Even better: An electromagnetically shielded, gold plated optical audio cable. Sold at Sears [1].
I stopped buying cables retail a long time ago. My favorite supplier: RiteAV. They're (IMHO) the Amazon of cables. Huge selection, modest prices [2], and great customer service [3].
Not to knock your suggestion, but I've had similarly great experiences with http://monoprice.com . It seems similar to RiteAV, but much bigger and their prices seem on par (maybe 6-10 cents more expensive):
[1] made me hysterical for a few minutes. I know this old audiophile who insisted on buying the gold-plated kind when I helped him set up his home theater. I literally spent hours trying to convince him that it didn't matter, but apparently learned behavior just beats logical arguments and evidence.
I think the reason there is a market for these kind of ripoffs is that back in the analog era the quality of cables really mattered, and that's when the people who buy these learned what they know of tech. I don't think it gets harder to learn new ideas as you get older, but instead unlearning the ones that have worked for you gets progressively harder the longer you have had them. I only hope I can be more rational when I get older.
My patience for the line, "It is digital. It either works or it doesn't" ended a long time ago.
"Digital" signals are analog signals, but the only difference is that they are restricted to being above or below some threshold. But around that threshold there is a gray area where you can't really tell whether your signal will be interpreted as 1 or 0.
I am not defending the need for high-end HDMI cables. But saying "It's digital so don't worry" is wrong.
There are reasons that "digital" cables use twisted pair. Wow, even some "digital" cable standards specify the number of twists per inch required for reliable operation. And wow, some cable standards even specify shielded cable is required. I wonder why.
Here is a fun exercise for those that think "digital" signals don't need engineering steps to protect signal integrity: build all of your cables (or PCBs for that matter) with straight signals and you will have an excellent time trying to debug why your communications don't work. Bonus fun for making the cable length 1/4 of your signal wavelength.
I think the point of the "either works or it doesn't" is a comparison versus analog. With an analog signal you could get slightly better results by getting better cables (or worse with worse cables). If you have a poor digital cable it flat out doesn't work. If the cable you're using works, buying a more expensive cable isn't going to make it work any better. Either the 1s and 0s made it from the source to the destination or they didn't.
No one is claiming that there isn't engineering that needs to happen to make a digital signal reliably travel from the source to the receiver.
The point is not that you can use anything, the point is that you only need a certain level, and then it's good enough. All my HDMI cables are from monoprice.com, I don't think I paid more than $4 for a single cable, and I can't imagine what kind of EM interference I'd need to mess with them. I have so many electronics in my house I'm probably on a watch list.
I guess the argument should have been that once you cross a certain threshold, cable quality doesn’t matter. That was of course also true for analog signals (human senses are only so good), but the transition from good signal to bad signal might have different characteristics with digital signals.
While a image from a analog signal will only get noisier and noisier as signal quality decreases, images from a digital signal will first show artifacts and then just stop displaying altogether. That’s a rather sudden transition. One second the signal is there, the other it's gone. Something like that just doesn’t happen with analog signals. (I’m basing this on my experience with terrestrial digital broadcasting – could be totally wrong for HDMI connection but I doubt it.)
I would guess that how sudden that transition is has something to do with the error correction and the codec of the signal. How many wrong bits can the error correction reconstruct? And, as soon as the wrong bits get past the error correction, how many wrong bits can the decoder handle and still reconstruct a image (albeit one with artifacts)? It would certainly be interesting to know how that problem was solved for HDMI connections. If you know the maximum bit error rates for your cables figuring out which are the right ones should be easy, given enough testing :)
I think "It is digital. It either works or it doesn't" in the context of A/V refers to the quality of the converted analog signal - what comes out of the speakers or is visible on the screen. And the signal getting through can either work or not, no matter how well engineered the cable is, isn't that correct?
There is still a qualitative difference between digital and analog signals. With analog signals, you can always get higher fidelity by upgrading components (until something else becomes the bottleneck). With digital, there are gradients of "wrong" but there is only one "right." Once you hit the threshold of bits not being flipped, getting more expensive and higher-quality components will not get you better-sounding playback. A digital cable can achieve literally perfect playback. Analog cannot reach perfection, which means it's always possible to improve.
