HDMI cable

Anyone know anything about hdmi cable lol? I know sounds funny but are there better hdmi cables then others. Google products( link) has all these different spec'd ones. I have a 42 inch LCD sony Bravio I want to hook up an acer 3820tg to with hdmi cable.

I dont want a bad cable frying my laptop or tv, some one recommend one please?

edit:

I finally got an hdmi cable from menards of all places. I checked both radio shack and officemax, they wanted 40-50 dollars for one. The one I got at menards costs me 6 bux. I used my new Lenovo Ideapad Y460 and connected it to the sony bravio and played an mmorpg on battery power. It works extreamly well, the battery almost gives it more power it seems but its definitely not hindered in any way. I gamed for nearly 2 hours this way.

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They're a`ll the same. Just get em from monoprice. 1.3a

 

How about hooking up an acer 3820tg to a 42 inch lcd sony bravio, that going to work out? Are laptops designed to handle that type of stress while gaming etc...

 

As far as your computer is concerned, there is no difference between a 15" and a 50" screen.

 

Yah Iv read that, Ill post a video when I do it here to show everyone.

 

That's the highest Monoprice.com currently sell, but 1.4 has supplanted 1.3, and is now the current state-of-the-art. Not that there's much utilization at those limits though.

 

Here is what I know: Buy any computer or A/V cable you ever need from Monoprice. If you pay more than $6-$10 for an HDMI cable, you're getting ripped off.

There is a very good reason why every forum thread on the entire internet that asks about cables will have someone mention Monoprice. They sell very high quality cables for very low prices.

As Trottel mentioned, there is no difference between a 15" monitor and a 42" HDTV. Your laptop will not fry or get damaged because it's working too hard when connected to a 42" monitor.

I actually think that Monoprice sells HDMI v1.4 cables, like this one here. That cable supports the higher bandwidth of 4K x 2K resolutions in the HDMI v1.4 spec.

But regardless, most people do not need HDMI 1.4. If you do not need HDMI v1.4, then I say you buy an inexpensive $6 HDMI cable from Monoprice today. And in the future, if you need HDMI 1.4, then you buy another $6 cable from Monoprice that supports 1.4 after they become available. Buying two cables in that manner is going to be far more cost effective than spending $60 on an HDMI 1.4 cable today.

 

The more expensive cables are thicker, but as far as I can tell on my 47 inch TV there is absolutely no difference in the video quality between the thick cables and the thinner $6 cables.

 

Monoprice sells cables of all thicknesses, from 28AWG to 22AWG, to flat cables, to cables with ferrite cores on them. Anyone who has ever bought from Monoprice will tell you that you absolutely do not sacrifice build quality when you buy a $6 cable from them.

People do not buy products based on quality. People buy products based on the perception of quality. And companies like Monster Cable and Bose are successful because they are experts at creating perceived quality. The moment a person recognizes this deception is the moment they become a Monoprice customer for life.

 

It's a digital signal. If your devices don't require HDMI1.4, you will see no difference (hint: the only reasons to need HDMI1.4 are 3D over HDMI, ethernet over HDMI, Audio Return Channel, or 4k x 2k resolution support. So, basically nothing)

 

3D is prob the main thing 1.4 spec is used for, and its a pretty niche market but it is expanding.

Though I wonder if the specs are simply tested limits and certifications for the cable, I would not be surprised if a 1.3 cable handles the same load as a 1.4 cable even if its not rated for it unless there really is some physical difference in the cable (I am unaware of any, but have not actually looked it up)

 

I do not know if this is the right place to say this, but I've hooked my Qosmio to my 52" Full HD TV (Samsung, LCD). I've started up COD BO, and @ 1920x1080, maxed out I were able to play it smooth as I do @ 1440x900. I wonder if it is my 9800M GTX or what...

 

If by smooth you mean 20fps and by maxed out you mean 0x AA.

But really Black Ops is not a very graphically demanding game though. It's nothing compared to many others.

 

No, it was actually @ 40-50 FPS! I can post screenshot of my settings when I get home for you

 

I would believe that.

You need to remember that these multi-platform games are developed on DirectX9 game engines that run on Xbox360 hardware, which is a 5-year old platform with a custom 500Mhz ATI GPU designed around the time when the nVidia GeForce 6800 and ATI x800 cards were top-of-the-line.

It does not surprise me at all that you'd be able to get 40fps - 50fps at 1920x1080 on a 9800M GTX

 

Well well, I do not know about that but it shocked me to be clear..
However, here is screenshot for you who is intrested!

 

They are all the same.

Like someone already pointed out, a digital signal (as opposed to an analog signal) is not medium dependent. This means, basically, that the only way a cable would "not work" is if its shorted out.

 

That's not entirely true. You see, just because the signal "passage" is not dependent on the cable quality, it does not mean all cables are the same.

Like any cable construction the material (i.e. copper/gold etc.) from which it's made of--as well as how it's put together--does effect at what point that signal fails to register. Additionally, a better constructed cable will last a lot longer. Luckily, these improvements only marginally increase the price.

