Try StreamFab Downloader and download from Netflix, Amazon, Youtube! Or Try DVDFab and copy Blu-rays! or rip iTunes movies!
+ Reply to Thread
Results 31 to 60 of 119
Thread
-
-
I'm not interested in the numbers. Data that explains subtle differences in performance doesn't exist, and you know it doesn't. What do you do when you walk into a store and buy a cable, a TV, a PC monitor, an audio amplifier or receiver, or anything else? Do you ask for the quantum data? Hopefully you don't depend on what you see or hear in a showroom; the showroom isn't your living room. If you are of the opinion that all devices sound and perform alike, you have no problem; you make your choice on the features and buttons you want, or price. If you need numbers to judge performance, then you're up a tree. Most of this stuff doesn't come with numbers. You can buy or use whatever you want -- in your experience it's all alike. If that's the case, price isn't even an object. The thing either shows a picture and/or makes noise or it doesn't.
My "procedure" is to usually to do a little research, but many times I just buy it. The ultimate procedure is to live with it and look and listen with calibrated equipment or gear with known performance characteristics to see exactly what it does or doesn't do. I thought I had a Yamaha receiver in mind one time, but at home its HDMI output smeared motion and screwed around with 3:2 pulldown and upsampling with a great many defects. It went back to the store and I exchanged it for something that worked better visually. Can I put a number on that? Not that I know of. If the second product did a better job through the same two TV sets, should I blame both TV sets for the defects I saw earlier? I don't think so. If I audition a new cable and the wife says "Ewww, is that a new wire or something? It looks like everything's a little out of focus," then I guess she's delusional, or maybe she had something for dinner that threw her metabolism out of whack. A good friend of mine invited a group over for a night of watching a couple of classic films, and the first thing we noticed after the movie was playing for a few minutes was murky shadow detail and a lot of noise in highlights. We asked about that. Ah, sez he, he slipped a new cable on us to audition. Hmm. Looks as if we were all delusioned into thinking that something had changed with his setup; he should have announced beforehand so we wouldn't notice (???). Have you ever watched the Criterion edition of Charades and noticed that Audrey Hepburn's skin shadows have a cyan color cast during the first 15 minutes of the movie? Some cables accentuate that problem, some don't. The Monster Cable HDMI I tried was horrible with that movie and several others: everyone had sunburn and subtle cyan blotches in skin. Went back to my QED and all the sunburned actors in all the movies recovered miraculously. If you've listened to the sound track from Meet Me In St. Louis you should be able to hear most of each voice distinctly in the chorus sections of the Trolley Song. If they sound all mushed together, something's wrong. The strings throughout Lawrence of Arabia are a little strident on the BluRay issue; if your HDMI is strident to begin with (Monster, Amazon Basics, monoprice), you should be able to hear the difference between cables. If the sepia opening sequence of Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid displays faces that look oily-shiny with bright edges that "sparkle" because of the "enhanced" contrast and lousy connector in your MediaBridge cable, you need a better cable (and/or you might have to calibrate your TV). IF the soundtrack in Kiss Me Kate sounds flat with no depth and the tapping shoes sound slurry, you might need a better cable. If some of the colorful multi-textured Elizabethan costumes in that movie develop artificial patterns and moire during play, I got rid of that cable and used one that didn't display those problems. In the brilliantly photographed movie My Brilliant Career there are many gorgeous pastoral scenes, one of which has a horse pulling a carriage down a dirt road; with a couple of cables, the brilliance and much of the pinpoint clarity and atmospheric effects on horizons disappeared from those scenes, and the horse's legs developed motion smear through another wire. Reconnecting my old standby wires transmitted those scenes properly, which means they looked the way they did when I saw the movie 7 times in a theater, and the movement of the horse's legs and hooves was distinct and unmarred on both of my HDTV's.
Those are the things I look and listen for. I can't put a number on what those wires do or don't do, because people don't test for that. The only test numbers out there are slanted at works/doesn't-work. They only prove that you get something at the other end of the wire. They don't prove anything else. If these are visual and audible details that you neither notice nor care about, use whatever you want and trust numbers without reservation. Either you get a picture and sound, or you don't. I'm more picky than that.
