Home audio & video forum: Poll: Do you pay a premium for HDMI cables?

From my experience, all cables are the same. Just some are a little better made. Just about everything I've used usually cost a lot less using somebody's generic cable type. HDMI Cables, Ethernet cables, and everything else, there's always somewhere you can buy it cheaper, and they all seem to work the same if you get something with the same specs as the expensive one.

Two of the cheapest places I've found were microbarn.com and cyberguys.com. If you're careful, two other place you can get things cheap from are the stores CompUSA or TigerDirect, their actual stores or online stores sell some cables pretty cheap.

You can buy a 6ft (2m) gold-plated HDMI cable for $3 from the microbarn.com, or even a 16ft(3m) one for $2 more.
http://www.microbarn.com/details.aspx?rid=101849

It has been tested and satisfactorily proven many times that expensive HDMI cables are a complete waste of money. HDMI cables (and USB also) either work or they don't, regardless of price paid and this has been born out by my own purchases over many many years. I have NEVER had a cheap one fail, not once, not ever.

There's plenty of wiggle room in your argument regarding 'buying cheap', and for buyers of HDMI cables too.

One can certainly buy a 6 foot, $3 cable and have good success, regardless of whether it has the 'magical' mandatory micron connector thickness you allude to. If that same person feels the need to shell out $100 for Monster cables to feel like they are necessarily getting some sort of added value with their purchase, I say let them. Even better, I challenge most people to take a blind test to see if they can notice anything distinguishable between several HDMI cable brands of different quality/prices.

FWIW, I've only had one or two of the very cheapest generic cables cause obvious issues (if this is what is meant by "fail"). Never have I had anything from Monoprice, Amazon basic or BlueJeans cable perform anything other than adequately.

Your implication that rich folks need to somehow act in a different way to stimulate the economy somehow is fantasy fueled at best, amigo. I'll only agree with you about the importance of buying good beer(!) [my own kryptonite]

For the bulk of --most-- users, the cheapest cables that actually function as required are just fine.

My personal corollary is long runs. Especially buried in conduit or walls/attics. I --will-- spend a little more for a better quality cable in those instances for the peace-of-mind that I DON"T have to crawl around to do that again. I'm not talking "Monsters", just mid-range with silver or gold contacts for longevity.

For economy, see pccables.com, or (limited to stock on hand) geeks.com and watch for the sales.

L-8-R-B.

No Sorry Guys have tried all Types and they all do the same job great Picture Great sound so my advice is buy the Cheap one it Just does the Job

You have that completely backwards. Analog cables are affected by build quality not digital cables. Between background nose and interference the better made the cable is the more clear the peaks and valleys in amplitude are. The difference is that in a poorly build analog cable, the minor variations in amplitude are lost and it only peaks up the larger peaks and valleys. Use the link below as an example. A "poor" cable might chop off some of the variability in the amplitude of complex sounds (sounds within other sound), but a "good" cable would keep the signal clean and pick up both the primary sound and the various inside the main wave. This doesn't apply to digital signals what so ever.


It is still possible to get interference with digital signals, but it is much less common and would require a fairly massive EM field like running your HDMI cable parallel with the main power line into your house or running it behind the circuit breakers.

http://web.gxmu.edu.cn/net/b/6_3.html