I'm not an electrical engineer so I don't know what the threshold of perfection is, but if the consumer reports can't tell the fancy cable apart from the Radio Shack equivalent of two-buck chuck, I'm not going to worry about it.
Ok when it comes to HDMI the goal was to always have good quality. The difference between an analog and digital is that digital ENCODES the information, it either gets there or not. The only thing the cable gives you is bandwidth.
Analog is different. The signal is itself the image, so a poor signal = poor image.
MAYBE if you have a projector projecting onto a movie theater screen will a better HDMI cable matter... maybe? because of bandwidth limitations if the sender is smart enough it might send info at a lower resolution. Other than that I can't see theoretically why a good HDMI cable will help.
Also on my 42'' tv, I've yet to be shown a performance improvement when connecting my XBOX 360 via component or hdmi. It looks identical. And if HDMI is better than component, then I don't see a reason why you would ever need a good HDMI cable unless you are a movie theater and the theoretical problem does exist.
Edit regarding bit errors... Lets assume that the cable you bought is a good quality cable. By good quality I mean most seem to be shielded and not cut and no shorts. This is a reasonable expectation. I've yet to see an argument for buying more expensive super gold plated uber network cables. Hey why is your network cable that handles SO MUCH DATA not gold plated shielded etc.?
I bought some cables from http://www.bluejeanscable.com/ a few months later. I needed to make a few longer than normal runs, and they had reasonable prices and were direct about the capabilities of their different products outside of spec.
There's a bit more to it than that. An HDMI cable contains three serial data links, each operating at roughly 1.5Gbps. At rates that high, some shielding is required, or the cable will pick up enough noise to damage the signal. The HDMI link has some error correction (contrary to a comment on that site) whereby 8 data bits are transmitted using 10 bits on the wire, so minor errors are tolerated.
The important thing, and the central argument of that article, is that with a digital link, once there are no bit errors, no further improvements can be made, and even a cheap cable is plenty good enough for a short HDMI connection. Gold-plated connectors are still a good idea. Corrosion is as much of a problem there as anywhere.
Should you use a truly awful cable, and those do exist, you will probably notice an occasional "spark" on the display.
The graphic is totally useless, the same information could have been conveyed in 30 lines of text. An "infographic" should have some kind of graph or chart or something that adds insight, not a picture of 9 playstations and a dopey flow chart.
Second order effects, of course. If Samsung ships a cheap HDMI cable in the box, it's very little skin off their nose; they raise the price by their cost, about $2, and even in the competitive TV market that's probably absorbable to some extent.
But what happens next? They ship their TV to Best Buy, who quickly notices the TV ships with an HDMI cable, "robbing" them of the chance to sell a Monster cable. Or worse, the customer might still buy one, get them both home, notice there's no difference (or at least no $400 difference) and return the Monster cable. Ack! That's a $100+ profit opportunity that Samsung is costing them. How will Best Buy make up for it? They're going to jack the price of the Samsung TV up by some fraction of the $138 that they can no longer make. Not necessarily the whole amount, it would be prorated based on the average rate of Monster purchase; Best Buy has its own problems if it jacks the price of a TV up as it is a competitive market for them, too!
In fact, it is so competitive that it is not hard to imagine that Best Buy will discover they can't effectively sell that TV for ~$50 more (guessing) and just plain take it off the market. I am not saying this is inevitable, just that it is definitely a very possible outcome. If they don't, the very-price-sensitive American consumers will certainly notice the price difference in sufficient numbers to reduce sales of that TV.
So, how does this feed back to Samsung? They put in an HDMI cable, and either their retails sales drop, or Best Buy even entirely drops their TV.
So, whose fault is this? Money grubbing Samsung? Money grubbing Best Buy? Well, the capitalistic model tends to assume that the customer is informed, and when the customer is not informed, they can be scammed. Here, the customers are not informed. So I split the blame between Monster, who are aggressively lying to customers, and the customer base itself. (Best Buy to some extent here too, for the same reasons as Monster.) Not one, not the other, both. Too many audio/videophiles will aggressively defend their purchase of expensive cables, even after it is explained that their justification is technical gibberish, and as the market leaders they deserve some of the blame.
