Does quality of HDMI cable really make a difference?
 

I went to Best Buy to purchase an HDMI cable for my Blu-Ray player (since it didn't come with one). As you can imagine there were some really pricy ones, and I asked the sales dude out of curiosity if it really made any difference between one HDMI cable or another. He told me that it really did because of bandwith, etc. and that I should go with at least a such and such series and pointed one out on the shelf. I then told him that I was not paying $130 for a cable and he got kinda pissed, but pointed out that that was for a $12 foot cable, in the end I did get that particular series of cable (albeit in a $30 cheaper 4-ft version).
I have to say that the PQ of Blu-Ray from the first 2 discs I have watched really impressed me, moreso than I have been from my HD DVD player which is hooked up with the cheapo HDMI cable that came packaged with it.
So i'm wondering if I am just imagining things or does the quality of the cable really make any difference?

***I'm only concerned about PQ, since I run audio separately.

No.

Is that a no to him imagining things or to the quality making a difference.

www.monoprice.com

Seriously, never buy cables from a store.

I second that.

I don't think it makes a difference, I paid 6 dollars each, for 6 foot cables. I have a PS3 and HD-DVD player hooked up and they both look great, why don't you switch the cables and try the cheeper one on the Blu-ray player and see if you can see any difference.

The latter.

With very, very long cable lengths there is a difference.

Yes, quality matters. But retail price bears NO indication of quality.

A $6-8 HDMI cable from monoprice.com works very well. It's all I use.

Yes, there are some HDMI cable that do not support the bandwidth for 1080p.

No, the massive expensive ones ($100+) are not noticeably better than the $6 ones from monoprice.

How would you know which cable does not?

Is is visible in the packaging specs? or how do you know?

Generally it's on the package (Up to 1080p! or up to 1080i!) or on the manufacturers website.

Ok, thanks for the info. guys.

I agree with this. Over a certain length, quality can be important. Even at 15', you might encounter some problems.

Yeah, when I bought my TV I needed HDMI cables as well. Initially, I bought a pair of Best Buy's in-house brand RocketFish cables (for $60-something each!). But the next day I searched online and found that Best Buy employees could buy these very same cables for $5, so I returned them and got a pair of Monster HDMI cables on "sale" for $65 each. I used them for a bit until boxing day rolled around and I got three Philips HDMI cables for $19.97 each. I've been using them ever since and as far as my eyes can tell they result in the same picture quality as the Monsters. I know it's not monoprice cheap, but it's not Monster expensive either, so I'm relatively satisfied with them.

Here we go again LOL

I *DO* think it makes a difference if you buy a hdmi cable:
1. with cheap connectors
2. for a long distance
3. which is not 1.3 certified

I'm wondering if copper shielding on the cable makes a difference as well. The Monsters I was using did not have copper shielding, but the cheaper Philips cables do.

My gf works at Best Buy and has bought me a number of HDMI/ Optical cables... retailing for $60-80 a piece... she gets them for under $5 with her discount. Stores rape so many poor customers with their prices!

Cables, accessories, etc (along with service plans) are where places like Best Buy make the biggest profit. When they have sales on hardware and software, they may barely break even, so they have to rape the customers on something in order to make money. :)

I picked up Rocketfish from BB. It's not Monster but it's not the cheapest either. So far so good. PQ is excellent. A little pricey, $70/4ft.

While I would in general agree, I would expect that any well-made HDMI cable (and I do consider Monoprice cables to be well-made) would probably work fine in very short runs (such as the 1-3 foot runs between components in an equipment rack) whether it is 1.3 certified or not. In runs longer than that, lack of 1.3 certification would be much more apparent.

Yeah, I was surprised when I was doing some returns recently and saw that some of the "cost prices" for CDs were so close to the retail price. I'm talking like $9 cost price for something that sells at $12.99. I even saw one that was selling at $12.99 and cost price was $12.09.

The next time anyone goes to Best Buy, ask them to scan something into their system to find out the price. At the bottom left of the screen is the cost price. I think the cost price runs into some other data and there are no decimal points, so that the customer doesn't realize what it is. Otherwise, someone might want to find out the sale price of a RocketFish cable and see that the cost price is $2!

