Don’t Be Duped Into Buying Expensive HDMI Cables

I saw a link to this Gizmodo article on Facebook (with a nod to Tony Butcher 😉 and thought this was worth a mention.

If you find yourself buying some new AV equipment like a television, a Blu-ray player, a home theatre system or anything that might have an HDMI port on it this will be worth keeping in mind.

Don’t be suckered into buying an expensive HDMI cable at the same time.

While it might seem small compared to the expense of the device you are buying you should not reward retail outlets trying to sell you a cable many times more expensive than a similar one if you shop around (you should be able to find a suitable one for under $10).

Now, you might be worried that you are getting a crumby cable for so cheap compared to the tens or even hundreds of dollars you might drop on those more expensive cables with gold tipped connectors on them. However, at the end of the day, a digital signal doesn’t suffer from the same problems an analogue signal particularly over short distances. In the analogue days, doing anything possible to recreate the original analogue wave signal and eliminate noise was beneficial. In contrast, sending the “on” and “off” signals down an HDMI cable will either work or they won’t work just like an Ethernet cable – it’s that simple and it’s one of the reasons why digital is superior to analogue.

One HDMI cable will produce the same result as another HDMI cable irrespective of its cost (provided that its not broken of course). Colour reproduction won’t be any better, picture clarity and definition won’t be any better, audio quality won’t be any better and your wallet certainly won’t be any better off with a more expensive cable.

So next time you are out shopping for AV don’t fall for it. Just go out and buy a few of the cheaper cables instead so you have some spare in case one does stop working or you get another device requiring an HDMI cable.