I give up on cable testing few years back. After doing blind test with friends, it's hard to detect differences in cables unless you had bat ears. The only concern I have with cables is proper shielding. Some cheapo cables without shielding might introduce hum to your system. Also, some china cable is not using copper. Now, for me Belden and Canare cable is a safe bet. Look at their spec and shielding option. HDMI cable, I prefer BJC Belden cable. Built quality is good and no problem even for 40ft length at 1080p. More expensive than Tesco cable but at least not bloody expensive as boutique brand.

This post has been edited by pierreye: Aug 16 2010, 08:55 AM

Do a ABX blind test. I had done that I can tell you most likely after few rounds, everyone kind of give up and just enjoy the music and movie. The only thing that can really be differentiate is when we burn a original audiophile CD to CD-R. The burn copy does sound a bit different especially the vocal.

This post has been edited by pierreye: Aug 19 2010, 10:08 AM

Cable does play a role in bandwidth. Example, CAT 5e is certified up to 30m for Gbps LAN. CAT 6 can go up to 90m for Gbps. If you use a CAT 6 in less than 30m, the performance would be the same (it wouldn't go faster than 1 Gbps). What we are trying to educate the user is for short length, normally a good build cable will provide the same quality as boutique brand cable. It's only when you go for longer cable such as for projector which normally exceed 25ft that you need to watch out. Don't buy those cheap China no brand/no certification cable as it's not certified to run at long length. For example, if you using 720p, the requirement for bandwidth is lower than 1080p. I read some reports in avsforums some user once upgrade to 1080p projector, they start to have snow or intermittent flash of white problem (loss of sync). Do note that most digital signal do carry CRC error check which can provide some degree of error correction. But once there are too many bits loss, then you have the sync issue.

I didn't read any specs on video HDMI but my understanding in networking and digital audio are signal is send in packet with certain fix size/length. If there is an error in the signal, it will try to recover the lost bit using CRC. If it can't be recover, than the packet will be drop. For network, it will send a request to resend the packet again. For audio, I think it is one way and the package will be drop. I believe engineer can build a better protocol that can use CRC check, buffer and resend the signal if it can't be recover from the source.

What I want to say is quality cable will not improve the picture quality (such as making black blacker than other cables. To me this is bullshit). But badly constructed cable will drop signal and degrade the picture quality.

As for quality power cable, please don't flame me. I think getting shielded good quality power cable only make sense if you had power conditioner/regulator. If you tap out from the socket directly, it doesn't make sense cause your wireman could have pull some unknown brand unshielded cable in your house. If you don't have a clean source, power cable can't fix the problem.

FYI, I had 2 x Zu Bok cable and 2 x Supra cable connected to 2kW voltage regulator.

This post has been edited by pierreye: Aug 19 2010, 09:56 PM

I dig up some info on HDMI video. Seems it does had some ECC build. I would be surprise if it doesn't had cause ECC would help to recover some error without resending the data.

Below is the info copy from HDMI video transmission protocol. It use BCH scheme.

During the Data Island, each of the three TMDS channels transmits a series of 10-bit characters
encoded from a 4-bit input word, using TMDS Error Reduction Coding (TERC4). TERC4
significantly reduces the error rate on the link by choosing only 10-bit codes with high inherent
error avoidance.
...
All data within a Data Island is contained within 32 clock Packets. Packets consist of a Packet
Header, a Packet Body (consisting of four Subpackets), and associated error correction bits.
Each Subpacket includes 56 bits of data and is protected by an additional 8 bits of BCH ECC
parity bits.
...
To improve the reliability of the data and to improve the detection of bad data, Error Correction
Code (ECC) parity is added to each packet. BCH(64,56) and BCH(32,24) are generated by the
polynomial G(x) shown in Figure 5-5.

Certified cable would mean that it would work as the specs required so consumer would had a piece of mind. Without certification, it would depends on the manufacturer if they follow the specs. If the specs meet the requirement, then I don't see how one cable would perform better than others.

