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In Reply to: RE: HDMI or component video cables for HD cable box to HD TV? posted by WoodyWW on April 29, 2008 at 09:49:00
Hi Woody!
HDMI cables are ALL different, and NONE provide 'perfect' information transfer. Not even close. The use of ferrites on the cable will improve the video image dramatically. For an incredible value, Blue Jeans Cable's HDMI is superb for $30 bucks. A "Big Blocker" ferrite on the TV end and you'll be in hog heaven, rest assured. Also, use a 193M Hammond choke for ultimate color saturation and detail. A Quantum Symphony in parallel at the outlet will just take it all to a whole new level, as well. I have a post in the 'Tweaks/DIY' section from just a few days ago which goes into this in detail in talking with cheap-Jack. As he makes clear as well, every HDMI cable has a different look and performance level.
But as for perfect video, it is akin to CD's 'perfect sound forever' claim: wishful thinking at best. In fact, as I said in my other post, I spoke to an engineer/designer at Better Cables (another excellent HDMI cable, for about $90), when I tried to DIY an HDMI cable. He agreed with my assessment that the design of HDMI was exclusively for convenience (surround just has too many wires for most folks to deal with), as it puts ALL those cables into ONE! Bad! Very bad! (I have down loaded the HDMI patent application to do the DIY I wanted, so I have some idea of what these cables are doing.)
But you can't escape the drawbacks of the HDMI format, because the design of HDMI uses a multiplexing of the signals for both audio and video down a single conductor. Yes, you heard right: the audio and video are sent down the SAME CONDUCTOR! Again, very, very bad! DVI was MUCH better in design for video information transfer, but it means lots of surround cables to run the audio separately. But by having the video on its very own cable, the Better Cables guy said, the DVI will pass the video stream with less interference than an HDMI. BUT, the HDMI signal carries VASTLY more signal information than what the DVI format is capable of.
Accordingly, folks erroneously believe that the HDMI cable ITSELF is a 'better' design than DVI. Not true at all. If you took that 1080p video signal and kept the audio out of it it, both your audio AND video would improve by eliminating interactions between them. (THAT'S what I was trying to do with the DIY HDMI.) Meaning that the design of keeping these signals separate, and not together for consumer convenience, yields greater benefits than squishing them all together and hoping they don't interact.
Dog, how I wish all HDMI cables were the same, or better yet, they all actually DID lossless transfer of video information. That would be great, no doubt. But the manufacturers are pulling the same shit on us that they did with so many other products: they tell tall tales of the performance levels of their products that they cannot come close to fulfilling. The HDMI format is spectacular, true. But just imagine what it could be if it was implemented properly! WOW!
And as for component vs HDMI, BrianA just nailed it when he said no comparison. HDMI CRUSHES component in video performance. Besides, component CANNOT DO 1080p HD! I believe it can only do 720. So again, BrianA is 100% correct. I
f you follow the good advice of both of BrianA and myself, you'll get a Blue Jeans HDMI cable, a ferrite, a Hammond 193M choke, and maybe a Quantum Symphony, and my friend, you'll be in video heaven! Guaranteed!
Hope this helps you out, and best of luck. Happy watching!
WS
Follow Ups:
Component can most definitely transmit 1920x1080p resolution. As an example, PS3 games encoded in 1080p (and even the PS3's Xbar menu) can be sent to a display at 1920x1080p resolution over component.
However, copy protection protocol for movies limits Blu-ray and HD DVD output to 720p/1080i and DVD to 480p for component output. You need HDMI, which uses HDCP, to output 1080p from a Blu-ray, HD DVD or DVD player.
c
The catch is that the CSS copy protection must not be present. This means that retail DVDs ripped by one of the copy protection defeating programs, retail DVDs that don't use CSS (very few, but an example is Digital Video Essentials) and home movies on DVD can be upconverted via the component connection.
x
Actually HDMI cables simply transfer digital information. On the disks themselves, the video and analog signals are digital and multiplexed. With a decent decoder, this shouldn't be an issue.
We'll have to agree to disagree about human caused global warming until the next global cooling scare comes along.
BrianA-
Are you saying that all HDMI cables perform the same? And do you think after-market tweaks are useless? I mean, different decoders clearly should have varying degrees of performance. But on a single decoder, are you saying no visible difference will exist between different HDMI cables? If so, why? Thanks.
(And what about this 'global warming' remark? The proper term should be 'climate intensification', not 'global warming', anyway. One super volcano eruption or meteor strike would prove that mighty fast! Ice age, anyone?)
WS
...every day, they say. Now it's not even "climate change" (as I've been instructed several times to say, by believers), but "climate intensification". OK... whatever...
Or as the great Welsh sailor/writer Tristan Jones used to say, in mock agreement, "Aye, even the bloody seas are rougher now."
