Home > Consumer Reviews > HDMI (2 meter) 6 foot cable HQ 1080P 1.3b

Get these cheap cables. They are as good as expensive Monster cables -- better actually. Why? HDMI is a digital-signal only cable. There is no analog signal to get religious about. Bits is bits. A Monster zero is no more zeroish than a four-dollar cable's zero. Ditto for ones. Here's some fun facts. The HDMI 1.3 spec tells us that all HDMI cables have to be certified as meeting the standard in order to use the HDMI name. HDMI 1.3 runs a 10.2 Gbps (gigabits per second). For perspective, this is 21 times faster than USB 2.0 at 480 Mbps. Fast.

The standard was cleverly designed to be robust, reliable, efficient (low power), high capacity, and LOW COST to manufacture. The HDMI cable contains 4 high-speed low-power differential-signal shielded connections -- in addition to 5 volt power and some low-speed digital signals for devices to talk back and forth to each other. Three of the high-speed connections carry respectively the red, green, and blue uncompressed video bitstreams. The fourth carries a synchronous clock, which cunningly allows the receiving chip to economically recover the bits in the other 3 channels at this extreme speed. Uncompressed audio is also sent (on a time slice basis) over the 3 video channels. Whereas the 1.3 spec supports 10.2 Gbps, your BluRay player rarely exceeds 5 Gbps -- depending on content such as color depth and the number of audio channels. There's plenty of excess capacity in your cheap cable. (Read the FAQ and white papers at HDMI dot ORG for more.)

So why is this dinky cable better than an expensive one? The Expensive Brands have wide-diameter cables with unnecessarily long connectors. This must give the appearance of being totally awesome. However, the wires INSIDE are the same size and layout as for any other HDMI cable. They must be in order to match electrical capacitance, impedance and shielding parameters required conform to the 10.2 Gbps spec. But, importantly, this bulky bloated thickness puts weight and tension on the connectors of your expensive LCD TV and BluRay player and other equip. Why would you want to put mechanical stress on these sockets? Bad idea. And their bits are not better bits: just 0s and 1s. I have these cables. They work.

Comparative Results: Technically Average, Overall Value Excellent (4 stars for build quality, but still the best value)

**Explanation**

Explanation of technique used for Review (actual results are below with accompanying title).
My first inclination when I received this cable, was to attempt to do a side-by-side comparison of various HDMI cables to determine what benefit, if any the various cables provide. To make such a test fair however, I had to find identical televisions, input devices, (cable box, blu-ray, standard dvd, etc), and a place to put them; as you may imagine this proved to be way more effort than it would be worth.
After contemplating the issue I came to the conclusion that such a test would be pretty worthless anyways. Since I (like most people) never watch identical televisions side by side the real question lies in whether one HDMI cable improves the picture enough that it is discernable without viewing the pictures simultaneously. After all, if a viewer cannot discern a difference between the two without looking at both together, then there is no justifiable reason to buy one over the other.
With this in mind I used the following equipment to test the cables:

Television: Sony Grand WEGA KDS-55A2000 55-Inch SXRD 1080p Rear Projection HDTV

Cables:
1. HDMI Cable 6ft 6 ft 1.3 1080P FOR PS3 TO DVD LCD HDTV
2. Cables To Go 98035 Premium HDMI v1.3 Digital Audio/Video Cable (8 Feet, Black/Grey)
3. Mediabridge - 6ft Ultra-High Speed HDMI Cable - 120 Hz - Version 1.3 Category 2 - 1080p - PS3 - Blu-Ray
4. Monster M Series M1000 HDTV HDMI Cable (8 ft. / 2.43 m.)
5. Sony 5mm High speed HDMI cable ver. 1.3 (White)

Inputs:
1. PlayStation 3 80GB
2. Optimum HD Cable Box/DVR (not sure of the model number)

**The Test**
To conduct the test I had my wife label each of the cables with a number, the cables were mixed then piled together behind the television. With my wife assigned as the operator. I and two friends sat on the other side of the television. We watched pieces of Planet Earth on Blu-Ray, as well as Transformers on Blu-Ray and Standard Def. In addition, we watched the same song from American Idol in both HD and SD, and portions of an NBA playoff game.
Each of us had a card numbered 1-5 with space for comments on image quality, sound, etc., for each cable. The test was, as aforementioned, blind. This was to ensure that one of my friends (one of whom provided the $200 monster cable) and I, owner of the .01 + shipping no name cable (and most of the other ones) would not be biased by knowing it was our cable. If you shell out $200 for something you really want it to outperform, which creates bias.

And now:

**The Results**
All three of us agreed that there were no conclusive differences in the test. After a lot of switching between various inputs the conclusion was that while we occasionally perceived slight differences it was never clear and would be impossible to tell if the two pictures were not side by side.
Thus I must conclude that these 5 HDMI cables are, for all practical purposes, identical. Which means that they all had average performance and the main purchase determiners are price, aesthetic quality and build quality.
So to sum up, taking into account my opinion of the different cables, the HDMI Cable 6ft 6 ft 1.3 1080P FOR PS3 TO DVD LCD HDTV is the cheapest and feels it, it will probably need to be replaced soonest as well but at .01 cent plus shipping you can afford to. The Cables To Go 98035 Premium HDMI v1.3 Digital Audio/Video Cable (8 Feet, Black/Grey) and Mediabridge - 6ft Ultra-High Speed HDMI Cable - 120 Hz - Version 1.3 Category 2 - 1080p - PS3 - Blu-Ray were pretty similar but I like the design and build quality of the Cable-to-Go a little more, it feels more solid, I feel like this one would last a while longer than the first cable but I didn't do any endurance tests. My least favorite of the bunch in terms of feel/price was the Sony 5mm High speed HDMI cable ver. 1.3 (White) which I felt, was very thin and cheap feeling considering its price tag, I wouldn't bet that it would outlast either the Cable-to-Go cable or the Mediabridge. The Monster M Series M1000 HDTV HDMI Cable (8 ft. / 2.43 m.) is well made and aesthetically pleasing and looks as if it will last you until something replaces HDMI, I cannot however recommend it because the price tag is simply preposterous, as it provides no visual or auditory improvement.

Was skeptical because of the low price, considering that most HDMI cables at Circuit City, Wal Mart and Best Buy among others were 50 bucks and up. So i decided to gamble my money on this. Ordered it, and got it in a few days. Hey it works!!! It does what its supposed to do, so I cant complain. My PS3 games look awsome with this cable pluged into my HD TV. And I only spent 12 bucks.

Wanted to get an hdmi cable for my new Sony 1080p set to connect to TiVo HD. Looked around and didn't feel like paying store prices (ridiculous). Much to my delight there were loads of choices and very cheap. Ordered it, came pretty fast, plugged it in, and it just worked. This is how things in the world should work. Maybe all the other inexpensive cables work just as well--probably do. I just know that in my case this one has worked fine for about a month now. Going to get another one.

Got the cable for my time warner dvr and a brand new samsung series 7 LCD tv. At first had trouble getting it to work with the crappy cable box and most blogs online reported the problem. Supposedly HDMI 1.3 doesn't work with older boxes. Not true, all you have to do is make sure in devices setting on your box(rather than audio settings) you have HDMI selected for audio output. If you are still confused called the cable company and they will explain...

Cable works perfectly well, don't get ripped off by buying $90 cable in the store...