News Kogan offers HDTV buyers free HDMI cables

Anyone who owns a projector, or a custom install with a media cabinet away from the main display?

 

But but but... What Hi-FI? magazine routinely reviews HDMI cables and "proves" that the higher priced ones give better pictures - more vibrant colours, less noise, etc. They've even done a test of figure-8 power cables with similar results and offer a recommended "best buy" product.

Surely you can't be saying that such a well respected magazine as What Hi-Fi? is just plain wrong?

 

It's crap like this that made me lose all respect for What Hi Fi. They're completely in the pocket of the manufacturers.

 

And we are again back to square one. How many of people using HDMI cables are the ones like you describe. Majority of cables are used for short range connections (set top box/DVD player/BR player/media box to TV, PC to monitor) and only a small minority of users actually do what you describe - put a PC in different room or in cabinet on other side of the room or use projectors.

So again, for majority of users any HDMI signal distortion is a non-issue, because they don't use cables long enough for the issue to be even present.

 

Runs under 10m you can get away with almost anything. If you want to do a long run, and/or want to do it with provision for future Deep Colour or 4k equipment, then you might need to start looking at cable quality (I'd recommend Blue Jeans, mainly because they have a huge chunk of their site dedicated to explaining how HDMI testing and certification works). For anyone with a TV-on-a-stand-with-things-under-it setup, you're good with any old cable. I'd suspect you could run 1-2m HDMI over coathangers if you could be bothered to solder them to those fiddly connectors (protip: S/PDIF over coax and S/PDIF over coathanger are both error-free up to many coathanger-lengths).

Also, if you hear someone mention 'jitter' as a reason for a digital link to somehow degrade in quality, ask them to explain how certain electrons can travel slower or faster than others in the same conductor.

 

Sorry guys but the price of that cable is clearly a mistake. If you check the companys store and see what they are selling they are not even a hifi seller they sell sell tons of cheap crap and furthermore there are a few more cables with the exact same design on the connectors that cost close to nothing. So its just a type o nothing more. But even so there still is alot of BS cables out there at insane proces but that one isnt one of them.

oh and btw heres the links to the other cables
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Quality-3-5...KWSZB804VQD5&s=generic&qid=1309881091&sr=1-26

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Extension-S...KWSZB804VQD5&s=generic&qid=1309881166&sr=1-10

as you can see they have the exact same design. After doing some searching i did find an HDMI cable that costs $1000 per meter

http://www.hardwaresphere.com/2009/...t-hdmi-cable-world-most-expensive-hdmi-cable/

 

But.....but.........Curry's sold me a gold/titanium plated kettle lead and said it would boil quicker than a standard one and I'm now enjoying my cup of tea 000000000.1 sec quicker than I normally would. What should I do with all the time I save?

 

Being in a hurry and heading to Argos for other stuff at the same time were the reason I paid a tenner for a boxed cable last year - though when it came to summer sales time a shorter version of the same lead was £2-3 at Zavvi and that's what I bought for myself.

Then this year, that £3 bought the v1.4 flat cable from Amazon, and throughout the quality has been consistent, no change from one to the next - as someone else remarked, those swivel heads still command a premium but if you don't need those, you're laughing. It's no different from other areas of tech where the price stays low and you just get the perceived newest one at the time.

 

Are you saying you need constantly reminding that people who sell things are trying to turn a profit? Yep, it's a real conspiracy out there that retailers are in it for the money - I'm glad you're here to point out the bleedin' obvious.

 

most people think customers make money but are constantly looking out for them, joe average doesnt really think too much, you see. most companies, especially the big multinationals, now think of the shareholders as the customer and the customer as a margin that can be squeezed.

 

^customer > company

 

Poundland's HDMI cable connects my PS3 and TV.

simples.

As for expensive cables, as long as mugs keep buying them, they will keep selling them.

 

I did once work on a project where the very cheapest HDMI cables weren't quite good enough. We were encoding non-picture information into the first few pixels of each row, and with cheap cables, there were enough errors to cause unreliability. Better cables solved the problem.

I would point out two mitigating facts, though:

1 - This sort of shenanigans is, strictly speaking, misuse of DVI (HDMI) which was not designed to produce bit for bit accuracy, as that simply isn't required in uncompressed digital video.

2 - When I say "better cables", I mean we bought £25 cables as opposed to £5 cables, and the problem went away. DVI is better than it needs to be.

It's fantasy, a fantasy even more perverse than the whole "audiophile" thing.

 

Oh, also:

Capacitance. Most high speed digital specifications do specify a capacitance for the cable and connector assembly, and I would be surprised if DVI didn't.

But that's far, far less likely to be a problem than other factors contributing to impedance mismatch and insertion loss, so I agree - still BS.

 

I use 7m HDMi from PC to plasma HDTV.

 

By the way, I was in Sainsbury's this afternoon and I noticed a "half-price HDMI cable" sticker, so I had a look. 2m HDMI cable, half price, £22.50 - reduced from £45. I laughed and the security guy gave me a hard stare.

 

Since John Lewis don't sell Logan products can you buy any TV and get a free cable? Sounds good business sense to me, buy someone else's product and get free stuff.

 

If we count HDMi cable lenghts in my house I have: 15 meters from my pc to my projector, 25 meters from the mediaserver in the basement, to the HD tv in the living room on the ground floor, and 7.5 meters from my brothers computer to his television.

So for me, cable quality matters at some point, though my cables are 25£ instead of the 5£ ones I would normally buy.

 

I'm still laughing my ass off at the reviews on Amazon's beast! HAHAHAHA

"I bought 4 of these to tie my girlfriend up to the rack in our dungeon. Just the thought of how much money I spent on these things took our playtime to a new level. It truly is a mind blowing experience knowing you've got almost $60,000.00 worth of Oxygen Free Copper wrapped around your limbs."

"Such good value, I bought two of them. One to use for my TV, one to tie the dog up to the gate when she is outside."

 

I read Krogan offers (I play too many games).

I'll get my coat...