

Slaying the Cable Monster: Why HDMI Brands Don't Matter - pwg
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2385272,00.asp

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bigiain
Is it just me, or does this at the beginning of the article:

"For digital signals like HDMI, as long as there is enough data for the
receiver to put together a picture, it will form. If there isn't, it will just
drop off. While processing artifacts can occur and gaps in the signal can
cause blocky effects or screen blanking, generally an HDMI signal will display
whenever the signal successfully reaches the receiver. Claims that more
expensive cables put forth greater video or audio fidelity are nonsense;"

directly contradict this at the end?

"No one saw any appreciable difference between the $3 cables and the $120
cable, or any of the cables in between. However, we did notice a curious
phenomenon: the screen appeared slightly darker and a bit more saturated when
connected to the Blu-ray player with the Monster Cable 1200 High Definition
Experience Pack cable. The HDTV showed that it was receiving the same 12-bit
color depth information through each cable, so the more-expensive Monster
cable wasn't pushing through more color detail. Again, the difference was
minimal, and could be corrected by calibrating your HDTV."

The contradiction there immediately makes me assume all of their testing
methodology is bogus and any other "facts" they introduce in support of
whatever argument they're trying to make are probably suspect...

I know they're right, and multi hundred dollar Monster Cables are snake-oil,
but I'm also left with the distinct impression that anybody who finds the
Monster Cable's transmission of a digital video signal "curiously darker and
more saturated" has shown themselves to be incapable of convincing anyone that
they know enough about what they're doing to change anybodies opinion. (In
fact I _strongly_ suspect Monster's notoriously evil marketing department have
had a hand n this "review"... How long till we see articles linking to this
saying "Look, even the skeptics who know all the digital domain science can
see the improved picture from our Monster Cable 1200 High Definition
Experience Pack cable!" Notice how strongly brand and product specific that
statement is, it's almost as though it's specifically written for SEO
juice...)

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tzs
The one that really surprised me was USB cables. I needed a USB cable on
Friday night. I checked Best Buy and the best they could do was something like
$36 for the length I wanted.

I then found that I could buy THE SAME cable from MacMall for $6. Not a
generic brand--the exact brand name cable. Same manufacturer's part number and
everything. And I could get overnight FedEx with Saturday delivery by 10 AM
for $10. So, from MacMall the net result would be half Best Buy's price for
exactly the same thing, provided I could wait about 14 hours for delivery.

(I ended up not buying from either of them, as a more thorough search of my
cable drawer turned up the cable I needed).

For USB cables, here's what I now recommend to people. I think this advice
applies to other cables, too, such as DVI and HDMI and network cables:

Someday, you are going to find that you need a cable and don't have the one
you want on hand. And you'll find you don't want to wait for overnight
delivery, so you are going to end up going to Best Buy and spending way too
much for your cable.

So why not take a measure now to make sure that does not happen? Go to some
place like monoprice.com, and give yourself a budget of, say, 75% of what one
long cable would cost you at best buy. Use that budget to order a variety of
cables. For example, for USB, for the cost of one 10 or 12 foot Best Buy
cable, you could get 2 or 3 long USB cables from monoprice, 2 or 3 six
footers, and a handful of 2 or 3 footers. Do that now. No rush, so use the
cheapest shipping.

Now you've got a stock of cables, and as you use them you can replenish your
stock at your leisure. Even if you end up never using many of the cables you
will be ahead as long as this saves you from a single Best Buy cable purchase.

~~~
hristov
Best Buy's business model is to overcharge people for peripherals like cables
and warranties. Their thinking is that when you are buying a big ticket item
like a TV, you compare the prices of the item and not the total costs of all
peripherals and additional warranties. So Best Buy says "let's have the big
ticket item be the cheap thing that brings people in, but then we will get
them on the price of cables." And of course their salesmen are trained not to
let anyone exit the store with a TV or a computer without buying a bucketful
of cables and extra warranties.

So yeah, that's why their cables are expensive, they are their profit center.

It used to be that Radio Shack was a good cheap place to buy cables, but they
also raised their cable prices. Radio Shack could have made a fortune just
selling cheaper cables to Best Buy customers, but instead they decided that
they could compete with Best Buy and raised their cable prices accordingly. Of
course Radio Shack stores are way too small to sell big ticket items, so they
failed and Radio Shack filed for bankruptcy.

So now the internet is the only place you can get cheap cables.