Or as in a Boston Globe front page headline. "The real name of Katrina is global warming". So cocksure of themselves! Alas the predicted hurricane extravaganza never materialized, but that fact never hit the headlines.
Why is that?
clark
so you can tell us all how things are just fine up there in the arctic!
Enough silliness. I agree with you the media overstates and sensationalizes everything, and it is nauseating. However, 'Scientific American' is not what I would call an alarmist or sensationalizing publication, and as a long time subscriber I can tell you that in this very area they are concerned that good science is being swept aside for profits by greedy old men who don't care about anything than their own immediate gratification, regardless of the consequences to others or the world around them. (Unless, of course, you think you're smarter than the internationally recognized climatological experts and editorial board of THAT publication, too!)
Why don't we talk about video and try to 'help' one another, hmmm? Let's leave the 'politics of science' to another forum....
You keep coming on with that stuff, and you get a reply.
"Good science" is being practiced as well by the "skeptics". Why is it that skepticism is highly regarded as healthy, as a rule, but not in the area of "anthropogenic global warming"? Why is it that here, skepticism is tantamount to "holocaust denial"? (I refer you to Ellen Goodman, Harvard '63, in the Boston Globe.) If God and science were really on your side, what would be the need for accusations and demagoguery?
As for "greedy old men", perhaps you don't realize that shareholder participation in American corporations is nearly 50% of the population, which includes widows, women and young children.
By the way, thirty years ago I caught Scientific American telling lies about digital audio, in a blatant promotional effort; I wrote them, and the editor just blustered back. The same magazine has also served as a mouthpiece for Thomas Edison and numerous others. Your trust is misplaced.
clark
The cables should not cause any issues. The adding of ferrites has to do with interference problems, where the high speed edges of the digital signals may be causing problems. Digital data transmission is almost a go or no go situation. Either the transmission is 100% or 0%. There is error correction for errors but that occurrs on the order of once per million bits or so.
Now if the digital decoder is a real cheap one, it may not do a good job of converting the digital data back to video/sound and any noise in the digital signal will end up visible or audible even though it shouldn't be this way.
About the global warming stuff. I post mostly on "The Outside Asylum" a secret part of this website where fully grown men argue like a bunch of kids about politics and religion, with some science/evolution/Global Warming stuff thrown in.
We'll have to agree to disagree about human caused global warming until the next global cooling scare comes along.
Brian A-
Thank you! I liked your post a lot. Anytime I can learn from folks, it's great.
The reason I responded as I did (and let me PLEASE apologize for the apparent dismissiveness of my tone in the original post. Not cool. Very sorry. Hope I didn't offend) was that sometimes when you tell a guy or gal that there's no difference, they just say, "OK", and don't do an investigation on their own. In my personal experience, the cables, all other things being equal, really did present a different level of resolution, and substantially so, whatever the reason for same. (But as you'll see below, I did adopt your approach, ultimately.)
My discussions with the Better Cables engineer backed up my thinking about sending the multiplexed signal on the same conductor, so thus my distaste for the format, However, I DO marvel at it as an engineering coup in many respects, and it can sure as hell save on cable costs not to have to buy nice ICs for the audio.
But your post gave me food for thought. I'm going to look at it from your perspective for a while and see if maybe my assumptions are wrong, and that there is something somewhere else causing the differences that even my 13 year old son says, "Wow!" about. Something IS going on. I want to find out what. But I sure as hell am not going to dismiss what you say out of hand. That's crap, and I'm sorry if I came across like that. No place for that here!
But please note: I DID refer the guy to the CHEAPEST cable. Why? Because what if his system is exactly as you say, i.e., such that there would be no visible difference between any of them? Well, if I told him, "DUDE! You just GOTTA get the WireWorld 'Silver Starlite Biff-Bob Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Ma'am' cable for a gazillion dollars!!!", then I guess I just talked a guy into pissing away some serious bucks. So, in a certain way, I completely backed up your position and approach, which I believe is the best one here: go cheap, as the differences make not be noticeable. I just hope I steered the guy right with the other stuff I told him about, because in my set up, MAN, do those tweaks make a visible difference to all of us here. Worth every penny!
Honestly, we DID see a difference among the cables. [But then again, we could all be simultaneously hallucinatory! : ) ]
Again thanks for the reply. You gave me food for thought, and I appreciate it.
Best Wishes,
WS
PS-
I thought the warming reference was directed to me personally, and thus my confusion. Thanks for the clarification. As for the site where grown men argue, well, I've had enough of arguing (a career spanning three decades as a civil litigator and trial attorney will do that to you.) I think I'll just listen to others, rather than argue with them. And thus, this post.
All the best!
c
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