What is the difference between a $17 and a $150 HDMI cable? - Page 3

I bought two 19.99 HDMI cables off NEWEGG which claimed to do 1080p.
THey worked fine for 1080i, but when I got an HDMI reciever and a PS3, the 19.99 cables were incapable of sending 1080p from the ps3 to the reciever.
After going insane trying to figure out wtf was the problem, thinking I had a bad reciever, I tried another, Yes monster cable, and it worked.
Am I saying that Monster is the only way to go? No.
Do cheaper HDMI cables work? Yeah, but not all of them.
Are all HDMI cables the same? Well, not from what I have seen, thats for sure.

There may be various reasons why your 1080p didn't go to that receiver, but the cables surely are not one of those.

 

Also note that 1080i is exactly the same as 1080p as far as transmission is concerned. No difference at all. None.

 

 

Cees

So when I say that I tried 2 identical cables, both that were 19.99, and neither of them worked, and then tried a different cable, which happened to be a monster, and then it did work, you are telling me, that the cable was not the point of failure?
Am I understanding this correctly?

I suppose I should have said that the 19.99 calbes work fine for 1080i on my directv, but did not work from ps3 to reciever.

I had a similar problem. My Pioneer player didn't like the longish run of cable and refused to do 1080p. I replaced the player with a Sony and it worked fine. Although the monster cable (which I bet was shorter) fixed the problem, your player is the one messing up, not the cable.

Actually no.
The 19.99 cable was 5-6 feet long.
The monster was 12 feet long.
Yamaha Reciever.
So nope.

So you say your 19.99 cables worked fine on your direct TV, but didn't between your PS3 and receiver.

Apparently it's not the cables then, isn't it?

 

Also, the way you tell it now, your problem seems unrelated to the difference between 1080i and 1080p. At least: there's no (solid) evidence for the assumption that the problem would be caused by that. The cables work on one connection (on which you happen to have one specific video stream - 1080i), but not on another connection (on which, as it happens, you want to use another stream - 1080p). Both applications differ in more than one aspect.

 

 

Cees

I must be missing something here........
The 19.99 cables did not work for a 1080p stream, when they are advertised to.
Tried last night from XBOX to Reciever and they didnt work on that 1080p stream either.

But they do work on 1080i.
I assume I am not compeltely stupid when I think that 1080i is using less bandwidth than 1080p, and I really have to wonder how its not a cable problem when replacing the cable makes everything work.

What am I missing here?

See, this is the impression I am getting from what you are saying.
If i take 50 cables, and try the connection from my PS3 to my reciever, and 40 of them work and 10 dont, that those 10 cables that do not work, that there is no problem with those, that there is a problem with my ps3 or my reciever even though the 40 other cables work.
If a cable is advertised to work for 1080p, and it doesnt, but it does work for 1080i, why can't I assume that the cable is OK, it just is not GOOD ENOUGH for 1080p?
Is this an invalid assumption? The cable has to have enough bandwidth for 1080p right? And if its not constructed well enough, its not going to work, right?
AM I not understanding what you are trying to say?
Edited by Its-stI - 7/24/11 at 5:00am

 

 

 

Cees claims didn't sound quite right to me, so a bit of googling reveals it depends on what we mean by "1080p". 1080i60 is the same as 1080p30. But 1080p60 will use double the bandwidth as 1080i60.

http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ISSUES/what_is_ATSC.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1080p

 

What I'm not easily finding is which output(s) the PS3 supports.

Both 1080i and 1080p transmit 30 frames per second (and those frames have the same size). If the frame is transmitted interleaved, it is thought to consist of 2 fields, so 60 of those fields are transmitted per second.

However: those fields are half the size of a full frame, of course. So the bandwidth used by by a 1080i transport is exactly the same as for a 1080p transport.

 

Of course we're now talking about "movies" with exactly the same amount of frames per second. If you send another kind of video, having more or less frames per second, the necessary bandwidth may be higher or lower, but that will be the case for both: 1080i and 1080p of course.

