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HDMI sucks:

HDMI is a horrid format; it was badly thought out and badly designed, and the failures of its design are so apparent that they could have been addressed and resolved with very little fuss. Why they weren't, exactly, is really anyone's guess, but the key has to be that the standard was not intended to provide a benefit to the consumer, but to such content providers as movie studios and the like. It would have been in the consumer's best interests to develop a standard that was robust and reliable over distance, that could be switched, amplified, and distributed economically, and that connects securely to devices; but the consumer's interests were, sadly, not really a priority for the developers of the HDMI standard. ... HDMI has presented a few problems. Unlike analog component video, the signal is not robust over distance because it was designed to run balanced when it should have been run unbalanced (SDI, the commercial digital video standard, can be run hundreds of feet over a single coax without any performance issues); the HDMI cable is a complicated rat's-nest arrangement involving nineteen conductors; switches, repeaters and distribution amplifiers for use with HDMI cable, by virtue of this complicated scheme, are made unnecessarily complicated and troublesome; and the HDMI cable plug is prone to falling out of the jack with the slightest tug. On the plus side, in the great majority of simple installations,

This comes up whenever audiophile cables are discussed, but it's worth repeating: don't buy the cheapest cable.

I'm not sure if you read the follow-up article, but this bears repeating.

The cable that was used for comparison was the cheapest cable. In fact, it didn't even pass the Cat-6 certification tests done by Blue Jeans Cable after the even had finished.

But even with that nobody could tell the difference in the final sound quality.

Get a bonded pair series 1 cable from Belden. I use a 25 footer daily from a mac mini and get 1080p no problemo either from an internet stream, file, or Blu-ray. http://www.bluejeanscable.com/...

Getting pushed around? Not used to having to deal with someone that can bite back? Keep in mind this is the company that has a track record of attacking any and all start-up cable and connector makers.

This is a great read - a small-time cable maker basically telling monster suck it after they sent their default "infringement" claim. http://www.bluejeanscable.com/...

I'm not sure if you understand what "lossy" means.. it doesn't have anything to do with degradation of the medium. Maybe I'm missing your point.

As for monster cables, the difference in sound quality is negligible at best, but with lossless vs lossy (mp3 vs CD) there's a huge difference in sound quality. A lot of people have grown up listening to mp3s or have been listening to them for years, and they don't even know what a really good recording sounds like. But as many have said.. they don't care. I can appreciate a decent sound system, but I know that many people just don't.

Here's a reason to never buy monster cables -
http://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/index.htm

And if you think monster cables are overpriced, there are companies that try to sell speaker cables for $25,000. - Presumably for people that like to tell other people how much they paid for them, then convince themselves they can hear the difference

No one thinks that the cable quality isn't important. For long runs, it is very important. But, the cables sold at Best Buy don't have important information (like the gauge of the cable) on the packaging, and they are terribly over priced (often priced 5-10 times higher than they should).

There is a vault of very valuable information about buying the right cables to avoid signal loss at this site. The "Tartan" brand cables made by the owners of that site are extremely good for the price, and I use them exclusively for anything over 15-20 feet.

HDMI is there because it's a good standard for a digital connection and has smallish connectors.

Not exactly

Kurt Denke's response to Monster was legendary, and can be found here.

Notice that he doesn't admit, concede, claim or offer anything at all. Just asks for a proper claim to be stated, and makes a few salient observations.

In your position, I'd get a lawyer like Kurt Denke to write my response to the BSA.

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/hdmi-dvi-cables/index.htm Are these then also illegal because they fall outside of the narrow definitions of HDMI connectors on both ends.

An interesting tale about the HDMI spec.