I have no experience with monoprice, but I do believe in 'you get what you pay for'. So either monoprice has to be a miracle store that can deliver top notch cables for dirt cheap, or somehow somewhere they use lesser quality components in their cables/connectors.

My personal favorite for cables is bluejeans.

They deliver top notch cables for dirth cheap.
I don't think they're a miracle store though.

It does. All of which you can buy from monoprice at a tenth of the price Best Buy will sell you one for.

Well then, I guess you believe in miracles.

The build quality is the same as any monster cable I've seen. It's not that they are cutting corners. What they are cutting out is the middleman, and the retailer, to sell you the cable at the cheapest price possible.

"you get what you pay for" -- in the case of digital cables what you get by buying brand-name/expensive cables is screwed.

In fact, the "$60" HDMI cable that came with my PS3 bundle was of less quality than my $6 monoprice cables.

Funny how sacred monoprice is to some people. :) I never said it's bad, but even by cutting out the middleman and the retailer, they still have to make a decent cable AND make a profit. Just common sense IMO.

Let's rename this site to DVDArgue.com ... :)

Volume

they do both.

some people have such a tough time accepting monoprice. order one and check it out for yourself.

i have 2 15' cables running from my display to my media closet, one running from my ps3/tivoS3/HDA2.

the cable are of EXCELLENT build quality.

they make their own and sell from their site.

no store, no salesperson, no stockholders, no frills, just great cables.

i also own monoprice hdmi splitter, optical cables, rca cables, subwoofer cables and an a multitude of wall plates.

i jumped off the sucker train 6 years ago.

It isn't that Monoprice is sacred, it's that we have all USED their products, and they WORK. As others have said, they don't make their products any more cheaply than the other guys, but they don't mark them up 500% either.

Before discovering Monoprice, I was a huge Monster zealot. That was pretty much all I would buy. But I needed a cable fairly quickly, and I couldn't find anyone who had the Monster version, so I skeptically ordered one from Monoprice, after it was recommended to me by someone here. After I received the cable, I was amazed at the obvious build quality, considering I had paid less than 1/5th of the cost of the comparable Monster cable. Now they are the only place I go when looking for cables, switch boxes, splitters, or other interconnect accessories.

Look at their web site. You can spend $24 for one of their 24 gauge, silver-plated, CL2-rated, 1.3a certified 10 foot cables, or you could spend $120 for one that might have marginally better build quality from Monster.

I still believe there are cables out there that have better quality for not that much more money. Not to say monoprice makes bad cables, but I just don't buy it that you can have both: high end quality for warehouse prices. These cables are excellent for J6P-systems, but I am not taking the risk of 'saving' $20 on monoprice cables (compared to BJC Series-1) with a $10k system. And we're not talking about spending $100 on Monster HDMI cables.

Some good information about what's important in HDMI cables:
http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articl...s.htm?hdmiinfo

Just my $0.02 on Monster cables: I am one of the few that does notice a difference in cables, with the biggest difference in the analog domain (speaker cables followed by RCA cables). The difference is less obvious with digital cables, but still, there IS a difference.

Again, this ALL depends on your setup. But people that are bashing high-end cables just because THEY don't hear a difference shouldn't be trying to tell ME that there is no difference. Yes, I have done 1:1 comparisons... Now *I* am not trying to tell YOU that you SHOULD here a difference either...

Disclaimer: my wife did not hear a difference between different cables. But then again, she also doesn't notice a difference between Dolby Digital and Dolby TrueHD :)

With all due respect, that is one of the most poorly-written marketing blurbs that I have ever read. And that's all it is, really, a marketing blurb.

You took the words (expression) right out of my mouth. I can make allowances for not having the overhead of a b&m retail store, but still...

That said, from all accounts I've read, the really expensive top brand cables are extremely overpriced. Last summer I bought an HDMI cable for $19 at a Sam's Club. The exact same cable was about $60 at Best Buy.

FWIW, Apple Stores carry an HDMI cable for $19.

OK, monoprice makes a ton of cables... is this the one I should be getting for my blu-ray player? I only need about 3 feet.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2

To each his own...

Isn't BlueJeans cables essentially the same thing as Monoprice? They sell/market their cables via the internet, with no known retail sales presence. I'd be willing to bet if you pull apart their cables and the monoprice ones, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Other than your wallet is lighter if you bought the BlueJeans ones.