R4N SS

iTrader: (6)

i agree with you there - but we all reach that point with our cars but ignore it and carry on

TIFF

DanRSturbo

I got mine off ebuyer, 4 times thicker then the virgin supplied HDMI one and cost a tenner, job done.

Adrian

PS3, XBox & Virgin HD all running on Tesco cheapies. Never had an issue.

zetec-Sam

iTrader: (2)

Do you have the ability to read?

SS1

iTrader: (3)

The Gold plated connectors are not worth paying extra for as all the scart sockets I have never seen on domestic equipment are nickel plated anyway, so what is the point?

cjwood555

http://cpc.farnell.com/kramer/c-hdmi...tt=kramer+0.9m - these are what I supply by default

Chris

R4N SS

iTrader: (6)

yes i can read perfectly well thanks - doesnt mean i have to agree with whatever i read tho

cjwood555

With high speed digital signals it's more a case of the cable being 'correct' than 'good'. Look at CAT5/6 cables - nothing fancy about them in the slightest, but a well engineered specification means they peform as necessary.

Rab

Didn't realise this would create so much fucking debate But, as thrush said, all I need is a cable to connect my sky box to my new telly. Half a metre would do it I'll buy a cheap one and be done with it

DanRSturbo

Have a look here : http://www.ebuyer.com/search?sort=pr...imit=50&page=1

~nomad~

iTrader: (4)

as long as there are idiots out there thinking a gold plated terminal will make a difference over a 1 metre run, I am happy.

Oranoco

Especially as silver is a better conductor anyway. Just doesn't look as flash so mugs won't buy it

~nomad~

iTrader: (4)

I like mugs, mugs make me money on gold plated hdmi cables

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

EXACTLY the point I was going to pick up one!

Ran, please tell me what you think is so good about gold connectors? Cos they mean FUCK ALL.

Back in the day, gold connectors came out as they are a better conductor of electrical (read, analogue) signals than the typical tin and nickel found on most cables.

But that doesn't apply anymore and here's why

In order to make use of gold plated terminals, ALL the connections need to be gold plated. That means your Sky box (for example) needs to have a gold plated scart socket, your scart cable needs gold plated terminals at both ends, and your TV needs one too. If any of the above have tin/nickel, then there's no point having anything else with gold plated terminals. Nickel to nickel conducts better than nickel to gold.

Secondly, it doesn't transfer to digital cables. Think of HDMI as the video equivilent of USB. It doesn't need gold plated terminals to make it better. It either works or it doesn't. How many gold plated USB cables do you see?

So gold plated terminals are for mugs, unless you are talking about analogue cables, mainly audio, and ALL your connections are gold plated.

The only reason HDMI cables are sold with gold terminals is cos mugs will buy them thinking they are better!

Next myth - sorry, you cannot "see" a difference between two different digital transfer cables. Not over a standard 1-5m run you can't. I don't give a fuck who you are, where you work or what you claim to be an expert in, you can't. People I see saying "I bought a £50 HDMI and it my TV is so much better than the £5 one I had" are people who have convinced themselves they can see it to justify to themselves why they bought it.

You cannot improve the visual quality of a 1 or a 0 by buying a more expensive cable. That 1, or 0, is either going to get to it's destination intact, or it's not. And if it doesn't get there intact, then you won't get a picture.

It's the same reason that with todays digital TV signals, be it sky, freeview, whatever, if the signal is getting through, you get a picture. If the signal breaks up, you don't get a WORSE picture, you just lose it full stop. Thats why you get TV programs juddering or stuttering - they are LOSING bits of information the TV/box is trying to decode. Back in the day with analogue TV, if you had poor reception, you got a fuzzy picture or "snow" or buzzy noise. You don't get that now. You either have a picture, or you don't.

Digital is VERY easy to understand in that respect.

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

Just to add actually thinking about it (can't be arsed to edit )

What always made me laugh about "gold plated terminals" was that inside the casing, behind the flash looking old plated terminal, was a shit load of nickel solder

So yes, whilst gold to gold = good conduction, the cable is made from copper and nickel anyway

And the difference between gold to gold as opposed to nickel to nickel was negligible anyway. The main difference was that over time, nickel oxidizes faster than gold is all

cjwood555

Just a small point or two:

1) Solder = tin + lead, not nickel. Posh cables often use solder incorporating a small percentage of silver. However, the idea of a good solder joint is that there should be good contact between conductors and the solder is just used as a conductive glue - solder shouldn't be used as the conductor.

2) HDMI cables are *mostly* (not all) crimped, rather than soldered.

3) Another reason for using gold-plating is that it is harder wearing than nickel-plating and so more appropriate for repetitive mating cycles, which tends not to be an issue in the home

4) But no, it's not necessary. However, most cables above a tenner will use gold plated connectors anyway so - as they say - meh!

Whatever - it seems that most of us are agreed that over short runs a cheap cable will suffice, and that over longer runs a well engineered cable (not a bling one) is preferable.

Chris

GAZ W

Would i be able to tell the difference on my latest set up?

Rab

zetec-Sam

iTrader: (2)

You need one with gold plated connectors, costing upwards of £100 otherwise the picture will be crap

cjwood555

Don't forget your screened mains cable with a 180-degree plug made from unobtanium with a snake oil jacket.