The other reason I blame this is that if you resolve the problem that a critical mass of customers actually believes expensive cables work, the problems go away. Best Buy raises the prices of all TVs a bit to make up the profit margin, as do all similar retailers. (Most are working on single-digit % profit margins from the top corporate POV, so if they lose something like the Monster cable they will need to make it up elsewhere.) Customers don't even notice because TVs continue to work like computers with constant price drops, so it manifests as a brief interruption in otherwise-falling prices rather than a huge, visible increase. Samsung starts sticking cheap-but-effective cables in, and instead of being punished by the retailers, customers reward them with happy thoughts about good service and a good out-of-box experience (which are hard to quantify but certainly produce bankable assets in the end).
The other option: When buying a TV through a different channel where there isn't a good Monster upsell opportunity, perhaps something like Amazon (which still has the upsell opportunity in some sense, but will present customers with many 1-star reviews and give them a chance to become informed properly), ship an HDMI cable then.
Second order effects, second order effects, second order effects. Always think second order effects when thinking about economics. It's never the simple story, the economic entities react to each other.
A) Not everyone is going to use a HDMI cable. (Wrong length, already have one etc. EX: How often did you use the phone line that came with a new phone?)
There is only one "good" (dubious) reason to by a really expensive cable, and that is for range. There is a performance differences between the cheap and gold cables, due to the different conductivities. However over short distance this isn't observable, as the receiver will correctly interpret the digital signal even though there is no noise on the line, this is the beauty of digital signals. It is there or it isn't, and with decent ECC on the line, which I'm assuming HDMI has, even with a fair bit of degradation it wont be an issue.
However as you extend the cable the signal with degrade at a different rate depending on the quality of the cable, and eventually you will reach a distance where the digital signal even with ECC is lost, and it will no longer work. With a higher quality cable this range is greater, (we are talking of ranges in the 10's -> 100's of meters), certainly no issue for a normal TV setup, and you would have to question why you even needed such a long cable to start with, move your source/receiver closer to each other.
The only other factor which might show up is the sensitivity and power of the transceivers, and you might find a cable of 100m works on some gear and not on others, but if you do you really are using the wrong tool for the job, go buy a optical repeater :)
I'm guessing on distances here, but you get the idea, I use to work in high frequency data transmission systems, and have no idea of the detailed specs of HDMI but should give you an idea.
Except when you're buying a new TV and you're at the checkout, you realize you need a cable to finish your hookup. This is why you never see a $10 cable in a retail store, like the poster above mentioned.
It's all about the psychology of needing it now instead of being able to wait 4 more days.
It's rare to see even a $10 one at retail. Often the lowest priced one is $20-25, and there are a bunch of $40 options. And not even talking about Monster which this article is singling out.
At the local Fry's (in Austin), there is a section of HDMI cables by the TVs and DVD/Blu-ray players. Cheapest in that section is about $20-$25 as you mention. However, over on the other side of the store, near the computer components, there is a section full of cables (coax, etc.). They have HDMI cables over there too - for ~$10 or so. I guess in some stores you just have to know where to look.
I've read exactly one semi-scientific comparison of popular DVI cables of varying price. Amazingly, the conclusion was that Monster Cables really are better. However the difference had no effect unless you were running a high-bandwidth signal (>=1920x1080x60Hz) over a long distance (>=12 feet? I don't recall exactly). The cheaper long cables would work for low bandwidth signals, but would lose sync and fail at high rez.
I suspect Monster has it in their catalog for government contract fulfillment where they can just drop it in without any review of cost when A/V components are ordered (seriously).
It's not aimed at people who actually look at price tags.
Have you ever gone into a Best Buy or similar and seen the cable selection? The "cheap" cables are $50, and the Monster cables are sold right beside them. Many people compare prices on the TV before coming into the store, but are not armed with good information when the salesperson tells them that their $1200 TV is worthless without $250 in cables.
So what if some dude with extra money pays a premium for a brand name? If it wasn't for them helping with the profits, Best Buy wouldn't be able to sell us a $400 dollar dual core laptop at a razor thin margin.
