Last week I wrote a post about Paying too much for cables and while most of the response both privately and publicly was in agreement there were a couple of people who felt that I was wrong or my logic was flawed. So I spent a little more time doing some more research. The surprising thing was that I couldn't find a single article or study that suggested that the more expensive cables were worth it.
One point of clarification
One of the comments suggested that the length of the cable DOES matter and that you should pay for a better cable for longer runs. On this point I TOTALLY AGREE! If I were building a cable into a wall I would absolutely want a better cable as it wouldn't be easily replaced once the construction was done. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that the $200 30 foot cable is necessarily any better than the $50 30 foot cable. Also when I said "it either works or it doesn't", I meant that for ANY length or type of cable. If I buy a 30 foot cable then I expect it to perform like ANY other 30 foot cable should perform. In other words if the picture is distorted, noisy or has artifacts, doesn't transmit HDCP, etc. then that's my definition of "it doesn't work!" Just so you know, I'm also going to plug in the long cable and test it before building it in 🙂
The quote of the week – "At lengths less than 4 meters you can just about use silly string…"
comes from this extensive study that a guy did comparing cables and although he starts off stating that there is a difference in quality, his final takeaways actually confirm my suspicions:
Your take-away from all this should be the following:
- At lengths less than 4 meters you can just about use silly string (OK, not really) and get HDMI to pass at any current resolution. At less than 3 meters you'll even extend that to 12-bit color and possibly the next crazy idea HDMI Licensing decides to throw at consumers. Don't spend a lot on these cables and if you want to save money you won't let anyone at a big box store talk you into buying from them.
- At long lengths (over 10 meters) you really need to pay attention to the manufacturer if you don't want to risk running into potential problems with 1080p and future formats such as Deep Color. With that said, just about any cable at or under 10 meters will pass 720p/1080i and nearly everyone will pass 1080p at 8-bit color as well.
- If you have an existing HDMI cable and are running into problems, we'd suggest at least attempting the insertion of an active component at the sink (display) side. This is going to be far cheaper than ripping out your walls and re-running new cables – and likely just as effective.
- HDMI has proven to be a moving target and there is no telling what crazy (likely unnecessary) format they will try to push down the cable next. Due to this, it's always good to "overbuild" your cable install, especially if it's a longer distance and going to end up behind drywall.
- If you're not prone to upgraditis and think 1080p will be your maximum resolution for the life of your install, don't sweat it…
See the full report here.
Also see this comparison and this comparison. It would be fun to sit people down in a room with an HDTV, good 1080p source and a quality receiver and do a blind test using different cables. I'd be willing to bet money that the doubters wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Lastly, Thanks!
Thanks to everyone that suggested monoprice.com as a source for low cost cables. I've placed an order for some even shorter HDMI cables than the 3 foot ones I found locally.
BTW: If you still disagree and feel better about the more expensive cables you bought, that's fine with me. Enjoy! 🙂 Y.M.M.V.
Terry, I took your advice and ordered the cheap cables from amazon.com. I ordered two 10′ and two 6′ cables. My new 3D tv was delivered and I was glad I didn’t have to purchase the $80 cables from the retailer. Well, after setting it all up, when I pushed “play” on the blu-ray player, there was a ton of noise AND blinking artifacts. The installer asked “where did you get those cables?” They were fine for the satellite, receiver and xbox, but there was too much info on the 3D blu-ray so I had to buy the better, more expensive cables. Yes, they are thicker, heavier and they work, unlike the cheap amazon cables. I’m glad they only cost me $4.
And which “more expensive” cables did you go with?
Hi Terry,
I`m a 57 year old artist going digital.I love the Adobe stuff! I`m astounded by what is available and having no trouble getting happy, and i`m not missing my 2000 sq. ft. studio at all.
I just watched one of your Lightroom videos in which you click on something and what looks like the whole Master Collection comes up along the bottom ( changing programs).What are you doig there?
Love your videos!…thanks
dennis
I’m either hovering over my dock that’s set to Auto Hide or Command-Tabbing to switch between apps. Thanks!
Great stuff Terry, as always. Thanks for sharing. I’ve been using monoprice.com lately for ethernet cables and for a bunch of misc. audio adaptors. In the last order the shipping charge (very reasonable) was actually a little higher than the cost of all the adaptors plus a 20′ ethernet cable I was getting! I would have spent more than 10 times the price anywhere locally.
Hi Terry. Dude, I love your site. Still not convinced on Lightroom over Aperture yet but I do have both. One thing in the cable issue that you might also want to mention if it applies to some is that if your media storage is networked at least use CAT5E or preferably CAT 6 (the stiff kind). We use it in many of our State Department backbone installs and I use it at home. Problem is that it is so stiff it almost doesn’t bend very easily but it is great when you want to push a hi-def video over a network. I am probably going extreme but I think I will install fiber in the next month or so just because it’s there. Cheers and great site once again.
Thanks for passing along the link to monoprice.com. Time to buy some cables.
I’ve had excellent customer service and found very reasonable pricing and shipping from http://www.firefold.com I’ve purchased USB, ethernet, firewire and audio cables from them.
Hi Terry!
Thanks for the follow up post and for pointing us to the audioholics article. It kind of confirms what I was trying to say in your previous post (that length of the cable matters and the extra bandwidth to ensure it is future proof). But I definitely was of the opinion that even for shorter lengths (about 8′) there will be some issues with picture quality and passing higher quality content. I cannot argue with the hard facts and testing on audioholics since my experience was not as comprehensive 🙂 As a side note, if you visit the monster page and look up the cable you had mentioned, it proudly proclaims compatibility with 16bit color (Deep Color) support and 4K resolution (I know we currently dont have many sources that can display such content and is an overkill at present) but it illustrates my point about the future upgradeability. And yes, the double blind tests sound interesting…I would love to participate in one of those! 🙂
Terry–
I just wanted to let you know how very much I appreciate these posts. We have a BlueRay player that has been giving us grief since we bought it. Well, I always ASSUMED it was the Blueray player, until we switched the cords, and noticed it was the HDMI cord! (A $30 GE, I believe) I was close to throwing the BluRay out the window, then I saw your post.
THANK YOU.
Now, on to finding a good cable for the darn thing. It sits right below (on a lower shelf) from the TV.
Anyway, thanks!
One point that Terry has made, but believe it is getting lost is cable price does NOT equal cable quality. You can buy cheap cables of poor quality and expensive cables of poor quality. You can also buy well built cables cheaply. It really comes down to physics, size (gauge) of wire, type of wire, and conduction metal used in the connections. Just because the big box store is making all of their profit on accessories, and therefore try to push $80 heavy duty cables, does not mean you cannot buy a cable with identical specs for $5.
I’ll add another plug for monoprice.com, and especially like the fact they give you options of wire gauges. The one bad cable flat did not work, and they replaced it promptly with no questions asked.
Hi Terry. Thanks for looking out for us. Last year, when you first mentioned the HTML cables for 17cents!!! each at Amazon, I ordered several, installed them and they have been working perfectly ever since. Also, thanks for the monoprice.com source for other cables — I plan to order some soon.