See my notes above.
I seriously doubt I'd say so, and I know from your posts that you're no liar, but I have no doubt that you consider it a waste of your time.
I can't take back what I see and hear. Maybe others aren't so picky. I can't account for differences in taste. I'm only reporting my own experiences and those of many people I know, including my local classic film club and my wife (who doesn't know one wire from another but does seem to know right away if I've changed something).Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 02:50.
-
Your wall of text critted me for 9999 hp.
I think,therefore i am a hamster. -
Or to answer the original question: Yeah, a cheapie will suffice for most people. I'd rather have something better. There are some pretty good cheapies around. Amazon Basics has a snappy image. So-so audio which is, um, tolerable (how much can you expect from TV speakers?). Best cheapies I've used are from ThatCable.com. Overseas shipping ain't that much. They were worth it IMO.
Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 02:50.
-
Assuming of course that all the cables and HDMI connections you tried included support for all the features your gear needs for optimum performance (like maybe ARC or deep color), the symptoms you are describing seem like they would most likely be related to problems with handshaking/interoperability. http://www.hdmi.org/installers/interoperability.aspx
A poor physical connection can disrupt handshaking, but that is not necessarily the fault of the cable, even if using a different cable corrects the problem. Since so many cables failed to perform, my guess is as to the most likely cause for your problems is that the tolerances for at least one of the physical connections on your gear are a little too close to being off the mark for some wires involved in handshaking. It would also explain why cheap the HDMI cables the rest of us use cause no problems for us.
Of course your wife knows that you have changed something, probably even before you demonstrate it. Wives are usually good detectives, unless they don't actually want to know that something has occurred. -
Those poor connections seem to follow the same cables around from TV to TV, and even follow copies of those cables around to the same TV's and to TV's others have used. If a cable model can't make good connections, I won't recommend it.
You keep saying that some of the cables "didn't work". I never said they "didn't work". Read post #18.Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 02:50.
-
I said they didn't perform. Not performing isn't the same as not working at all. So none of the other equipment followed the cable from TV to TV and everything was properly set up and connected? OK, we're back to you being delusional and everybody else humoring you. Yeah, everybody who knows you humors you to avoid the inevitable consequences of arguing with an someone suffering from delusions.
-
And I'm humoring the rest of you bah-humbug dudes. Sorry to see you're missing out, but this is a little like singing to the deaf and just as tiresome. I use only goods that give good delusions. Many people I know buy the same stuff and have the same delusions. Even when they hook up that same wire or copies of them to other TV's, identical delusions occur. I guess they don't care for the experience of non-delusional consumers who enjoy the dank reality of visual and audible crap coming out of those brand-new HDTV's. Few people actually watch TV nowadays anyway; basically they sit and stare at whatever goes on in front of them while blabbing on the phone or popping open another beer. Some people just like to watch pixels move around, oblivious to content. That's up to you. Thank heaven there are still a great many professional movie makers and video and audio engineers who still cater to the delusional crowd. When consumers take over the design and creation business, the whole world of media will look like some kinda bad UTube experience.
Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 02:51.
-
-
HDMI is digital, so like most communications digital, either the 1's and 0's arrive at the other end or they don't. HDMI either works or it doesn't. Yes there can be pixelation when it's right on the edge of work/don't work, but generally it's one or the other.
Saying you can see/hear differences between cables seems to me like someone claiming an MP3 sounds better when it's transferred to an MP3 player using a higher quality USB cable, or the movie looks better when the video is being read from a hard drive rather than an optical disc, or when a better quality ethernet cable is used, it improves the image quality in web pages. Unless you've got an explanation at to why HDMI is different..... -
-
Kinda like cd music playing too slow due to parts wearing.
I think,therefore i am a hamster. -
You guys best stay at your own literal level and stop misreading to suit your own purpose. You've distorted what I said. Stop trying to bring this forum down to your own Walmart level. People come here for advice about good better and best, not the garbage you guys refuse to leave behind.