Same as THX. THX simply is a certification to say that certain equipment meet the min requirement. Doesn't mean that without the THX certification equipment would be below par. In fact, some equipment without THX certification exceed THX requirement. What certification brings to consumer is a confirmation that the specs is accurate and according to the specification

What we want to educate the mass is if both HDMI cable are certified, the picture quality would be the SAME. If one claim to improve picture quality or improve black levels compare to others, then I would say "BULLSHIT"

This post has been edited by pierreye: Aug 19 2010, 11:03 PM

I think both Digitech and JChong have their point in the discussion.

What JChong ask is if uncertified cable meet the HDMI requirement on bandwidth, there should be no difference in picture quality which I agree.

Digitech argument is if the cable is uncertified, then there is no way end user will know whether it will work as good as certified cable. Again, the point here is customer is taking a risk. If he get a good batch of HDMI cable, then it should work as good as boutique brand cable. Another problem with cheap unknown cable is some cable is a mixture of iron and copper which is very thin. Not PURE COPPER. So when it's bend more than certain degree, it'll break the cable. I don't believe in mixing silver in copper wire will increase the video picture quality. Also shorter length for less than 6', the tolerance for build quality in cable is lower.

So can we agree that if both cable are certified, both should display the same picture quality as required by HDMI standard?

My take is if you throw in RM 1k for 3 ft HDMI cable and expect to see a difference, it must be placebo effect. But as long as you feel good touching a RM 1k cable, who cares? It is your money and as long as you are happy with your purchase, that's a money well spend.

This post has been edited by pierreye: Aug 20 2010, 09:47 AM

You can't go wrong with Belden cable. Do you know that some boutique brand use customize belden cable just changing the jacket or add on braiding and sell at crazy price?

Audioholics been tellling people that boutique cable is a scam. The equipment can't find any scientific proof that expensive cable is better than cheap cable. In fact, there is a blind test where 50% of self proclaim audiophile choose copper cable strip from a night lamp better than USD1k exotic cable.

Most of the exotic cable claim that equipment can't measure their "special" cable and only audiophile ears can differentiate the difference. Then they say it had to be base on "faith". Faith to me means no proof, just believe it. Also read on Randy foundation that offer USD1m for anyone can differentiate an exotic cable compare to cheap copper cable. So far no one win USD 1 million.

What we had been trying to tell you guys if you had money to spend, upgrade your speaker and amp first. Some people buy a RM 1k speaker cable for RM 2k speaker. I would advice spend RM100 on the speaker wire (get cheap belden bulk cable) and spend RM 2.9k on speaker.

Check this out:
http://www.matrixhifi.com/ENG_index.htm

This post has been edited by pierreye: Aug 21 2010, 12:39 PM

Yeah... do a real ABX test. We will award anyone that can differentiate the cable with Lowyat Golden Ear Awards. I'll sponsor him to Randy Foundation to take the ultimate USD 1million test and split the money.

Anyone had Dune 3.0 to try out 12bits output. I believe in the forum, somebody mention certain HDMI cable failed when switch to 12bits deep color. Also, I'm interested to try out 12bits output from Dune through my 40' long BJC Series 1 HDMI cable.

This post has been edited by pierreye: Aug 22 2010, 12:13 PM

If it can pass the 12bit test, then I would say it should pass 8bit PQ with flying colors. Good buy

This post has been edited by pierreye: Aug 23 2010, 10:38 AM

If you have a source that can output 12bit and your tv accept deep colour, then you can try it out. Anyway, Tesco allow for refund within a day.

Is there a difference between DVI straight to HDMI? Not that I know as the adapter doesn't had any electronics inside. It's electrically compatible. I had use 3m DVI to HDMI cable and compare to DVI to HDMI adapter + HDMI cable, and can't see any difference. Only thing to watch out is if you use ATI video card and need HDMI audio output, you need to use ATI DVI to HDMI adapter + HDMI cable. I do agree get an adapter and HDMI cable would be more flexible in the future.