Omega Owners Forum

Chat Area => General Discussion Area => Topic started by: Stemo on 25 March 2014, 13:25:19

Title: HDMI cables
Post by: Stemo on 25 March 2014, 13:25:19
Which are best? Gold plated £50-£80 ones or will pound shop do?
Title: Re: HDMI cables
Post by: RobG on 25 March 2014, 13:27:32
Which are best? Gold plated £50-£80 ones or pound shop?
No noticeable difference Steve. Digital signal incoming doesn`t degrade outgoing regardless of "quality" of HDMI cable. Another consumer rip off
Title: Re: HDMI cables
Post by: Stemo on 25 March 2014, 13:28:59
Which are best? Gold plated £50-£80 ones or pound shop?
No noticeable difference Steve. Digital signal incoming doesn`t degrade outgoing regardless of "quality" of HDMI cable. Another consumer rip off
You've been ogling Sophie Rayworth, haven't you Rob?   ;D
Title: Re: HDMI cables
Post by: Jimbob on 25 March 2014, 13:30:14
as long as the cable is rated the same, or higher than the device, no probs, eg HDMI 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 which I beleive increases with the bandwidth they can carry, so blueray 3d films need higher, dvd lower, so get the cheapest 1.4 cable you can find, job done.
Title: Re: HDMI cables
Post by: Stemo on 25 March 2014, 13:33:35
as long as the cable is rated the same, or higher than the device, no probs, eg HDMI 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 which I beleive increases with the bandwidth they can carry, so blueray 3d films need higher, dvd lower, so get the cheapest 1.4 cable you can find, job done.
Well...according to 'experts' on watchdog and again on shop secrets this morning, it makes not a h'apporth of difference what you use. Digital signal equals 1 or 0, and even a piece of kitchen foil will do the job.  ;D
Title: Re: HDMI cables
Post by: RobG on 25 March 2014, 13:36:27
as long as the cable is rated the same, or higher than the device, no probs, eg HDMI 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 which I beleive increases with the bandwidth they can carry, so blueray 3d films need higher, dvd lower, so get the cheapest 1.4 cable you can find, job done.
Well...according to 'experts' on watchdog and again on shop secrets this morning, it makes not a h'apporth of difference what you use. Digital signal equals 1 or 0, and even a piece of kitchen foil will do the job.  ;D
What I said :P ;D
Title: Re: HDMI cables
Post by: Jimbob on 25 March 2014, 13:39:19
apparently numbers are now out the window...

1.4 = Highspeed with Ethernet.

Pretty sure I got mine from here for a couple of quid.

http://www.tvcables.co.uk/cable/high-speed-hdmi-cables-with-ethernet

To confirm...I didnt mean spend a fortune, just get one rated enough for the job, likelyhood is even the £1 shop ones would be rated enough, if someone paid for the testing.
Ive used £1 shop ones, for a couple of people, and the connector quality hasnt been great, theyve done the job, but they aint quality....spend 3 times that, and you wont be disapointed....£3 :y
Title: Re: HDMI cables
Post by: Stemo on 25 March 2014, 13:41:03
as long as the cable is rated the same, or higher than the device, no probs, eg HDMI 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 which I beleive increases with the bandwidth they can carry, so blueray 3d films need higher, dvd lower, so get the cheapest 1.4 cable you can find, job done.
Well...according to 'experts' on watchdog and again on shop secrets this morning, it makes not a h'apporth of difference what you use. Digital signal equals 1 or 0, and even a piece of kitchen foil will do the job.  ;D
What I said :P ;D
Yeah......cause you watch daytime TV......like wot I do  ;D
Title: Re: HDMI cables
Post by: steve6367 on 25 March 2014, 14:02:22
To emphasise - it can make no difference, its is digital and either connected and working and not working. There is no in between state where cable quality can make any difference.
Title: Re: HDMI cables
Post by: Sir Tigger KC on 25 March 2014, 14:10:35

