HDMI....Does Price Matter

C

cheryl138

Guest
:hiya:

My father in law has bought a Toshiba 32" lcd from comet:devil:
and theyve told him to get the Monster hdmi cable from them for £90
Basically does anyone know if he really needs to spend so much as i have read that you cant tell the difference between a cheap and an expensive one !!!!!!!!

Plus is hdmi what he should go for ?

His eqpt is listed below

Toshiba 32wlt58 lcd
Toshiba dvd
Sky (normal)

Would appreciate any help
 
If the dvd player has an HDMI ouput then thats the best connection. I believe you will see better images from better cables but £90 is a bit steep.
 
Hes also on about canceling sky as the tv has built in free view,if he does this i presume a decent quality scart would do as he has no amp or receiver to take audio from component !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Not quite sure why cancelling Sky and using the TV's built in Freeview tuner would require him to require a Scart cable!! ????
 
Ignore the Comet salesman. There's nothing wrong with Monster cables, but they are way overpriced on the high street. Monster cables are the new extended warranty scam, huge mark-up for no real benefit.

What is he using currently, to connect the DVD to his old TV?
 
...or just get a £5 Ebuyer job here: http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/prod...VhcmNoUmVzdWx0cw==&cat_uid=24&subcat_uid=1491

As long as it works (and I've bought and used enough of the Ebuyer ones to be quite sure it will) then the output will be absolutely identical to a £30, £40 or even £90 load of monster snake oil. Anyone that sees a "difference", other than the obvious sparklies/dropouts with a faulty cable, are deluding themselves.

It's only when you start looking at 7m+ distances that cable quality comes in to play, as HDMI/DVI is a high bandwidth, high pin count interface that is prone to signal degradation at longer lengths, causing the aforementioned artefacts to a point, past which the display simply stops receiving a signal.

5m and under, just use the cheapest you can find. Anything else is an absolute con in my opinion.


P.S. What model of Toshiba DVD player did he end up with? I wouldn't put it past the comet chumps to try flogging him a totally surplus HDMI cable...
 
I compared the £4 ebuyer 3m jobbie to a £100 one, both by blindtesting with movies and using test patterns. There's absolutely zero difference, as you'd expect - after all, it's a short cable transferring data, computers have been doing this for years. See here for a review that found the same thing:

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,121777,00.asp


Just give the money to charity and buy the cheaper one.
 
Exactly, it's a digital signal so cable quality doesn't mean bugger all. The only time you will get a bad picture is when the cable is actually broken.
 
Stompy said:
Exactly, it's a digital signal so cable quality doesn't mean bugger all. The only time you will get a bad picture is when the cable is actually broken.

...and even then nine times out of ten it'll just stop working altogether.

I was browsing through an AV mag in a newsagents a while ago and had to have a chuckle when they described a certain bloody HDMI cable as having "excellent colour rendition for the price and above average detail in darker areas" or something to that effect :rotfl: :rolleyes:
 
Surely this must be the hardest Job in the world. Trying to make up some reason why a cable should be more expensive when there is no actual difference.
 

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