~~~
noblethrasher
The general phenomena of which they are taking advantage is called anchoring -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring>

~~~
trafficlight
In the case of HDMI cables, I think the term you are looking for is:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging>

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Groxx
> _Claims that more expensive cables put forth greater video or audio fidelity
> are nonsense; it's like saying you can get better-looking YouTube videos on
> your laptop by buying more expensive Ethernet cables._

Fantastic comparison. I'll have to remember that one...

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mgcross
The B&M markup on cables and adapters bothers me enough that I'll eat the
downtime and buy from Monoprice or Newegg. For the price of one HDMI at
Walmart, I was able to get HDMI, optical, and a display port->HDMI adapter
from Monoprice.

~~~
trafficlight
There is no reason to buy cables from anywhere but Monoprice.

~~~
nitrogen
Monoprice's cables are very utilitarian, and they are extremely awesome at
doing what they're supposed to do. However, if you want a thinner cable,
smaller connectors, or different jacket for environmental or aesthetic
reasons, they're probably not going to have what you want. They do have a wide
selection of colors for HDMI and Ethernet cables, though, so even when buying
a cable that needs to look good, I always check Monoprice first.

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tzs
OT, but wow, that site is sure using CPU. I'm seeing my CPU usage go to a
consistent 70-99% just sitting on that page (Mac Pro with one quad core Xeon).
It looks like it is their Javascript, as it drops to nearly nothing when I
disable Javascript and refresh. (I've got Flash disabled, so it isn't their
Flash ads). Anyone else have the Javascript go crazy there?

~~~
code_duck
What browser are you using? That's a critical piece of information.

~~~
tzs
Safari

~~~
code_duck
The site uses a lot of CPU when loading, then settles down for me. Safari's
CPU usage spikes up to 30% or so with Flash enabled, but I notice when I have
Flash disabled, it spikes up to 105%. That's pretty backwards, hmm? But no, I
see no sustained CPU usage with Safari on my Mac.

~~~
tzs
I did some profiling, and it looks like it is some Javascript that is trying
to check to see if one of the Flash ads has loaded. It's being called
thousands of times in a few seconds.

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juiceandjuice
When you are talking about longer distances it matters a bit, but not much. We
bought a long (50 or 100ft, can't remember) pricy cable for my friends
parents, and the signal loss was so great that the TV only recognized the
signal half the time, but it was all or nothing.

but yeah, 3/6/10 ft isn't gonna make any difference.

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rickdale
Less than a year ago HDMI cables were listed on Amazon for a penny. I ordered
4 for 4cents and then 2.98 shipping for the whole order. I think after
California changed laws about lead in cables for energy efficiency, places
were shipping those cables all over for real cheap. Now the $1.50 seems
standard.

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tedunangst
Myth: Digital signals can't degrade except in an all or nothing way.

Simple experiment you can do at home: Take your favorite audio source, convert
to uncompressed 16-bit samples (just like you'd find on a CD), and clip the
high bit to always be 0. Congratulations, you just degraded a digital signal.

Oh, the article then says "While processing artifacts can occur and gaps in
the signal can cause blocky effects". If that isn't gradually degrading, what
is?

"it's like saying you can get better-looking YouTube videos on your laptop by
buying more expensive Ethernet cables." Anyone who's ever used a damaged
ethernet cable before knows how wrong the author is on this point. It doesn't
take many dropped packets before you can't stream HD video.

I 100% agree with conclusion, but there's something about the words "digital
signal" that somehow makes people think they aren't signals.

~~~
juiceandjuice
But relative analog SNR doesn't change, that's the point. A glitch is no
signal or infinite noise, depending on how you look at it. Blacks don't get
blacker, highs don't get clearer.

~~~
tedunangst
It's only infinite noise very briefly, the next sample may be ok, and more
than one bit are transmitted at a time. Consider that as you add bits to a
digital sample, it gets closer to resembling an analog sample.

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napierzaza
What an obvious and boring subject.

~~~
karamazov
I agree; this really hasn't been news for 5 years, if not more.