Thought I'd leave you teenagers alone to enjoy your own crap advice in peace, but a couple of people from another forum saw this thread and pm'd me about the way you shit on what I've posted. You don't do a damn thing for this forum with crap like this. No one would ever learn anything from Videohelp if everyone here was as lame as you're being right now. If you don't like what I recommended, ask the moderators to delete it. Stop assuming that everyone who comes here asking questions is as close-minded as you are.Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 02:51.
-
Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 02:51.
-
I posted this sometime ago in another thread but, it reminds me of this idiot I used to know.....
He was adamant and went on and on how even if you kept a store bought pressed CD in pristine condition that just from playing it over and over and over the laser in cd players would wear it out or "burn" out the information on the cd eventually making it unplayable!!!
F'n idiot!!
LOL!!! -
First of all, you know that the moderators do NOT delete posts because "someone doesn't like what was recommended". Good grief man. Some asshat from Hungary posted some months ago telling people to go "bugger themselves" because they argued with him over some DTS thing and the moderators didn't even blink. I got threatened with expulsion some years ago for making what I might call "an uncharitable remark" about Australians. Baldrick MADE me edit the post, remove the comment, AND apologize on the forums for it for basically saying that a poster was "typical of Australians" about some thing or another because apparently that was "racist". But you can tell people here to go f*** themselves and use those words or similar ones and nobody blinks. So no, your comments are here to stay unless you edit them.
Second, maybe you have problems dude. I get that for some bizarre reason that defies rational explanation this has become a religious issue to you. It's a weird thing to become a religious issue, but that's how it is. This is WAY too near and dear to your heart. This has gone far beyond "You say X but I say Y" into you have gone cuckoo for cocoa puffs here. When you write posts as long as yours have been on picking a freaking cable, maybe you have just lost perspective if not your mind. You tested over 40 cables by your own admission and rejected 35 of them. At what point does this even seem rational? OK, maybe your wife is nuts too since you claim that apparently she personally shares your belief that all 35 cables you say suck also suck to her. Or maybe you're exaggerating. I'm pretty darn sure your film club friends did not in any way sit through you making 40+ cable changes. Probably you showed them one cable that sucked and one you liked and they agreed with you and you are trying to pass this off as "proof" that you are right. Dude, it's just sad. Why do you care? Crap man, when people come here and want to do dumbass stuff, LET THEM. It's not worth it. Frankly it makes you look bad that you can't let it go, man. And you'll write a book in response to this too arguing your same points over and over again and trying futilely to "prove" that you are right. Sometimes in life the majority is just wrong, but sometimes when everybody else says "It's just not that big of a deal" maybe they're right. -
It's that big of a deal when people shit on your words and claim you're delusional if you don't share in their cultural black hole. None of this changes anything. Many readers come here from three generations of media dumbing-down, so -- ha ! -- what's to be expected? I'm assuming the O.P. has a broader outlook than some people have shown him tonight. Instead of information, we get snide commentary from a couple of South Park rejects.
Meanwhile some visitors and I are enjoying some delusional viewing together. Enjoy your bad connections.Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 02:51.
-
Ron Burgundy: Boy, that escalated quickly... I mean, that really got out of hand fast.
Champ Kind: It jumped up a notch.
Ron Burgundy: It did, didn't it?
go easy fellas, this just aint that important, group hug. -
Nope. Pre-schoolers ought to stay the hell outta here. Every time they post something it's irrelevant toilet humor. I just now let a couple of our visitors take a look at the posts and they stood around the computer laughing and shaking their heads. "You really waste your time with these droolers?"
Yep. It's getting to look that way.Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 02:29.
-
I read post #18 but can't see it's relevance. I'm curious as to how it works. How do the digital 1's and 0's look and sound different depending on the HDMI cable being used? If what you're saying is true.... and the HDMI cable makes a difference to quality..... there must be a reason for it.
