USB dual-link (3.0) uses a backwards compatible plug ... it can do that because there is enough extra room to increase the pin count. There is no room in a standard HDMI A plug to add extra pins. A "faster" HDMI cable would be a different cable going into a different jack. I've waited until far down in this too long piece, after most people would got bored and move on, to bring up something more self-serving ... justifying multiple models, who's prices go up to $895 for an AQ 1m Diamond HDMI cable. AudioQuest makes no claim, in our sales material or on the box, to differences in video performance between our $25 cable and $895 cable. I am very respectful of the physical and physics reality that HDMI video is quite robust. The combination of minimal signal degradation and error-correction circuitry, is that AQ accepts the baseline that all HDMI cables make the same picture. On the other hand, we marvel at how often there is a real difference in video performance ... I don't mean the "sparklies" that show up when pixels are lost, or the black screen which is usually the result of lack of copy-code authorization. I mean what is most often seen as a lack of contrast and of black-black. Considering that there's a pretty narrow window between works-perfectly and doesn't-work, it is surprising that any cable should fall in the small band of over-the-cliff, but hasn't-crashed. So, I'm essentially agreeing with the closing paragraph in the HD Guru article, to not pay more for an HDMI cable because one expects a better picture. However, depending on the particular hardware (source drive capability, input circuit capability, error correction ability) and the particular cable, it's an area worth investigating for those so inclined. I'm please that this buyer-beware statement is about picture quality, because ... Audio quality, good old fashioned audio quality is why AudioQuest makes so many models of HDMI cable. The very same added-expense ingredients which create higher performance in AQ's digital coax, balanced digital, and USB cables, are used to great effect in the HDMI series: better metal (increasing use of silver up to pure PSS silver), and AQ's patented Dielectric-Bias System (DBS), make the some wonderful obvious slap-in-the-ears differences with HDMI audio as with the other also surprisingly fragile methods of moving audio around. Video requires a lot of data, but audio is vulnerable in many ways that video is not. The point here is that cables which cost more to build, and which sell for higher prices, offer very real improvement in performance, in audio performance. Those of a certain mindset find it difficult to believe that digital audio isn't all perfect. While I can describe some of the ways in which a wire cable or a fiber-optic cable introduces jitter, the "argument" is not won in the intellectual domain. The fact if that when people listen, they hear. If they care, they buy at the level that makes sense for them, just like choosing the quality of loudspeaker or car that makes sense for the individual. It's an interesting irony that after decades of controversy about whether all amplifiers sound the same, all cables sound the same, whatever, that the "subjective" claim that one piece of audio is or is not better than another, is less onerous than misleading with actual numbers. Hmmm, maybe that $119 shelf-system with hundreds of watts and 30-20KHz performance, and LCD TVs claiming to be LED TVs (I have an OLED set, a entirely different class of product), and cables claiming to pass 480fps are all manifestations of a permanent phenomenon ... death taxes and deception will always be with us. Sincerely, Bill William E. Low CEO/Designer AudioQuest

 

[teddieriley]

+100 on monoprice. <$5 for a high quality HDMI cable. Or you can be stupid and go to Best Buy and buy the same thing for $80 with prettier packaging.

 

[esquire.]

Originally Posted by Blackhood

If it were a $1.50 cable then I could see that it might make a small difference.

With the way Monster overprices their cables, I'm not so sure that they aren't the equivalent of a $1.50 cable.

If the $100+ Monster cables work fine but are a overpriced rip-off, what that does that say about the quality of my Just Hook It Up Monster Cables that I bought at Wal-Mart for $10? But, hey, if cheap cables work just as well as fancy cables, then I figured I'd give these $10 cables a shot even if they were from Monster.

With shipping and handling, I figured that the $10 price wasn't that far off from buying them from the internet.

 

[A Y]

Originally Posted by pg600rr

dont want to highjack, but along the HDMI lines, I need a 45-47 ft. (so prob. will have to do a 15M/50ft. cable). I thought it was going to have to be 60 ft. but I overestimated!

BJC has their bonded-pair cables that go up to 100 feet. Though ratings for HDMI are lower, they claim that they've run very long cables, which will work for certain receivers and transmitters. Order one and try it out --- they have a great return policy. If that doesn't work, they also have an HDMI booster that is meant to drive it longer distances.