An excellent place for purchasing av and other sorts of cables at sane prices is monoprice.com Ive been very happy with the pricing which is consistently the lowest I've seen and the construction quality both. Sanely priced does not imply any loss in construction quality nor does the contrapositive hold, though US consumers are conditioned to view price as a signalling mechanism for quality to various extents
Unless you know exactly why you need the expensive one, you don't need it.
Unless a reasonable-length cable is damaged or malconstructed in such a way that it distorts transmitted waveforms so much that they're not recoverable, any reasonable conductor will work. This stuff isn't rocket science since about a year after RS232 was invented.
My personal favorite store to get cables from: Fleet Farm.
Typically, you can find almost any kind of cable for $5-$10, some of the common ones for less. I think my 25-foot flat ethernet cable came in at a whopping $12, but it's been the most durable I've owned.
They've also got rational pants, which my wife in particular likes.
I always thought that the "high end" cable market was a rip-off. Even as someone who loves high quality audio, its REALLY hard to tell the difference between a moderately priced cable and a high end one.
[+] [-] Sam_Odio|16 years ago|reply
I stopped buying cables retail a long time ago. My favorite supplier: RiteAV. They're (IMHO) the Amazon of cables. Huge selection, modest prices [2], and great customer service [3].
1. http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_05750807000P?vName=...
2. HDMI cables start at $3.50 - http://www.riteav.com/hdmi-cables-c-141_147.html?osCsid=cjmg...
3. I've never seen another retailer with as high a satisfaction rating: http://www.resellerratings.com/store/RiteAV
[+] [-] lokijuhyghj|16 years ago|reply
In tests audiophiles showed that not only are the 1s sharper but the 0s are much more rounded giving a more fulfilled sound
[+] [-] Pahalial|16 years ago|reply
http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Monoprice
Marginally higher rating, but more importantly a MUCH larger sample size (2338 lifetime reviews vs. 25)
Also, as someone north of the border they do ship here, whereas (as far as I can tell) RiteAV doesn't.
[+] [-] Tuna-Fish|16 years ago|reply
I think the reason there is a market for these kind of ripoffs is that back in the analog era the quality of cables really mattered, and that's when the people who buy these learned what they know of tech. I don't think it gets harder to learn new ideas as you get older, but instead unlearning the ones that have worked for you gets progressively harder the longer you have had them. I only hope I can be more rational when I get older.
[+] [-] tezza|16 years ago|reply
http://euronetworks.co.uk/acatalog/HDMI_Cables.html
Really high quality cables, low prices.
Confusingly named, it's UK based as I said.
[+] [-] micks56|16 years ago|reply
"Digital" signals are analog signals, but the only difference is that they are restricted to being above or below some threshold. But around that threshold there is a gray area where you can't really tell whether your signal will be interpreted as 1 or 0.
I am not defending the need for high-end HDMI cables. But saying "It's digital so don't worry" is wrong.
There are reasons that "digital" cables use twisted pair. Wow, even some "digital" cable standards specify the number of twists per inch required for reliable operation. And wow, some cable standards even specify shielded cable is required. I wonder why.
Here is a fun exercise for those that think "digital" signals don't need engineering steps to protect signal integrity: build all of your cables (or PCBs for that matter) with straight signals and you will have an excellent time trying to debug why your communications don't work. Bonus fun for making the cable length 1/4 of your signal wavelength.
[+] [-] matwood|16 years ago|reply
No one is claiming that there isn't engineering that needs to happen to make a digital signal reliably travel from the source to the receiver.
[+] [-] mrcharles|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ugh|16 years ago|reply
While a image from a analog signal will only get noisier and noisier as signal quality decreases, images from a digital signal will first show artifacts and then just stop displaying altogether. That’s a rather sudden transition. One second the signal is there, the other it's gone. Something like that just doesn’t happen with analog signals. (I’m basing this on my experience with terrestrial digital broadcasting – could be totally wrong for HDMI connection but I doubt it.)