There are several issues I see with your claim

1: long runs are often made up of multiple parts for practical reasons. For example the source may connect to a wall plate which connects to another wall plate which connects to your projector. Even if the individual cables are all compliant the combination of three cables and two wall plates may not be.
2: just because a cable has a mark on it doesn't mean that mark is valid. Unless you have expensive test gear your only indication as to the likelihood of the marks being valid is the manufacturers reputation.
3: unless you have expensive test gear you have no way of knowing if your sources and sinks are out of spec, just about in spec or in spec with room to spare.
4: I have seen a claim that the testing requirements for HDMI cables are somewhat lax with regards certifying a cable at one length and then letting manufacturers make cables of other lengths without recertification. http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/certified-hdmi-cables.htm

Agreed. The "snake oil" type claims make it easy to overlook that there are legitimately better HDMI cables that are useful in some situations, especially long runs. This dealer's page explains the technical issues very well, besides offering different grades of cables to match requirements: http://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/hdmi-cables/hdmi-cable.htm

HDMI certification is rather odd. You can certify a 2m cable of a certain line, then sell a 20m cable of that same line as certified. http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/certified-hdmi-cables.htm?hdmidept has more info, as well as a lot about the testing process.

Or you can just order from a vendor that doesn't bullshit.

Plug: http://www.bluejeanscable.com/

Thank you for that link, that place looks awesome. I will definitely return there the next time I need a cable.

Or you can just order from a vendor that doesn't bullshit.

Plug: http://www.bluejeanscable.com/

I ordered a 35' HDMI/DVI cable so I could put a slightly noisy machine in a closet away from my desk area.

Who's the idiot?

The fact that the first one seems to be a simple cable and you need a nonstandard HDMI port that can output analog signals to use it.
http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/component-to-hdmi-cable.htm

we have, on rare occasion, seen devices which provide a nonstandard wiring setup where it is possible to route analog component video through an HDMI socket. These devices are extremely rare, and if you have one, your user's manual will clearly state as much. Unfortunately, because there are a few such devices on the market, there are now "HDMI to Component" cables being marketed in various outlets (we've seen them on Amazon and eBay), and the sellers of these products often do not appear to realize that they will work with only a very small, limited class of devices. Don't buy one just to try out; unless your manual says it will work, it WILL NOT.

The second one actually converts the digital signal lo analog and should work with any device.

Blue Jeans Cable is an excellent source of HDMI cables, and information. That link will actually lead to their slightly less than reverant overview on HDMI which is quite informative.

For less information and more cabling, go here instead.

I do not work for or have any association with the above except that they sent me excellent cables as ordered for a good price and had excellent pre-sales customer service via E-mail.

Blue Jeans Cable is an excellent source of HDMI cables, and information. That link will actually lead to their slightly less than reverant overview on HDMI which is quite informative.

For less information and more cabling, go here instead.

I do not work for or have any association with the above except that they sent me excellent cables as ordered for a good price and had excellent pre-sales customer service via E-mail.

Therefore, if you needed a long enough HDMI cable, as the voltage drops enough from the transmitter to the receiver, you'd start seeing the difference between low quality and high quality cables in that the good cables would work and the others would cut out frequently or not work at all.

Signal loss and error rates aren't about "voltage drop", it's about signal loss and noise gain. Ultimately what matters is the S/N ratio. Also, the HDMI cables are designed with specifications for the allowed signal loss and still transmitting error free transmissions. (The people who designed HDMI weren't stupid and know about signal loss). Unless you're talking about very long cables of 50 feet, I'm guessing the "differences between high quality and low quality" cables are all in your head.

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/how-long-can-hdmi-run.htm

HDMI signals that aren't quite good enough for the transmission length and bit rate they're being challenged with do not necessarily fail in a binary "get a picture/don't get a picture" way. On the edge of failure, there's a class of bit errors that are measurable and possibly visible but not so bad that the connection drops altogether. There's a decent intro the topic on the Blue Jeans HDMI Cables Overview, and the visual pattern just before the connection becomes unusable is usually described as a "sparkle". This is not unique to HDMI; similar DVI sparkles have been described for years.

This is not intended as a defense of Monster's products though. Even those paying attention to sparkle issues and the like know that there are plenty of cheap models from sources like Monoprice that work just fine; the comments at CNET on HDMI are a fair description of the marketplace.

Monster cables don't look any better than any other quality made cable... (see Blue Jeans )

You shouldn't confuse Psychosomatic Video Nirvana with Monster successfully ripping you off!

If they really did that, it was years after they intimidated Auto Shack to rename itself Auto Zone.

At least Rat Shack doesn't abuse design patents to try to stifle competition.

