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HDMI CABLES

Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2012 11:48 am
by Bags
Hello all, just wanting to know if there is any major difference in a 2m hdmi cable that costs me $5.00 or a $40.00 one from the shop? Just need to connect from a VGA converter to LCD tv. Cheers!

Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2012 12:15 pm
by Meaty
i had a $5 one spare which my inlaws borrowed for their new 3d 65 inch led tv .... every 30 secs to 5 mins it would black out for 2 seconds then come back with a picture ... due to the cheap hdmi cable not having enough bandwidth throughput .....

now with a expensive hdmi cable that no longer happens.

Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2012 12:45 pm
by Syke
i just use the $20 ones from EB game stores. they go on sale alot too. i havent had any issues with any of them yet.

Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2012 12:53 pm
by Bags
Hmm. Well I may hang out for a eb special!

Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2012 1:06 pm
by The X
Bags wrote:Hello all, just wanting to know if there is any major difference in a 2m hdmi cable that costs me $5.00 or a $40.00 one from the shop? Just need to connect from a VGA converter to LCD tv. Cheers!


Simple answer, mostly no, sometimes yes.
The "sometimes yes" situation is if the cable is made of woefully inferior copper quality, poorly or not shielded or the 20 wires of copper in the cable are "too thin" leading to issues of signal attenuation (loss) along the run of the cable, however the attenuation problem wont be as apparent on short runs of cable... I use $7 ones from Ebay and apart from a dicky connector, no issues. They are only 1.5m long but ample for my needs.

However you said VGA converter to HDMI. VGA is an analog signal, pretty average quality, you're not going to get any benefit from up-scaling an "analog" signal to HDMI. Most LCD TVs have DVI or VGA input ports. Save your pennies and just go VGA to VGA if possible.

Meaty wrote:i had a $5 one spare which my inlaws borrowed for their new 3d 65 inch led tv .... every 30 secs to 5 mins it would black out for 2 seconds then come back with a picture ... due to the cheap hdmi cable not having enough bandwidth throughput ..... now with a expensive hdmi cable that no longer happens.

Sounds like the cheapy you had was really cheapy. Not due to "lack of bandwidth" it's just copper wire at the end of the day, but probably poor/non-existent shielding, where a transient electro magnetic disturbance would be enough to disturb the "clocking" signal and cause the signal "dropouts" you observed. You probably observed periods of pixelation bursts too, no doubt.

Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2012 2:04 pm
by Bags
Hi Pete, my tv has one hdmi in and one RCA and Rgb only. I need to buy a converter and the cable I think to connect.

Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2012 2:32 pm
by ijustatecurry
Depending where you are in Melb head to one of MSY, CPL or Centrecom. Cables (and everything else) are extremely cheap and are your stock standard gold coated tip affair. Bought multiple cables from there and all have worked without issue

Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2012 2:35 pm
by Marek
I've been buying the cheapest HDMI cables from eBay for many years now. No problems at all. I've bought maybe 15-20 types of cables, adapters online over the years. I've seen the exact same cables being sold in stores for $50-120, while I pay between $1-10 online (depends on length)...

Even if they're more inclined to become faulty, which they're not, paying another $5 every few years to get them replaced is nothing!

Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2012 8:43 pm
by turbogirl
I've had cheap ones and an expensive one, no noticable difference