HDMI leads...what is the difference?

Mickey666

Does it require a separate power supply? 

I'm not entirely surprised about the difference though.  Firstly the optical fibre would be immune to any electrical interference that might have been causing the previous dropout problems and secondly an optical connection would interrupt any possible 'earth loops' between the connected equipment, which is another potential source of interference, especially when one item is plugged into a mains socket a long-ish distance from the other item is plugged into a distant mains socket.

£40 doesn't seem outrageous for an optical cable with embedded opto-electronics.  I would start flinching when the price tag gets into 3 figures or more.

Petriix

Mickey666 said:

Does it require a separate power supply?  

No, no separate power required. Apparently there is sufficient power from the HDMI port to make it work, but only in one direction; although it will happily carry the ARC signal back to the receiver.

John_

ferry said:

Just out of curiosity but what would be the difference between a cheap HDMI lead and some that I have seen cost upward of £20?

Will I see any better performance out of an expensive lead?

Thanks

No difference at all. It’s possible, in theory, that someone could make a lead so bad that even a digital signal was degraded enough not to make it through, but it’d take a real effort to manage that. In the real world, they all work perfectly.

a

Petriix said:

I too was sceptical about expensive HDMI cables but then I bought a new TV and decided to mount it on the wall on the opposite side of the room to where the AV receiver lives. I can't easily move the amp because it's wired to 10 ceiling speakers and various other equipment so a 10m HDMI was required to run under the flooring.

I initially bought a £14 cable with reasonable reviews - just about anything you can buy on Amazon has a small percentage of 1* reviews where people claim it blew up their house or maimed their dog, and this was no exception - and, on the whole, people said it would work just fine. However, after a brief test then a not-so-brief process of feeding the cable under the floor, the issues began. Every 10 minutes or so of watching a 4k source the screen would go blank for a second or two.

After much research (some of which involved trawling through posts by the sort of people who claim that gold plated power leads make an audible difference), I relented to buy a 'hybrid fibre optic' HDMI cable for about £40. Now, maybe I've been brainwashed, but this cable (which arrived in a fancy box, and despite being literally embedded in the floor) has performed flawlessly with no signal dropouts; despite being around a quarter of the thickness of the cable it replaced.

Make of that what you will.

My  first job in a tv and computer company who wanted to display a 480 digital monitor some 5 meters away and have it finished in a day. So a simple circuits were built, flat ribbon cable used, but the display had multiple ghosts and snow all due to capacitance and inductance mainly from the cable, the rush job was scrapped.

Gold on a connector is prefered for the fact that it does not oxidise, and makes the product sound expensive, Both silver and copper are better conductors compared to gold and strongly doubt is was the gold that made your cable work. 

Personally would not but a 10m hdmi or usb cable for £14, because they are just not going to work well, but cat 6 network cable I would and probably want it cheaper too 

John_Gray

By far the "best" cables are those from Monster!  They solve all known problems, cure all diseases, and will even walk your dog (if you ask nicely).  At just £345 for a 15m HDMI cable, how can you not rush to Amazon to purchase several?  (And you get Free Delivery, too!) 

fred246

I was just about to buy one but they are not in stock.

John_

For those who don’t understand the reason that cable quality rarely matters in digital signals, a simple explanation is this.
Analog signals send information based on the voltage, the intensity of (for example) a sound wave is literally given by the voltage in the wire. Any difference at all in how different frequencies or amplitudes pass through the wire will change the output.
Digital signals are more like sending a data file, and for these the strength of the signal pretty much doesn’t matter, if it gets through, the file is fine. Even the odd error can make it through without a problem, as it can be detected and corrected.

Petriix

a said:

Gold on a connector is prefered for the fact that it does not oxidise, and makes the product sound expensive, Both silver and copper are better conductors compared to gold and strongly doubt is was the gold that made your cable work.

I never mentioned 'gold' in relation to my cable; I was making reference to the special breed of people who claim that a gold power lead can make an audible improvement to their HiFi equipment.

I imagine that there was some kind of interference or voltage drop on the cheaper cable that led to either the TV or the receiver to drop and reset the connection - the world of HDMI signals is a mystery to me. The new cable works because of the fibre optic bit, not because of the colour of the connector.

neilmcl

Petriix said:

a said:

Gold on a connector is prefered for the fact that it does not oxidise, and makes the product sound expensive, Both silver and copper are better conductors compared to gold and strongly doubt is was the gold that made your cable work.

I never mentioned 'gold' in relation to my cable; I was making reference to the special breed of people who claim that a gold power lead can make an audible improvement to their HiFi equipment.

I imagine that there was some kind of interference or voltage drop on the cheaper cable that led to either the TV or the receiver to drop and reset the connection - the world of HDMI signals is a mystery to me. The new cable works because of the fibre optic bit, not because of the colour of the connector.

It shouldn't be a mystery to anyone. It's a cable with ability to carry a digital signal, it either works or it doesn't. Your first cable wasn't up to the job, the second cable was, and I doubt it was because of anything to do with the fact it was because of the "fibre optic bit".

Heedtheadvice

Yes generally a digital signal gets there or doesn't (even with a bit of error correction).....mostly.

Whilst that is true if the signal gets corrupted sufficiently then transmission can become unreliable and error correction fails or at least is so intrusive to slow down interpretation of the signal. Most of us have experience  tv digital signals of fine quality, then not working then pixilated then fine again when the digital signal is a bit poor! Similarly digital wifi can become very slow with lower signal strength as it requires lots of error correction.......

so signal quality matters especially when on the cusp! Easy to suck it and see rather than spend lots at the outset though when it comes to a simple short cable.