I would guess that how sudden that transition is has something to do with the error correction and the codec of the signal. How many wrong bits can the error correction reconstruct? And, as soon as the wrong bits get past the error correction, how many wrong bits can the decoder handle and still reconstruct a image (albeit one with artifacts)? It would certainly be interesting to know how that problem was solved for HDMI connections. If you know the maximum bit error rates for your cables figuring out which are the right ones should be easy, given enough testing :)
[+] [-] mseebach|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blackguardx|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lmkg|16 years ago|reply
I'm not an electrical engineer so I don't know what the threshold of perfection is, but if the consumer reports can't tell the fancy cable apart from the Radio Shack equivalent of two-buck chuck, I'm not going to worry about it.
On an unrelated note: this is a listing on amazon for 6 feet of digital audio cable for over a thousand dollars. Read the comments. Comic gold. http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/dp/B0...
[+] [-] lkjhgvbnm|16 years ago|reply
True that's why I reject TVs with a video chipset, I want a TV and a DVD player that uses valves for the video processing.
I wonder how big an MPEG-2 decoder in valves would be?
[+] [-] lurkinggrue|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] GrandMasterBirt|16 years ago|reply
Analog is different. The signal is itself the image, so a poor signal = poor image.
MAYBE if you have a projector projecting onto a movie theater screen will a better HDMI cable matter... maybe? because of bandwidth limitations if the sender is smart enough it might send info at a lower resolution. Other than that I can't see theoretically why a good HDMI cable will help.
Also on my 42'' tv, I've yet to be shown a performance improvement when connecting my XBOX 360 via component or hdmi. It looks identical. And if HDMI is better than component, then I don't see a reason why you would ever need a good HDMI cable unless you are a movie theater and the theoretical problem does exist.
Edit regarding bit errors... Lets assume that the cable you bought is a good quality cable. By good quality I mean most seem to be shielded and not cut and no shorts. This is a reasonable expectation. I've yet to see an argument for buying more expensive super gold plated uber network cables. Hey why is your network cable that handles SO MUCH DATA not gold plated shielded etc.?
[+] [-] andrewcaito|16 years ago|reply
I bought some cables from http://www.bluejeanscable.com/ a few months later. I needed to make a few longer than normal runs, and they had reasonable prices and were direct about the capabilities of their different products outside of spec.
[+] [-] gridspy|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mansr|16 years ago|reply
The important thing, and the central argument of that article, is that with a digital link, once there are no bit errors, no further improvements can be made, and even a cheap cable is plenty good enough for a short HDMI connection. Gold-plated connectors are still a good idea. Corrosion is as much of a problem there as anywhere.
Should you use a truly awful cable, and those do exist, you will probably notice an occasional "spark" on the display.
[+] [-] keefe|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brown9-2|16 years ago|reply
Perhaps some people will respond better to the same information in this format as opposed to pure lines of text.
[+] [-] gstar|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cake|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edd|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerf|16 years ago|reply
But what happens next? They ship their TV to Best Buy, who quickly notices the TV ships with an HDMI cable, "robbing" them of the chance to sell a Monster cable. Or worse, the customer might still buy one, get them both home, notice there's no difference (or at least no $400 difference) and return the Monster cable. Ack! That's a $100+ profit opportunity that Samsung is costing them. How will Best Buy make up for it? They're going to jack the price of the Samsung TV up by some fraction of the $138 that they can no longer make. Not necessarily the whole amount, it would be prorated based on the average rate of Monster purchase; Best Buy has its own problems if it jacks the price of a TV up as it is a competitive market for them, too!
In fact, it is so competitive that it is not hard to imagine that Best Buy will discover they can't effectively sell that TV for ~$50 more (guessing) and just plain take it off the market. I am not saying this is inevitable, just that it is definitely a very possible outcome. If they don't, the very-price-sensitive American consumers will certainly notice the price difference in sufficient numbers to reduce sales of that TV.
So, how does this feed back to Samsung? They put in an HDMI cable, and either their retails sales drop, or Best Buy even entirely drops their TV.