Hmm. Maybe the whole "Rat Shack" thing is the reason they're changing their name.... Won't work, though. We'll always jokingly refer to it as the Rat Shack. :-)

Dumb name or not, as long as they continue to sell component parts and soldering gun tips, I'll keep going there. They tend to carry the parts that Fry's doesn't and vice versa. If they drop that, I probably won't set foot in one ever again; they quite literally have nothing else of interest to me or anyone I know.

Rat Shack? There's no T in radio. It was the Rad Shack, the totally tublular place we all hung out at during the 80's.

If they really did that, it was years after they intimidated Auto Shack to rename itself Auto Zone.

At least Rat Shack doesn't abuse design patents to try to stifle competition.

Hmm. Maybe the whole "Rat Shack" thing is the reason they're changing their name.... Won't work, though. We'll always jokingly refer to it as the Rat Shack. :-)

Dumb name or not, as long as they continue to sell component parts and soldering gun tips, I'll keep going there. They tend to carry the parts that Fry's doesn't and vice versa. If they drop that, I probably won't set foot in one ever again; they quite literally have nothing else of interest to me or anyone I know.

No, design patents are not idiotic, they help prevent terrible knockoffs. They can be used in idiotic ways (http://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/index.htm), but they are not in and of themselves idiotic.

As an added bonus he's hysterical. You have got to read the letters. :)

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/index.htm

He needs to talk to the Blue Jeans cable guy who previously was a lawyer: the Monster Cable incident

Its digital...plug it in, if it works it works if not it doesn't...that simple. The connectors are the same, its just whether or not it can handle the bandwidth.
Here is a good read.
http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/belden-hdmi-update.htm
If the signal falls inside of that little window it may get interpreted wrong but there are enough error correcting codes to figure stuff out.
Either way...buy the $5 cable see if it works, if not spend a couple more bucks but not over $100

HDMI is a digital signal format, developed primarily as a platform for the implementation of HDCP (High Definition Content Protection) to prevent consumers from having complete access to the contents of high-definition digital recordings. As one might expect from a standard that was developed to serve the content provider industries, rather than the best interests of the consumer, HDMI is something of a mess. [..snip..] As more and more manufacturers move to implement HDMI on more home theater devices, however, it falls to the consumer to try to make the best of this dubious and poorly-thought-out standard.

This was directly after I had to return some 30' HDMI cables I got from monoprice for not working at 1080p from my xbox360. This put me in a crunch to get new ones since the drywall was about to go in.

I found Blue Jeans Cable referenced on AVS Forum (you will can weeks digging through A/V topics there) and saw their location was just up the street from where I work. They said I could pick it up in person and waived the shipping charges within a day!

The cables are of excellent quality regardless of the price - which happens to be very affordable. I was most concerned about the HDMI cables at that length, but their website said it should work - and they did with flying colors, so to speak. I got their top of the line for the 1080p and the cheaper Tartan for DirecTV stuff (top res is 1080i), but it turns out I had no issue with their Tartan cable at 1080p either.

I was impressed with their operation.

Sorry for sounding like a marketing cheerleader, but I'm pulling for them, especially after the entertaining read. These are good guys, selling great product at excellent prices. They have earned my future business and do not deserve to be on the litigation receiving end of unethical competitors.

Entertaining enough to justify a purchase. I'd been putting off getting HDMI cables for my projector for a while anyhow. http://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/

Ditto. Already on their website . Click on the HDMI link on the left side. Its really interesting.
This guy is no fool!

I would have liked to have know about monoprice sooner...

I just switched over to http://bluejeanscable.com/ not 15 minutes ago. :)

I would suggest getting all of your cables from Blue Jeans Cable from now on. I know I will; Their prices for HDMI cables are almost as low as monoprice's.

... buy all of my overpriced cables at Blue Jeans Cable from now on (obviously I'm not a customer of either company)

This is also a great piece of guerrilla marketing - maybe they are well known in their field but I had never heard of Blue Jeans Cables before today ...

HDMI? sleek? sexy? Clearly you've never seen a HDMI cable made from this stuff.