You've been ogling Sophie Rayworth, haven't you Rob?   ;D

She does have a certain 'Yummy Mummy' look about her!  :-* :-* :-*
Title: Re: HDMI cables
Post by: Stemo on 25 March 2014, 14:18:08

You've been ogling Sophie Rayworth, haven't you Rob?   ;D

She does have a certain 'Yummy Mummy' look about her!  :-* :-* :-*
If you mean she's got a nice arse....yeah. ;D
Title: Re: HDMI cables
Post by: chrisgixer on 25 March 2014, 14:39:49
I have a couple of gold plated ones on my home cinema. One of which gives a missing line of pixels through the scrolling banner on sky sports news.

Wiggle the cable, line disappears for a while, as the info comes through. So there's quality involved somewhere. Just not sure where, exactly.
Title: Re: HDMI cables
Post by: Stemo on 25 March 2014, 15:12:37
I have a couple of gold plated ones on my home cinema. One of which gives a missing line of pixels through the scrolling banner on sky sports news.

Wiggle the cable, line disappears for a while, as the info comes through. So there's quality involved somewhere. Just not sure where, exactly.
You've got a loose wire, but that's not news to us.  ::)
Title: Re: HDMI cables
Post by: chrisgixer on 25 March 2014, 16:03:07
I have a couple of gold plated ones on my home cinema. One of which gives a missing line of pixels through the scrolling banner on sky sports news.

Wiggle the cable, line disappears for a while, as the info comes through. So there's quality involved somewhere. Just not sure where, exactly.
You've got a loose wire, but that's not news to us.  ::)
Says the man who part ex'd a perfectly good [list a chain if cars here] for a Gaywoo. And all through webuyanycar.com

He likes bending over does our Esta. :-* ;D[/list]
Title: Re: HDMI cables
Post by: TheBoy on 25 March 2014, 18:16:07
Any old shite will do, it will either work or it won't, in which case its faulty
Title: Re: HDMI cables
Post by: TheBoy on 25 March 2014, 18:17:17
though for longer lengths, I'd start buying increasingly better quality. Price means sod all in this arena
Title: Re: HDMI cables
Post by: Marks DTM Calib on 26 March 2014, 12:24:25
The issue with such a cable is capacitance which impacts on the time it takes the 0 to change to a 1 or vice versa. The faster the signal, the less time you have available for this change to occur and the data 'eye' to be maintained. The longer the cable, the greater the capacitance.

So if its a short length then pretty much any cable will do the job, start looking at longer lengths and you need better cable to minimise the pulse spreading.

Of course, there is also the issue of the device its connected to, if it has a crappy output then there is less room for margin, similarly, if the receiver has a low quality input then the data eye will need to be better.

Gold on a connector does but one thing, it reduces the rate of oxidisation of the terminals, nothing more (as gold is not that good a conductor) so might slow the degredation of the electrical connection. But beware, all to many of the HDMI connectors have a gold plated screen connection and the equally important signal connections are still tin plated (worth checking).
Title: Re: HDMI cables
Post by: Kevin Wood on 26 March 2014, 12:34:24
Yep, devices do vary in their ability to drive the cable.

I've got 2 identical cheapo 5m cables feeding the TV.

The Set Top Box link is 100% OK. Never get any issues with that.

The feed from the blue-ray player can be hit and miss. Occasionally, I hear a thermostat go over and it causes a glitch in the video and audio, so, clearly the blue ray is a bit marginal at driving the cable. That said, I think it might be set up to upscale everything to 1080p, whereas the STB only outputs 720p, so the bit rate will be much higher.

So, yes, cable length and definition of content combine to challenge the cable. SD over a short distance, any bit of wet string will be fine. HD over longer distances and you might need to find a better quality cable.

.. and you don't always get what you pay for, so expensive doesn't necessarily mean quality!
Title: Re: HDMI cables
Post by: chrisgixer on 26 March 2014, 15:50:10
Paid £30 sobs for a 12metre HDMI to run the tv upstairs from the sky box in the lounge. Just as a frinstance.