What HDMI cable?

Anyone tried the 2 cables? Any editor in WHF knows?

CS

Hi there,

Sorry, your question seemed to slip through!

Both are excellent five-star cables. I'd say the QED just pips the Chord in performance-per-pound terms - which is why we named the QED Qunex range as our overall Award winner for video cables - but if you can find a retailer who'll do you a good deal on the Chord, go for it!

 Sort of depends how long a cable you need. I've found the Chord HDMI cables particulary well-suited for long runs without the dreaded sparklies setting in - currently running a 15m to my projector, which admittedly isn't used too often, without any visible problems.

One extra word of advice if you are investing a lot in a longer-length cable: check it before you buy, or at least before you chuck away the receipt - there are still compatibility issues between different cables and different HDMI-equipped kit: i've found certain longer-length cables work between my projector and DVD player, for example, and some don't. All part of the lovely 'standard' that is HDMI....

Agreed - main problem seems to be that some players deliver more signal into the HDMI cable than others, and that some cables lose more signal along the way. An HDMI repeater like this can help for very long runs of cable.

Hi Clare and Andrew. Thank you both for your replies.

Currently I intend to go for either the 1m QED HDMI-SR or the 1.5m Chord HDMI Silver Plus.

Since my DVD player is just located below my TV which will be replaced soon by a LCD TV.

The QED and Chord are both priced at around 80 pounds. And they are sold around the same price here in Singapore. Therefore, I would like to get the cable which is better in video quality. Or are they the same?

Thanks again.

CS

 To be frank, over runs that short, I doubt there'll be much in it between the two. The quality of your player and TV will have much greater effects on the overall performance.

Read my post on HDMI before you buy.  The existing standard 1.2 and forthcoming standards 1.3 are looking to squeeze more data through what is basically a set of twisted pair data cables with no error correction.  The higher data rates will 'stress' the vulnerabilities of the cable standard, and will not address its fundamental flaws. The telecommunications industry has been able to increase data rates over standard copper cable for many years now (e.g. high bandwidth ADSL over copper telephone twisted pairs), but this has been achieved by better protocols and error correction at both ends. Much depends on the length and the 'route' that the cable takes. Put a 90 bend in the wire (if you can) and this causes skin effects more pronounced than that produced by a cable just transmitting analogue signals and hence causes data loss and timing errors. To achieve the higher data rates, some manufacturers are already producing insulation as thick as the cables that you see BT digging up in the roads.  Try routing that in today's modern WAF household. When data packets arrive at different times due to minute differences in cable length (a bit like being on the outside of a race track as opposed to the inside), there is no buffering or retiming at the projector end (now there is a good idea). Hence you may need to buy a repeater. More money spent in order to satisfy copyright protection (HDCP) requirements.  What a money making industry this is!