Whats the difference between HDMI cables??

Question

some HDMI cables are $30 other r $50 and some r $100. what's the difference between them??!

Answer 1

It depends on what you are hooking them up to and the capability of your television. Some HDMI are gold plated and it does make a little difference in quality if you can pick it out. But if you buy something in the low range don't be afraid the picture will be better then with a 3 cable and s-video cords. I have a blu ray player and thats the only thing you can hook up to it is a HDMI cable to get the true 1080P picture. The Gold ones are a little better but very expensive so i would go with something in the mid-range that may be gold, make sure you look at what type of metal its made of.

Answer 2

The difference is to some degree materials (e.g. cable wire gauge, strain relief design, connector quality) and build quality, but mainly the degree of markup for fancy packaging and advertizing. Recognize that cables are one of the highest markup items in most stores.  Because profits on components are razor thin, many stores can make more profit selling the connection cables than on the components themselves.

HDMI cable performance is virtually identical at lengths under 15 ft (5 m).  

For better cable designs a cable could work perfectly out to 50 ft or more (assuming the cable were that long), while cheaper cable designs would fail as length exceeded 15 ft or so.  For typical 3-6 ft cables the design differences are irrelevant since performance will be faultless in all cases.

For some enlightening reading, including lab results showing little if any practical difference between expensive and budget HDMI cables see the links.

Given the option look for budget HDMI 1.3 certified cables and be assured they will work as well as any costing much more.

Answer 3

They are all digital and thus, they are all the same quality. Digital signals are received perfectly regardless of how much the signal degraded over transfer.

Answer 4

The primary difference is how much $$ leaves your wallet.  I'll assume you're looking at cables in the 1 - 2 m length range.  If you're talking about cables in the 10-15m range or more, sometimes Monster is better, but not always.  HDMI is a digital cable type.  That means either the signal is there, or not...

Check out monoprice.com or bluejeanscable.com.  Both have excellent quality at a fraction of the cost of Monster.  Bluejeans is slightly more expensive than Monoprice.

I've got 3 Monoprice 2m HDMI 1.3 cables.  I didn't go for the low end ones either.  I've got the gold plated ends and silver plated wire cables, and paid $13 each.

What's with the silver plating and why might one care?  As we all learned in science class, electrons take the path of least resistance.  Silver isn't as good a conductor as Copper, so this forces the electrons to travel deeper inside the cable.  When the signal travels deeper inside the cable, it's less susceptible to external interference.  At a run of 2m or less, it's not likely incur interference, but what the heck, it made me feel better.  And the cables were STILL $70 cheaper *each* than Monster.  For me, that's a savings of over $200, and at most, I blew an extra $27 in total for the super duper cables. :)

Monoprice also has some nice 2m HDMI 1.3 cables in the $4 - 5 range too.  Those cables are not rated for in-wall use, as the ones I selected are.  In other words, you shouldn't run the $5 ones through the inside of your walls.

I'm in no way affiliated with Monoprice, other than being a happy customer.