 

So, indeed, 1080i is NOT less bandwidth than 1080p (all other things being equal). Nor is the resolution on your screen different.

 

 

Cees

 

Ok.....then so after all this, why would a cable NOT WORK on a PS3 to Reciever at 1080p, but does work at 1080i from directv to reciever?
Am I so wrong to think that the cables are different?
One does not have the capability of the other?

The PS3 doing something different? Slightly different specs. Lots of possible reasons.

I'm glad for you that you solved your problem.

 

 

Cees

Is HDMI not HDMI on another platform?
They do not have differnt protocols I would assume.
If a cable is rated for 1080p, which makes me really believe there is a differnce from 1080i to 1080p since back in they day they advertised that their cable would work for 1080p, why would they do that if there wasnt a difference in transmission?

Yes they would.  

Without hesitation.

 

 

Cees

Sine the inception of the HDMI format, the cables have had the "bandwidth" to support full 1080p video transmission (read the first part of the answer to this FAQ).  As the spec has matured and the version numbers have grown, support for additional features is what has been added.  Nothing has changed regarding the cable's capacity for transmitting video.  The addition of ethernet, audio return channel, etc. are what has been "evolving" on the HDMI front for the past couple of years.

 

The marketplace for "cables" is so inundated with false claims, exaggerations, made up BS, and dowright LIES that you really can't trust much at all of what is written on packaging.  "Optimized for 120Hz" - complete nonsense.  "Fast", "Faster", "Faster than Faster" - hogwash.

 

When it comes to video signal transmission, if it says HDMI that's all you need to know about the cable.

 

With the Playstation as the source, ancillary features like deep color, or other expanded color space are more likely to be the culprit - as these are the kinds of things that pre-HDMI 1.3 cables are more likely to have issues with.

The implementation of hdmi in the source makes more of a difference than the cable. That was the case with my Pioneer bluray player. It didn't like to resolve the 1080p in certain situations. With the same cable, a Sony bluray player handled it just fine.

So its hit or miss if a cable is going to work?
ANd HDMI outputs are not Standardized?

The fella who installed my ht told me that hdmi is a fairly new standard and at first there are problems with any output that complex. My bluray player was over a year old. He said that a new player would work fine, and it did.

I don't know his definition of "fairly new", but I would not take any more home theater advice from that particular fella.

HDMI 1.0 was released in December 2002, going on 9 years ago. In consumer electronics that is closer to "ancient" than "fairly new."

Even the latest iteration, HDMI 1.4, was release in May 2009 - still more than two years ago. The video portion of HDMI was an extention of DVI, with which it was designed to be backwards compatible. The DVI standard was released in 1999.

I'm not buying that a slightly-more-than-a-year old Blu Ray player had any kind of HDMI compatibility issue because it was "too old" and HDMI is a "failry new" and "complex" interface.

Regards,

Joe

Blu-Ray spec is a whole other ball game.  Blu-Ray was released as an essentially incomplete product.  "Profile 1.0" players did not fully support all that was supposed to be included.  It wasn't until the Profile 2.0 players hit the market that the hardware did all it was supposed to do.  In those cases, HDMI wasn't the weak link, it was the players themselves.

 

Well, whatever caused it, the hdmi out of my Pioneer bluray player wouldn't do 1080p only 1080i patched into my projection system, which includes a hdmi switcher and a long length of cable, but my Sony works fine - flawless 1080p. The Pioneer works perfectly patched with a short hdmi cable into a monitor. The problem isn't the cabling. Maybe it didn't like the switcher.