So, whose fault is this? Money grubbing Samsung? Money grubbing Best Buy? Well, the capitalistic model tends to assume that the customer is informed, and when the customer is not informed, they can be scammed. Here, the customers are not informed. So I split the blame between Monster, who are aggressively lying to customers, and the customer base itself. (Best Buy to some extent here too, for the same reasons as Monster.) Not one, not the other, both. Too many audio/videophiles will aggressively defend their purchase of expensive cables, even after it is explained that their justification is technical gibberish, and as the market leaders they deserve some of the blame.
The other reason I blame this is that if you resolve the problem that a critical mass of customers actually believes expensive cables work, the problems go away. Best Buy raises the prices of all TVs a bit to make up the profit margin, as do all similar retailers. (Most are working on single-digit % profit margins from the top corporate POV, so if they lose something like the Monster cable they will need to make it up elsewhere.) Customers don't even notice because TVs continue to work like computers with constant price drops, so it manifests as a brief interruption in otherwise-falling prices rather than a huge, visible increase. Samsung starts sticking cheap-but-effective cables in, and instead of being punished by the retailers, customers reward them with happy thoughts about good service and a good out-of-box experience (which are hard to quantify but certainly produce bankable assets in the end).
The other option: When buying a TV through a different channel where there isn't a good Monster upsell opportunity, perhaps something like Amazon (which still has the upsell opportunity in some sense, but will present customers with many 1-star reviews and give them a chance to become informed properly), ship an HDMI cable then.
Second order effects, second order effects, second order effects. Always think second order effects when thinking about economics. It's never the simple story, the economic entities react to each other.
[+] [-] Retric|16 years ago|reply
B) It costs them money.
C) It helps suport big box retail.
[+] [-] ciupicri|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matclayton|16 years ago|reply
There is only one "good" (dubious) reason to by a really expensive cable, and that is for range. There is a performance differences between the cheap and gold cables, due to the different conductivities. However over short distance this isn't observable, as the receiver will correctly interpret the digital signal even though there is no noise on the line, this is the beauty of digital signals. It is there or it isn't, and with decent ECC on the line, which I'm assuming HDMI has, even with a fair bit of degradation it wont be an issue.
However as you extend the cable the signal with degrade at a different rate depending on the quality of the cable, and eventually you will reach a distance where the digital signal even with ECC is lost, and it will no longer work. With a higher quality cable this range is greater, (we are talking of ranges in the 10's -> 100's of meters), certainly no issue for a normal TV setup, and you would have to question why you even needed such a long cable to start with, move your source/receiver closer to each other.
The only other factor which might show up is the sensitivity and power of the transceivers, and you might find a cable of 100m works on some gear and not on others, but if you do you really are using the wrong tool for the job, go buy a optical repeater :)
I'm guessing on distances here, but you get the idea, I use to work in high frequency data transmission systems, and have no idea of the detailed specs of HDMI but should give you an idea.
[+] [-] singer|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joezydeco|16 years ago|reply
It's all about the psychology of needing it now instead of being able to wait 4 more days.
[+] [-] Frazzydee|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smackfu|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pcarmichael|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JshWright|16 years ago|reply
$9.99, shipped.
[+] [-] brown9-2|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corysama|16 years ago|reply
Either way: monoprice.com
[+] [-] ck2|16 years ago|reply
It's not aimed at people who actually look at price tags.
[+] [-] ShabbyDoo|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coverband|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carterschonwald|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mawhidby|16 years ago|reply
Here's a link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002L5R78/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp...
[+] [-] teeja|16 years ago|reply
Unless a reasonable-length cable is damaged or malconstructed in such a way that it distorts transmitted waveforms so much that they're not recoverable, any reasonable conductor will work. This stuff isn't rocket science since about a year after RS232 was invented.
[+] [-] Groxx|16 years ago|reply
Typically, you can find almost any kind of cable for $5-$10, some of the common ones for less. I think my 25-foot flat ethernet cable came in at a whopping $12, but it's been the most durable I've owned.
They've also got rational pants, which my wife in particular likes.
[+] [-] vital101|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thmz|16 years ago|reply
I also like high quality audio. But most of the time just a good thick electric copper cable will do the job. Also saves you a lot of $.
[+] [-] samlittlewood|16 years ago|reply
http://www.zerogain.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1464