And there's the rub. Should "knowing" the components used in the construction of a cable (or at least what the manufacturer claims are used) make that cable actually perform better? To me, it does not. I trust my own eyes and ears. But then, perhaps my 1080p 73" DLP rear projection set isn't "higher-end" enough.

I'm not judging your or anyone's equipment. I need my cable to transport High Def 1080p/24 video (currently 720p) and Dolby True HD audio. Both requires a high bandwidth and I assume will maximize the data streams within the cable.

1080p/24 is only ~75MHz which is less than half of the HDMI 1.0 max of 165MHz and only 22% of the HDMI 1.3 max of 340MHz. Raw 24-bit 96Khz 7.1 audio won't add more than 20MHz to that total, TrueHD more like 4MHz.

Unless you have exceptionally long cable runs even the cheapest of the cheap cables will have no problem carrying 1080p/24.

See, now that's where it's not quite true. Go back to the beginning of HDMI a couple years back. Say, in the AVS archives. Read about all the cheap, bundled cables that had sparklies even at 6'. Now they just don't bundle HDMI cables most of the time.

Sparklies are drops of video signal because it never got through the cable. They appeared as little white specs in the picture. white = no signal

I've not yet seen such an issue mentioned in regards to a not-broken Monoprice cable.

Just for another way of saying it: 1080p24 requires less bandwidth than 1080i60 or 720p60. Probably part of the reason it was chosen for BD/HDDVD storage, takes up less space.

Where do you get your numbers from? Read This

"The dominant consumer digital video formats are HDMI and DVI. In HDMI and DVI, digital signals are run at bitrates which vary with resolution, and which can run quite high; currently, the highest HDMI resolution in common use is 1080p/60, which involves running signal at 1.485 Gbps.

The frequencies in use here do an interesting thing to the significance of wire gage, which requires a bit of three-dimensional thinking to understand. In a 1.485 Gbps bitstream, our fundamental frequency is normally considered to be about half that bitrate, or 742.5 MHz, and because we're trying to convey some harmonics of that fundamental frequency to keep our bit edges from rounding off too much to be recognized by the receiving circuit, the bandwidth required to handle that is about three times that frequency, or 2.2275 GHz. "

I get my numbers from (a) math and (b) the HDMI website:

Video pixel rates can range from 25MHz to 165MHz. (Page 8)
HDMI 1.3 increases its single-link bandwidth to 340 MHz (10.2Gbps) (see HDMI specs section)

The BJC page uses bit-rate rather than pixel-rate (aka video bandwidth). HDMI uses 8b10 encoding for 10 bits per pixel so multiply pixel-rate by 10 to get bitrate per data line.
E.G. 340MHz * 10bps = 3.4GHz.
and 3.4Gps * 3 data lines = 10.2Gbps.
which equals the maximum HDMI 1.3 spec as quoted above.

However the difference in scale is irrelevant. The point is that 1080p/24 does not even come close to pushing the limits of HDMI 1.0 much less HDMI 1.3.

One error I did make is that I used formulas for analog video, not digital. Digital requires less pixel-rate because there are no losses to overhead like retrace or cable attenuation. Taking that into account, 1080p/24 requires a pixel-rate of only 54MHz, not 75MHz. So we are now down to just about a third of the max HDMI 1.0 speed and a sixth of the HDMI 1.3 speeds.

To be fair - back then the HDMI receivers and transmitters were also less robust and the main reason they don't bundle cables today as frequently as they used to is because the big-box stores want it that way,it gives them a headstart on upselling over-priced cables.

So...... Any updates? I'm very curious to hear the results.

He liked it so much he hung himself with his more expensive Blue Jeans cables.

Still didn't get them

I received my Wii component cables and I think I ordered them a day after you put in your order. I'm in the South though, so it might take an extra day to get out to you. Surely not past Monday...

Ok I have been testing all weekend and here are my thoughts:

Sound: no noticeable difference (this is harder to test anyway)

Picture:
standard DVD: it seems that monoprice's cables are a bit softer than BJC. Difference is minimal
HD DVD: now we're talking! The monoprice cable clearly is inferior: background details are soft and less revealing, color are also not as deep as with the BJC. I will post some photos soon (hopefully the differences will be clear on these pictures). It seems that either monoprice cables aren't capable of handling the bandwith or are dropping frames.