The specs down the bottom proudly include:
Overall diameter: 11mm (approx. 7/16 inch)

1.1cm!

That said, it's able to carry a HDMI signal, within spec, for well over 100 feet. Not that you need that when your xbox/blu-ray player/ps3/media centre/whatever is 5 feet away from your flatscreen, but yeah... thick cable. (It's crazy the hoops you have to jump through to get full HDMI 1.3a compliance, apparently. 1.2 was pathetically easy to work with, and could be done fairly cheaply. Most thinner cables won't pass 1.3a tho, it's much more strict about the degradation over 40 feet)

I buy my cables from Blue Jeans Cables in Seattle. They're not quite as cheap as the GP's supplier, but they are excellent quality:

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/

Last I checked and tested the longest a *COMPLIANT AND CERTIFIED* HDMI cable could go was 40 feet. Anything further without increasing the thickness of the wires caused massive problems, and that's across HDMI 1.2 and 1.3 spec.

So where the fuck did you buy your 50 foot cable?

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/how-long-can-hdmi-run.htm

Maybe you just need better speaker cables.

I suspect that cat6 has very good economies of scale in place. Plus the connectors are cheap.

The rest is good vs bad engineering:

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/whats-the-matter-with-hdmi.htm

Ethernet carries packet-based protocols which have error correction. If one packet corrupts, no problem. HDMI is a constant stream, so any glitches will show up on your TV.

Well except for an HDMI cable, the PS3 comes fully-loaded. You get Ethernet and wireless and can download game demos and movie previews as soon as its plugged in and set up. I recommend getting a good quality HDMI cable from Blue Jeans Cable or something and I'm glad they don't include one (raising the price, and only helping people who have HDMI capable TVs, and possibly not being high quality).

Many thanks to Bluejeans Cable for providing this article for our site.

Actually, you do not.

HDMI has better quality and support for higher resolutions than VGA

Wrong. VGA is an analog signal and its resolution is not limited. The highest common for resolution for VGA displays is 1920x1200 (2-page, WUXGA).

HDMI incorporates error correction in the specs.

Again, wrong. And might I add, error correction is useful for data, useless for video. You're not going to re-send a video frame when it gets screwed up unless you're not worried about sync.

Finally, if you are using CRT then you should get with the fucking program and upgrade to a display technology that isn't 110 years old.

CRT still has the best black levels and colors.

It's obvious you don't know anything about video standards. Read up and compare HDMI to SDI for interfaces...it's not even close.

Monster Sound is not for audiophiles, it's for wannabe audiophiles. It's actually an even bigger ripoff than most of the real audiophile stuff if you ask me, because they don't actually do anything expensive or use more expensive materials - they just hike up the prices. Of course, smart people use places like Blue Jeans Cable.

Since I am no video expert and no I don't talk to sales people at bestbuy, here is the article I was talking about.

http://bluejeanscable.com/articles/whats-the-matte r-with-hdmi.htm

Educate :)

Monster may help on analog audio, but doesn't do jack for digital.

Please no, not even for analog. Monster is like the Bose of cable. Don't feed the marketing machine. Buy cable just as good for less at places like Blue Jeans Cable.

I'm not defending Monster by any lenght. They do make nice cables; however you can find the same thing for about 1/4th the cost else where.

I've seen more than my share of resistance issues. (why the GW Solarcar came in 4th place in the 1995 GM Sunrayce -- because we used conductive epoxy, which caused oxidation on the aluminum, but not until we had some current going through them for a day or two).

That being said, I can think of a few reasons why different cables might be better than others. (I'm not going to justify a specific brand, though, as I'm guessing that there are plenty of other quality products without the extra price).

Others have already commented on resistance, shielding and connector quality -- all very important. You also have issues with the quality of the wire. (microstranded wire can take tighter turns, where you might not be able to get a standard cable to ... but of course, you don't want to keep too tight of a radius in the long term, but it can be useful when you're trying to snake them through initially). There can also be impedance mismatch, which can cause problems, if you're using cables that were made for a different specification.

Oh -- and as to the jewelry comment -- count the number of Hummers/Lexi/Lincolns/etc in a Walmart parking lot. It amazed me.