 

If you are really depending on a "high quality" cable to transmit data compared to a "low quality" one, you have much bigger fish to fry with regards to your setup.

And last time I checked, cables don't really have an expiration date. Whether it is the cheapest cable you can find or the biggest ripoff cable you can find, you can expect both to last indefinitely.

Go tell that to Monster Cable.

 

I take care to make sure my threads are worded succinctly; nevertheless, you have to read them without bias:

If I offer you two extension cords and one is heavy duty, which would you prefer to use to plug in a space heater? If you can see that there's a difference between these two, then you can understand the point of my thread.

 

I think you're talking about a hypothetical situation where you are comparing an HDMI cable that is thick as a cigar, and an HDMI cable that is thin as a piece of dental floss. And I would agree that yes, when you have cables that are on those different extremes of thickness, there absolutely is a difference.

However, I think Trottel is saying that the cables discussed in this thread (Monster cable, Monoprice cables) are both in the "thick as a cigar" category, and that they should both perform identically. But perhaps more importantly, that a Monster-branded cable is 10x the price of a Monoprice cable, but absolutely does not come even close to performing 10x as well.

I think that you would agree that a thick, well-built cable is not very expensive to make, and should not cost a lot. And I would also think that you would agree that Monoprice fits all of those criteria very well.

 

If that's the case, he over analyzed my point.

I admitted as much in a previous post.

 

But this is totally different. This is an example where there is a difference. Electric space heaters can pull thousands of watts so you want a thicker cable that better handles the current demands of the application. With HDMI cables though, we are going to send the same kind of signal all the time, and a cheap one does that just as well as a thick one. Now there are times when a thicker better and shielded cable can be useful such as when we are talking long distances and/or lots of EM interference. But in any application where a cheap cable works just fine, like 99% of time, there is no point in purchasing a cable of higher caliber.

 

I was thinking of hooking up my desktop to the new 55" Bravia we just got! I think it would look great, I'll just hijack the cable boxes HDMI cable.

 

Did you go for the Sony due to prior research, or did the sales guy (or girl) nudge you towards it? Remember that any time you are buying stuff like that, the sales guy might make a big bonus for selling a certain TV. My brother makes a 1% commission on all products he sells, but a large portion of his paycheck comes from manufacturer incentives you will never know about. If you are looking at TV's, and the sales guy stands to make 1% off of one, and 1% plus $200 off of another, which one do you think is going to sell better?

 

It was a Black Friday deal, $999 for a Sony Bravia 55" 1080 120HZ LCD. Not the latest and greatest in TV tech but more than enough for us (we were using a 12-year old rear projection until it broke a few days ago!).

All I know is, the TV cost $200-$400 elsewhere including Best Buy and the on the internet, so it wasn't a bad deal by any means.

 

I'm pretty sure your brother would agree that knowing the sales person makes a [manufacturer's] profit is no reason not to buy a product.

 

I got an hdmi cable and hooked up my laptop to the tv, it worked well, I posted a video on my starting post. You can see it here too.

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Hi @jeffreybaks
If you want High Quality HDMI Cable you have to buy some very good ones on ebay look for High Purity Tined Cables !
Make sure the cable is latest 1.3 a.b.c
For your laptop it's enought 1.3


I would buy Sony HDMI this one : Sony PS3 HDMI Cable DLC-HD20HF Flat High Speed 2 M 6"6 on eBay (end time 18-Jan-11 17:42:12 GMT)

 

HDMI uses digital signal so quality shouldnt be affected. Just make sure you get a cable with ferrite beads near the ends to reduce EMI and RFI interferences from other electronics and wiring.

I spent $8 on a cable 2 years ago, i still use it this day.

 

QFT. You shouldn't spend more than $10 on a cable unless it's 15' or more. Monoprice.com is your friend

 

eem not sure about that --- >shouldnt be affected it may be ..
it is digital but not optical .. optical is lossless ...
But if you have 10m HDMI cable you need some boosters in signal .
The image and audio may skipping or loose some pixels ..

 

HDMI doesn't have variable bandwidth. You don't skip or "loose" (lose) pixels. You either have a connection, or you don't. The picture is either there, or not.

Do ethernet cables also randomly degrade your signal quality and need boosters? Why would HDMI? It's pure superstition to say that HDMI needs boosters or needs anything special.

 

You should totally get a wireless mouse, and keyboard so you don't have your laptop screen in the way.

 

Optical isn't lossless, and uses a digital format just like (digital) electrical signals. Now while it is true that signal attenuation can cause loss of signal (which could result in skipping or blinking), that depends largely on the cable quality, and for most HDMI cables any length under 5 meters is not going to have a problem. If you want a higher length (usually up to 15 meters) get a higher quality cable. It's really only past that that you would typically need an extender/booster, and seriously, why do you need a cable that long in the first place?

 

ya im big into wireles, Im getting a wireless roccat pyra mouse and a wireless headset logitech g930. The keyboard would be nice to have to but I really like to use the laptops keyboard to game with.

