Thread: The A/V Cable Thread

Does anyone have a source for inexpensive yet good-quality cables for A/V equipment? S-Video, Component Video, Optical, and HDMI?

$64 for a four-foot HDMI cable is a crock of **** (Best Buy/Circuit City/Fry's) and I will die before I spend that kind of money per foot on cableing my home entertainment center.

www.monoprice.com

I got a 6 ft HDMI cable there for $5-something. It had excellent reviews, including some guy who did all these elaborate tests on it.

Yep, seconded. Here's the one I got:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...ormat=2&style=

Excellent quality cable.

That is the exact one I got.

Dayum!

Then what the hell is the real difference between that cable and the ones that Best Buy is peddling for over seventy bucks?

Apparently only bastardly million-percent-marker-uppers. Read review here:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...mat=4#feedback

And just for you, FBJ, "Damn you, Best Buy ****ers!"

Originally Posted by Fooferah

That is the exact one I got.

Now you just need a TV to plug it into. How's the search going?

digital signals, especially those among twisted-pair HDMI signals, can see impedance and noise introduced via length. Basically, what you can see is a large amount of rounding errors in the data, multiplied over and over. There can also be noise (and bounced data) from a poorly designed cable. It's a voltage transfer, not so much 1s and 0s. Usually, however, these aren't a problem in most cables up to a certain length, where cables see what is sometimes referred to as a "digital-cliff." Normally this is about 25 feet in standard HDMI cables (though I've heard people say up to 50 is fine). Noise and artifacts will probably be seen around 30feet in most low quality cables. These are all taking for granted a well designed cable, as poor designs could see noise and voltage issues at any length... and due to power regulations of the devices, the cables may work differently on different setups. Let's not even start on the lack of any error-correction in the bitstream.

Digital signal is actually quite a bit more complicated than most people think, and the fact that the HDMI cable sort of approaches the problem as a twisted pair cable instead of a wide-pipe coax (where impedance could be better controlled)... leaves a lot of future issues as well, I'm sure.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention... I was able to get that Sharp Aquos online. Only problem is, Time Warner is out of the HD boxes, so I am on a waiting list. Bastards.