More to follow.

Is there any chance someone can help you with switching cables so you can do some blind tests?

Sure, I can ask my wife. But I have the 'proof' on camera

I don't think you'll have much success conveying that difference via pics posted on a web page from a camera.

Also, my own personal experience has been that knowing which one of two choices was which certainly colored my perception. A double-blind test is essential for this kind of evaluation IMO.

You live in Hoboken. I bet there are a couple of hundred people on this forum at least from that area who could do the switching for you. I myself live in New Brunswick which is only a bit of a hike, not that I'm volunteering.

However the whole thing was to have a blind test. To switch them yourself negates it, and I doubt putting some pictures on here is going to change anyone's mind when you have a vested interest in seeing a difference, which is what the studies are about.

I don't care who ends up right here, I don't even have an HD player. However I just find it weird that you needed all weekend to determine that monoprice is "clearly inferior."

+1

You need to have your wife hook up this cable test while you're out of the room. You're absolutely seeing a placebo effect here.

After hearing countless times that a 1.3 HDMI cable either works or it doesn't (over shorter distances, that is), this "experiment" that was conducted just seems weird to me. And no, pictures posted on a computer won't do it for me. There will be too many variables like other light hitting the lens of the camera or the screen, etc. etc.

Yes, I would love to have a perfect stranger in my house, swapping cables Do you mind if prefer my wife?

It's amazing that everyone jumps on me for posting my preliminary results. Somehow I expected this to happen and I even considered not posting anything at all.

Yes, I will do the blind test but I really think I will see the same results. Don't forget that I'm projecting on a 102" screen, so it might be that differences are more noticeable to me, than to someone who has a 50" flat screen (to give an example).

The most obvious results where with the mountain scenes in the HD DVD version of the BBC Documentary Planet Earth. With the monoprice cable the whole imagine felt 'flat' with lacking details. Really hard to explain.

Do you think didn't have anything else to do this weekend?

If you guys want me to continue testing and posting results, please try to respect my opinion also appreciate the effort that I'm taking to do these test. No reason to be negative.

Those are the people that want you to believe that there is no difference in cabling, and thus you should buy monoprice. Yes, the signal is digital (0s and 1s), but that doesn't mean there can be a slight loss of digital signal which might affect picture and/or sound quality.

Does HDMI have a threshold for how much data it can lose in transmission before there's some kind of error?

That may be true, but I don't believe that would account for your perception of loss of color depth. I can't see how dropping bits could explain that behavior. I would expect that you would either see bizarre color shifts or some kind of noise/macroblocking caused by the missing/misinterpreted data stream. The only way I could see that a reduction in color space could occur is if there were something in the HDMI handshake that throttled a signal to compensate for limitations in the cable (as opposed to the devices connected to it). And, to the best of my knowledge, such capability is not in the HDMI spec.

Would you be able to point me at the Planet Earth disc and timecode you were using for your test? I don't own any BJ cables, but I would still like to look at my Blu-ray copy on my 73" screen to see whether any of the muddiness or flat colors are evident using my 24 AWG cable.

Egads. There's only one person shilling in this thread. Hint: it's no one advocating monoprice cables.

But what the hell do I know, I'm just a peon. I'll take the advice of umr (anyone who frequents avsforum will know who umr is), who ISF calibrated my HT last year; he gave me a thumbs-up for using monoprice materials.

You had to expect that everyone would jump all over you, if you still found monoprice to be inferior after your testing. Still, I agree that there is no need for the negativity. It is after all your opinion, so I will respect it as such. Please continue to post your findings (especially on the blind tests), and I for one would be interested in seeing any photos you might have to post. If nothing else, PM them to me.

I personally don't care what you claim as your results. As soon as you said you were going to purchase the monoprice cables, I knew what your results would be. Heck, I am not even sure you purchased a cable.

I agree that a larger screen will magnify issues not seen on a smaller screen, but my screen is larger, plus I am using better equipment (my eyesight is also better than 20/20). If you are able to see such a large difference between the cables, then I should see even a greater difference - but I don't.

If you would be willing, I would like to place a friendly bet that you cannot see the difference. We would use a member here to do the switching, and you would just sit back and relax. I will also supply the monoprice cable for the test. Just let me know. Maybe others here might also want to get in on the action. Could mean a lot of money for you...