There are two issues with long HDMI cables: loss and capacitance. Loss is how much the signal strength is lowered at the other end of the cable. Capacitance is how much charge is necessary to drive that length of cable. Both are directly proportional to the length of the cable. If your HDMI receiver has good current driving capability on its HDMI ports (no one specs this), then there's a good chance it will drive a long cable. So there's only one way to find out: try it out.

Originally Posted by Artisan Fan

Here's what the head of Audioquest says about the differences in HDMI performance:

JFC. What a ridiculous letter. There is only 1 takeaway point from it:

The combination of minimal signal degradation and error-correction circuitry, is that AQ accepts the baseline that all HDMI cables make the same picture.

There you have it: an audiophile cable company says that HDMI cables make no difference to the picture quality. It either works or it doesn't.

Of course, they go on to justify their exorbitant cable prices with audio:

The point here is that cables which cost more to build, and which sell for higher prices, offer very real improvement in performance, in audio performance.

For digital audio cables, there are perhaps 3 things which can affect sound quality:

1. Data loss. This is not even an issue, because if it happens, it's pretty obvious.

2. Radio frequency interference: noise and other undesired things. This can be obvious (like a hum), and you see that in the new Arcam rDAC USB DAC, whose coax digital input isn't isolated, and causes ground loop hum.

This can also be subtle, like RF noise injection messing up the power supplies or clocks of a DAC, thereby inducing jitter and other small-scale artifacts. For HDMI, this is a non-issue: the form factor of HDMI is pre-determined as is the shielding. The way HDMI cables are designed, short of maiming a cable, there's not much you can do to alter its susceptibility to RF. But even if this was an issue, which it is not, the next point shows why this is moot.

3. Cable-induced jitter. The argument here, and this is the one Audioquest is making in their letter, is that some cables better preserve clocks transmitted, but this bogus, since the kind of situation where a cable would matter depends on the particular details of the transmitter's and receiver's circuitry, and you cannot make a cable that will make everything sound better because different HDMI devices will implement HDMI differently. So an uber-$$$ Audioquest cable can actually make things sound worse.

This is true as well for the RF noise in point 2 above.

If they care, they buy at the level that makes sense for them, just like choosing the quality of loudspeaker or car that makes sense for the individual.

I hate when audio companies try to make a lame equivalence statement like this. Cars are a popular one, but I'd never seen one to loudspeakers yet. Cars are measurably different, and they are easily differentiated across prices. Speakers more so, since it is impossible to create a perfect speaker.

--Andre

 

[Artisan Fan]

These are good points Andre. I was thinking in terms of audio quality and digital cables in my earlier comments.

One thing that has surprised me is the sound quality differences on 75 ohm digital cables. I recently tried several and the better quality ones made a difference. I assume that is likely due to jitter. I used my Sony SCD-777ES as a transport and a Benchmark DAC1 (latest version) playing back my own recordings, some needledrops and some gold CDs I'm familiar with.

 

[esquire.]

Are my HDMI cables bad?

When I connected it from the TV to the DVR cable box, I got the following message:

Your TV doesn't allow display of this program through the DVI input source. Please choose another TV source

 

[A Y]

Originally Posted by esquire.

Are my HDMI cables bad?

When I connected it from the TV to the DVR cable box, I got the following message:

Not a cable problem. That's probably a copy protection issue between your TV and DVR. Are you using some kind of HDMI-DVI converter? Perhaps your TV doesn't support HDCP on its DVI input?

--Andre

 

[ramuman]

Originally Posted by Artisan Fan

Audio quality, good old fashioned audio quality is why AudioQuest makes so many models of HDMI cable. The very same added-expense ingredients which create higher performance in AQ's digital coax, balanced digital, and USB cables, are used to great effect in the HDMI series: better metal (increasing use of silver up to pure PSS silver), and AQ's patented Dielectric-Bias System (DBS), make the some wonderful obvious slap-in-the-ears differences with HDMI audio as with the other also surprisingly fragile methods of moving audio around. Video requires a lot of data, but audio is vulnerable in many ways that video is not. The point here is that cables which cost more to build, and which sell for higher prices, offer very real improvement in performance, in audio performance.



Are they seriously implying that HDMI cable choice doesn't make a difference for the digital video channel(s), but does for the digital audio channel(s) the cable carries? Is this a joke? They do realize that the audio and video are carried over the same wires and pins in a serial stream, right? What exactly makes digital audio more susceptible in a stream than digital video?