If possible, get the distance between the source and the receiver and the display to a minimum, 2 meters or less. Then, unless you've bought a bootleg cable, almost any cable will work for even HDMI 1.4. As stated above, the gauge of the wire isn't as important as the connector. A poor connector will result in impedance mismatches and thus reflections back to the source and that can be seen in a carefully watch picture. The major players, Monster, etc., all see to take great care with their cables. If it's not possible to keep the distance to less than 2 meters, buy the cable with the clear understanding that you can return it with no questions asked. As for installers, make sure that the do a test, if possible, on the cables before the actual install. This means laying the cabling out and running everything to make sure that signals are getting to where they need to be unfettered by loss of bandwidth and reflections back down the cabling caused by poor wiring design and poor cable connection design. Only when the result is good should the installation proceed.

Here is no difference just wasting money try eBay very cheap only $3.00

There may be differences between the expensive and cheap cables, BUT part of the HDMI spec requires the transmitter and receiver to perform signal equalization. This is done so HDMI works more reliably otherwise we would have a lot more problems with using HDMI. So long story short.... Try your cheaper options first before being suckered into high dollar cables. Due to the cheap prices from places like monoprice, I usually order an array of cable options so I am not completely out of luck if I get a cable that does NOT meet my needs.

I have never had a problem even with 25' monoprice HDMI cable to my projector and that's sending a 1080p signal. All my components.... 360, PS3 and SA BD player are connected to my receiver using monoprice cables. Again no issues. And all of my cables even with the extras I have on hand cost me less than one high end 6ft Monster HDMI cable.

I used to the monster cable compare with noname, I do not see the difference of the image or video.

I recently picked up an HDMI cable made by ACCELL UltraAV.

The length is 10m (32.5') / Claims to be 6.75 GBPS / HDMI 1.3

Picked it up locally for $30

So far it's doing a great job. Not sure how it competes with other fellow HDMI cables, but I am sure it's worthy of the $30 I paid for it.

With that being said, I am a believer in lower end cables and not going for something that is buying it for more due to brand-name

I bought a 25 ft cable from them and had nothing but nightmares with it. Paid 20.00 bucks for it, ended up replacing my Onkyo receiver with a sony receiver had same picture issues, (broken up picture). Replaced sony with a Yamaha receiver and still had the same issues. Replaced cable with a 70.00 dollar one and all problems went away.

No one said a $70 cable would not work well. It's just $50 too much.

I own some Mon$ter cable as well. I got it extremely cheap and have not problems with it. I also have no problems with my Monoprice cables.

I seems you got a bad cable. That could happen with the more expensive cable as well. Errors in manufacturing can and do occur.

I don't care what I have to pay for a cable as long as it does the job. The cheap ones failed me, the new one for 70.00 dollars did the job, i'm happy:P

Coming late to this discussion but it happens everywhere.

What others are saying is right - HDMI is HDMI. All this about a "1080p" cable is BS. Officially, a cable rated for that just means that it has allegedly been certified to carry the maximum bandwidth across a minimum distance which I believe is 7.5 metres.

But any claims that you need a "1080p" cable to carry 1080p are rubbish. Any cable will do it, although the lower the quality of the cable, the shorter the cable is, the better. If you have really long cable runs (which is a bad idea anyway) then a better quality cable will probably serve better. But aside from this it's nonsense.

The same is true of all the claims about gold-plating and oxygen free stuff and all the rest of it. These cables are produced to entice those who don;t know better into paying vast sums of money when they don't need to. And at the other end of the scale, you get obssessive video and audiophile types who convince themselves they are getting a "better picture" or get a warm glow of elitism from using a hundred dollar cable - that is very much a new Emperor's Clothes type effect. After all, if you spent that much on a cable, you'd want to believe too. HDMI is digital and you just need to get the 0's and 1's from one place to another. As such it is far less sensitive to losses and outside interference than the old analogue systems.

The only thing you have to watch out for is the HDMI version - the latest incarnations of HDMI support things like 3D and ethernet. If you want to use those features, then you need a version compliant cable.

But for most people, a cheap cable is completely adequate.

It's worth noting that cables are an item that have one of the highest profit margins around. They are cheap and easy to make. A store has a much higher profit margin on a cable than it does on the TV it just sold you - and that's why they try so hard to sell new TV owners an outrageously expensive one..