I don't understand the MP3 reference, unless you're saying the lossy formats used when encoding movie soundtracks are less time wasting than MP3 for some reason.
I don't have a lot of experience with a variety of HDMI cables. There's only a few of them in this house. One is a very expensive type the salesman "threw in" when I bought my TV/Bluray player to give the impression I was getting a better deal on the TV, while at the other end of the scale the HDMI cable connecting this PC to my TV is about three times the length and a fifth of the price. I can't see a picture difference. I've compared them both to a high quality VGA cable, and while VGA looks very good, there's no doubt HDMI provides more fine detail, even if that fine detail is often just high frequency noise, but I can't tell one HDMI cable from the other.
I googled "HDMI cable quality" and found a whole bunch of links where it's claimed the cable makes no difference to quality, but in the first three pages of search results, not any claiming the contrary, which given the amount of disinformation available on the internet is fairly unusual. I even found a link to a consumer magazine's testing of HDMI cables. Given the title of the article is "Digital AV cables rip-off" I imagine you wouldn't need to read the article to correctly guess the conclusion they reached.
If you're going to disagree with commonly accepted fact, which you're certainly entitled to do, shouldn't you at least be able to offer an explanation as to "why". If it was me I'd want to be able to, even if for no other reason to re-assure myself the differences I was seeing/hearing were real.
Maybe you could ask one of your visitors to post here and offer an explanation for the differences in quality when using different HDMI cables if you're not prepared/able to do so. We're all waiting to be educated. Well at least I am.....Last edited by hello_hello; 17th Mar 2014 at 23:46.
-
Maybe they're wrong. In this case you're dead wrong. I've only seen a lot of toilet humor and mockery around here relatively recently and it's not playing around, it's the low down low-rent cheesy stuff you hear from smart ass fourteen year olds hanging out on street corners trying to show off to each other. Really sad.
Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 02:51.
-
Someones gonna have to step down from alpha male position or this will turn into a **** fight :P
-
I've asked what I considered to be a rational question in a couple of posts. So far it's been ignored in preference to offering a critique on the posting style of others, analogies to religion, and an irrelevant reference to wasting time listening to MP3s. The last one on it's own cost quite a few credibility points but there seems to be no desire to try to redeem them.
-
What kind of sources are you using? making movies by yourself? audio recordings by your self?
I know how HDMI works thus i know that there is no way to do "subtle differences" - if there are some "subtle differences" then probably this is related to recreational weed smoking or drinking alcoholic beverages or way how you've been sleep - not HDMI - HDMI is plainly a very stupid data interface that convert bitmap to serial data with some scrambling and later those data are deserialized and unscrambled, then placed in memory buffer in your TV/audio equipment - there is no place for "subtle differences" in HDMI - there is plenty place for "subtle differences" in your equipment or in your brain.
I'm not buying cable, TV or PC everyday thus i have no problems with this also i'm not trying to express myself trough AV equipment .
Baldrick this one is betterLast edited by pandy; 18th Mar 2014 at 05:29.
-
sanlyn post #8: "The elastic threads from old socks and buttons works well too."sanlyn post #18 extract, to which he keeps referring: "The blind leading the blind isn't the kind of rec a lot of people are looking for."
BTW: Is that popcorn buttered?
Similar Threads
-
How to connect pc to TV by HDMI cable if the pc has no HDMI but USB port?
By coody in forum ComputerReplies: 3Last Post: 7th Dec 2013, 06:55 -
LED MONITOR - HDMI to DVI-D cable, HDMI media player not working?
By krishn in forum DVB / IPTVReplies: 16Last Post: 25th Feb 2012, 17:20 -
Is there an HDMI to RCA audio splitter cable for older 1.0 HDMI tv's?
By Lord Stinkfoot in forum DVD & Blu-ray PlayersReplies: 22Last Post: 10th May 2011, 17:33 -
Unable to use HDMI cable with Scientific ATlanta 8300 DVR cable box
By aimee43 in forum DVB / IPTVReplies: 11Last Post: 28th May 2009, 13:21