[Wump]

Hello.

Sorry for the basic question! Bit new to all this stuff as just got new TV after ditching 25yr old TV and terrestrial 4 channels!

I have just got a Panasonic G10 plasma and panny cinema system with blu ray player. Can anyone recommend a good HDMI cable to use from the blu ray player to my TV please, and where to buy?

PS: I will shortly be wall mounting the TV so the cable will probably be 'bundelled' in some wall trunking with alot of other cables.

Many thanks indeed for your help!

[Sanders79]

Hehe! Be ready for lots of people either saying you do/don't have to worry about what sort of HDMI cable you buy!

Check out Mark Grant cables. His HDMI cables aren't "cheap" (you can get a HDMI cable for a couple of quid at Tesco) but they are extremely well made, and I am a fan.

[HDCriticalFan]

Originally Posted by Wump

Can anyone recommend a good HDMI cable to use from the blu ray player to my TV please, and where to buy?

I use the free one that came with Sky+HD and I bought an additional one from eBay (for about £2.50).

There is no need to pay "serious money" for digital cables to get quality ... they either work or they don't.

For "eBay money" if a cable doesn't work I would just buy another.





Regards

[freesat99]

I'm surprised that you haven't had more replies.

Without going into detail about the technical details of HDMI, it uses high-speed serial digital data transmission. The transmission over the cable is for sure analogue (voltages), however the modulation is digital. This has the advantage that the signal can suffer degredation and the receiver will still be able to pick out the digital data with 100% copy. In fact there are some chips which can recover degraded HDMI signals which to the human eye look completely unrecoverable. Over a few metres any cable (cheap or expensive) will hardly degrade the signal (note: there are ways to measure this but the equipment is very expensive).

Freeview uses a digital modulation and it is pretty clear when data is being lost. There is no subtle change to the picture, just massive freezes and corrupted macrocells. I don't know what happens with a bad HDMI cable, but I suspect there will be no picture and/or sound whatsoever.

In my opinion use the cheapest most convenient cable you can find.

I have just this week bought a LCD and Blu-ray. I popped into Tesco and paid £7 (or so) for a cable (a tad on the expensive side for me - but I am a tight b*gg*r!). Works perfectly. Just today I finally received in the post a 2m HDMI cable (gold plated - not that it makes a difference) bought off Ebay for £2.45 including postage. Just tried it on the Blu-ray and no suprise it work perfectly.

Why pay a tenner, why pay £25, only if you want you cable to *look* nice, or perhaps you want it to have a nice label to show your friends. I read on another website that cheap cables fall apart after a few years. Ha ha. What BS. I have just unplugged plenty of cheap cables from my old setup and they are all OK after over 10 years of use. In fact the cheap HDMI cable looks remarkably well made! I might buy another to cut it open just to see.

My opinion is that expensive (you decide what is expensive) HDMI cables are just a way to rip-off(*) mugs. Technically there is no way that a £500 HDMI cable can perform any better than my £2.45 jobby, but it will no doubt look nicer.

(*) It's a bug bear of mine. Go into a high street dealer and pay £20-£25 for a USB cable or buy one from the local computer faire for £2.

--freesat99

[ags1983]

Heres a good read for ya.
Maybe this will help people understand HDMI cables... - PlayStation®3 General - PlayStation.com Forums

I know its on a ps3 forum but the principal is all the same.

[Wump]

Thanks read alot about them but when i said quality i was refering to the connection part of the cable, sorry should have made that clear.

[topgazza]

Tesco

[Joe Fernand]

Hello all

Wump - plenty of options available from AVForums assured advertises -

HDMI has no error correction and some pretty tight tolerances to try and deal with - on a short run of cable most cables will handle 1080p (the highest bandwidth signal you can throw at it today) and some may even survive with next gen kit when 4K2K arrives.

On longer runs you need a cable that wont introduce enough signal drop to cause the Sync device (Display, AV Amp etc) to not be able to lock to or decode the incoming signal.

You don't need to spend a fortune to get a short HDMI cable - go with a CAT2 High Speed cable if you want future compatibility; that way you'll still be OK when you next update your system

freesat99 - I'll wager that none of your 10 Yr old cables include a 19 pin, hand soldered, double sided connector block that's only 10mm wide; the cheap stuff is woeful and can and does fall to bits in the HDMI world.

Joe