Jim Galbally

right guys, jim here, i think you've ALL missed a MASSIVE point when discussing this particular issue

right, digital TV signals are ENCODED. that means that the information in the picture is taken and transfered into a digital format (ie 0s and 1s). This can then be DECODED on the other end. also in the case of 99% of CODECS (COder-DEcoder) also compresses the infrmation to reduce file size. ie an uncompressed DVD movie would be about 500GB, a MPEG2 compressed DVD movie is <5GB

here's a wiki article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codec

the codec used by most HD stuff is called H.264 (aka MPEG4)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC

Now one of the very clever features of this is that it can detect and compensate for missing information in the data stream.

imagine this, your nice shiny new blueray has a tiny tiny scratch on it and this has made 3 bits (the 0s and 1s) unreadable. now would you like it if the blueray refused to play or crashed at this point? no you wouldnt. so what the decoder can do is detect this error and compensate for it in some way. this will likely cause a visual artifact of some description in the picture/audio. If this is only a small error you will likely not notice it.

now, if the data stream is very corrupt (think FreeView with a poor signal) then the chances are it wont be able to compensate so you get a rather bad picture.

now think about this, the cable you are using has to carry this digital signal. if it is able to deliver the signal with no data loss then the picture will be perfect.

if it is able to deliver the signal with minimal data loss the picture will probably be almost perfect and un-noticeable to the human eye (it will not be blurry etc. like analog it will simply have artifacts)

if the cable is unable to deliver a good signal then the picture will contain a lot of artifacts, probably noticeable to the human eye OR worse case not display the picture at all.

so, discussion of "it will either work or it wont" is not true, you are assiming that in order to display the picture it requires a 100% un-corrupt datastream.

now i have no idea on the quality, runlenghts etc. of HDMI cables so cannot comment on what is good and what is bad or apply any of the above knowledge to a real world situation with any authority, but the above many be enough to allow those iof you who THINK they know what theyre talking about to go "aaah yes, didnt think about that"

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

Good to see you back Jimbob - haven't spoke to you in ages! Gone are the days when I used to ring you up asking how to format Win98

cjwood555

Fair point about error correction, but the data transmitted over a HDMI/DVI/HD-SDI link is not compressed - yes, the media is compressed, but it is decoded in the player and sent at full data rate over the hd link.

It is, however, encrypted. And the big problem with HDMI and DVI cables is that HDCP (the encyrption mechanism) is quite fragile - it is a single-ended line, rather than balanced/differential like the data lines. As soon as the that HDCP signal is corrupted, the error correction doesn't even come into it because the receiving device doesn't have the correct key to decrypt the data, so just receives garbage.

HTH
Chris

cjwood555

(the reason cat5/6 converters work well is because they convert all the signals to balanced lines and so they become much more resilient to noise)

Jim Galbally

cjwood, when you say its not compressed i take it your mean compressed on the fly yes?

the data stream itself is ofcourse compressed as the original material is compressed.

also my understanding of HDCP and it's blueray equivalent is that is is still parity based and resilient to noise

cjwood555

The media is compressed, but HDMI and DVI are full resolution, full data rate links. The data transmitted over them is uncompressed. The decompression/decoding is done by the player. The TV receives a full res signal.

Parity just enables detection of errors - the packet must then be re-transmitted to attempt receive it intact. Which is fine for the odd error due random spikes of noise from the fridge etc.... but if your cable is simply too long for the line driver to sufficiently overcome the noise floor and cable RC then every packet (or at least a lot of them depending on severity of the problem) will be corrupted and hence you either get 'no signal' (actually meaning 'couldn't handshake properly') or a blocky/intermittent picture.

HTH
Chris

Rab

This is all VERY interesting. But do I need a fancy cable or not.... My TV gets delivered tomorrow, so kinda need to know ASAP...

R4N SS

iTrader: (6)

Rab it all comes down to how bothered you are about your home cinema mate.

If not that bothered go for a cheapy - if you are really bothered then get a decent one IMO

zetec-Sam

iTrader: (2)

NO!

It's Czech Mate

I think the main reason people use gold connectors, certainly from what i know from my hifi research/own system, is that gold is inert and wont react with anything. Therfore gold connectors dont corrode and degrade over time. I dont think they transmit analogue signal better than silver/nickel etc.

As for the OP, if you dont have a mega quality home cinema set up then you dont need a fancy cable.

cjwood555

Rab - I've got a Philips hdmi lead here which was £30 new, has been used one for about a week and is currently spare - this one. Looks a bit nicer than the cheapo ones and works fine. If you want it your welcome to it for £15 posted?

Otherwise, if you're not worried about the aesthetics, as mentioned before just get a cheap one for the short run

I posted a link to the ones I use further up this page. Sadly, if you just order one, CPC charge a £6 handling fee, so not necessarily the best choice.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/HDMI-v1-3-Gold...item5192bb8535 - is the same cable (by the look of it) as I've used previously. They're fine so long as you dont put too much strain on the connector.

(ps for the mods - spare hdmi is a personal spare, not anything to do with my company!)