 

man what you saying is OPTICAL ! you need more information

Do ethernet cables also randomly degrade your signal quality and need boosters?

maan oh dear where do you live??
the whole internet is wired with fibre optic cables !! that why they dont need any boosters its just light and when it comes to exchange terminals there is optical signal converted to digital coaxial ..
OMG you dont know much about this ..

BUt HDMI is Digital but NOT Optical so longer cable you have more loss you generating that is normal everybody knows this .. dont know why you been so negative
here is cable HDMI vith integrated booster because cable is so long it needs boost signal ..
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/601492-REG/Gefen_EXT_HDMISB_50_50_HDMI_Super_Booster.html

 

S/PDIF - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Digital Optical Signal IS lossless!
thats my business if i want 1metre cable or 1km
http://www.cables2u.co.uk/hdmi-signal-booster-p-742.html

 

Okay ill give this a crack,

Your talking about signal attenuation of a cable medium, thats a different kind of loss of quality. Also Toslink is only good for 6metres, after that its signal loss. No cable is lossless, even fibre optics (light) will experience loss at long distances, or else it would be breaking the laws of physics.

A digital signal is either 0's or 1's, ON or OFF, picture is either there or not.

If you have a very long cable, it will be subjected to signal attenuation. Now if you run a digital signal (0's or 1's) through it, the receiver chipset will have a hard time telling if a weak packet is a 0 or a 1 so it will drop it instead.

A dropped digital packet will show up on your TV as no picture at all, random blank lines or sparkling. It will not affect the actual picture quality because its either there or its not.

Analog on the other hand can have variable signals, which can lead to distortion. eg:



My point earlier was, a $8 cables quality look the same as a $200 cable as long as its getting a clean digital signal. If hdmi used an analog signal, noise/interference will affect the quality.

 

nope most of the net still runs on copper, there is more optic used in europe and S.K. then the USA and Canada
If FO is losless please explain why I have seen the atlantic FO backbone from Newfoundland to the UK and it posesses boosters ( look up EDFA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDFA )

and have installed EDFA's fora couple of the telco's around here when they were in a bind?

 

Yes here in Australia, we now have FTTH (Fibre to the home) and it requires a booster every 100-200kms. We have lots of bushland

 

I think this debate is over two separate (but related) issues:

One having to do with signal transmission strength, and it's medium, while the other has to do with data codecs. Although I agree the data transmission via HDMI will "lose the signal" strength over distance, the codec will not change. Nevertheless, specifying the cause precisely will not change it's end results. The nature of the loss, depends on your perspective, determining a solution, and how precise you want/need it to be.

Conversely, optical transmissions can have extremely long transmission lines without loss in signal because it uses light; and is why it's used in intercontinental transmissions.

 

Exactly. As long as the devices on either end of the HDMI cable can lock onto the same signal, there will be no loss of quality.

The EXACT same thing happens with optical connections. It's just that it uses light instead of electrons as the analog signal carrier. It's simply the different mediums and design that determines how the signal attenuation happens and how much it stops functioning.

HDMI is a digital, lossless protocol. A connection over a 3' cable will be identical to a connection over a 50' cable, as long as the connection is made.

 

? The S/PDIF link makes no mention of lossless, and in fact, supports my position down in the limitations section, where it notes that TOSLINK cables have high light-signal attenuation that limits their effective range to about 6.1 meters or so. If you were, in fact, referring to the transmission algorithm, as separate from the transmission medium, then that's a completely separate topic. Even with a lossless algorithm, if the transmission is interrupted (say, by signal attenuation) then you will get dropouts and missed notes just like you would get by an interrupted transmission using almost any other algorithm. The only way to avoid that would be redundant transmission protocols, and none of that has anything to do with the distance required (apart from longer distances making the possibility of loss greater).

 

You're absolutely right Judicator. I was reading up on head-fi.org about spdif and people could notice a loss in quality with it, even though it still "worked."

 

yeah i said in first place that HDMI loosing signal strength by cable length then somebody above started saying no no and no
then it started talk about optical digital .. etc ..
I experienced that hdmi loos
its a big topic about digital quality ...
for end nnormal users its completely enough ..
I know when you study something on web and then you say it but I working with it every day

 

I really dont belive that ..
If you loose optical digital quality then it will drop completely because if light gets distorted from some reason .. its not light up ..

But HDMI if you loosing signal you can see for example : picture freezing distorting image audio skipping but this is very very rare all HDMI cables are NOW very good quality these days , so no loss of signal is not made and people using short cables at homes anyway
I know that some people wiring miles of HDMI cables in their walls extensions..

PS : I need mention here that Optical Digital Cables are two types
Those cheap ones are made with plastic fibre that you can see now in home shops with coloured lights and these are low quality
But fiber made with glass makes signal 99.8% quality

 

My fiber-optic knowledge is a bit rusty (mostly from 5-10 years back), but wouldn't that depend more on how much of it is getting through? Back then, if you put in a kink of greater than about 60 degrees or so in the cable, you'd lose some, but not all of the signal (due to the nature of reflection/refraction within the cable), and at that point, you'd be getting a partial signal; some of the data would be getting through, but not all of it.