Best type of cable to use

[DaneClark]

I have been playing around with the settings on various things, trying to get the playback on my DVD player to look as sharp and edge-enhanced as possible with as little artifacting as possible. Will using an HDMI cable to connect my TV to the DVD player produce better results with this than the red white and yellow cables? And is it best to have my DVD player set to progressive scan mode?

[sanlyn]

I have been playing around with the settings on various things, trying to get the playback on my DVD player to look as sharp and edge-enhanced as possible with as little artifacting as possible.

sharpen + edge-enhanced = artifacts.

Will using an HDMI cable to connect my TV to the DVD player produce better results with this than the red white and yellow cables?

Yes.

And is it best to have my DVD player set to progressive scan mode?

Yes.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Audioquest%20HDMI
http://www.whathifi.com/review/audioquest-pearl-hdmi

Monoprice fanboys, have at it.

[jman98]

Amazon sells their own brand of HDMI cables for about $6 each that I have been using for years.

I cannot personally recommend sanlyn's cable advice as I feel that those cables are unnecessarily expensive and I warn you that such a recommendation is going to lead to a religious war and take this thread very far from your original simple questions.

[usually_quiet]

Monoprice sells decent budget cables. I have 3 of them. I have tried their 3ft and 6ft cables with 2 different computers, 3 different TVs, a DVD recorder, a DVD player, a cable box, and a Blu-ray player and had no connectivity problems with any of them. Same story with some no-name cables and another cheap cable brand purchased from Amazon.

sanlyn is the only member of this forum I know of who has tried Monprice cables and claims to have had a problem. The fact that he tried other brands of HDMI cables too that he says didn't work right for him leads me to believe that there is something about his gear that is slightly off the mark, but since he paid a fortune for said gear, he blames the cables. Maybe he should read this: http://www.techradar.com/us/news/home-cinema/high-definition/common-hdmi-problems-and-...lutions-923327

[nic2k4]

Will using an HDMI cable to connect my TV to the DVD player produce better results with this than the red white and yellow cables?

Red-White-Yellow RCA connection (Composite) => 480i resolution

HDMI connection => up to 1080p resolution

Unless you have an old TV with a built-in up-converter there's no contest. Some receivers offer up-conversion of analog inputs, this works best with the Red-Green-Blue connections (Component). HDMI is the only digital output on your DVD player and if it has up-conversion capabilities, you'll get the best results possible. If it does it will allow you to manually set the HDMI resolution.

[sanlyn]

sanlyn is the only member of this forum I know of who has tried Monprice cables and claims to have had a problem.

The only one you know of. True.

The fact that he tried other brands of HDMI cables too that he says didn't work right for him leads me to believe that there is something about his gear that is slightly off the mark, but since he paid a fortune for said gear, he blames the cables. Maybe he should read this: http://www.techradar.com/us/news/home-cinema/high-definition/common-hdmi-problems-and-...lutions-923327

I read that. B.S. from the blind. The O.P. likely can't see any better than the average joe. I'd suggest http://www.amazon.com/Mediabridge-High-Speed-Cable-Ethernet/dp/B0019EHU8G .

[usually_quiet]

Looks like sanlyn did not actually bother to read that article. It does NOT claim that all HDMI cable are alike, as one would expect since the source for the information presented owns a company which tests HDMI cables, although it does point out that cables are not always the root cause of HDMI-related problems.

[julitomg]

trying to get the playback on my DVD player to look as sharp and edge-enhanced as possible

IF your DVD player has HDMI output, the answer is absolutely yes, compared to the yellow/white/red cables that come with most standard DVD players.
If your DVD doesn´t have HDMI output, the next best thing is component output; red, green and blue RCA connectors just for video (again, if your DVD player has that)

[sanlyn]

Looks like sanlyn did not actually bother to read that article. It does NOT claim that all HDMI cable are alike, as one would expect since the source for the information presented owns a company which tests HDMI cables, although it does point out that cables are not always the root cause of HDMI-related problems.

You're not paying attention. The problems discussed in that article are not the poor imaging and f*k'd up audio I complain about with many cables, whether they are HDMI or otherwise.

You seem to have some kind of personal jihad against any opinion that differs from yours, experience that goes beyond your glass eye or tin ear, or equipment better than what you own, or anything that's priced above your low-rent, clearance bin standards. You just enjoy spoiling it for the rest of us. I won't apologize for lowering my standards to yours or others' big-box-store mentality or mass marketing hype.

[usually_quiet]

Looks like sanlyn did not actually bother to read that article. It does NOT claim that all HDMI cable are alike, as one would expect since the source for the information presented owns a company which tests HDMI cables, although it does point out that cables are not always the root cause of HDMI-related problems.

You're not paying attention. The problems discussed in that article are not the poor imaging and f*k'd up audio I complain about with many cables, whether they are HDMI or otherwise.

You seem to have some kind of personal jihad against any opinion that differs from yours, experience that goes beyond your glass eye or tin ear, or equipment better than what you own, or anything that's priced above your low-rent, clearance bin standards. You just enjoy spoiling it for the rest of us. I won't apologize for lowering my standards to yours or others' big-box-store mentality or mass marketing hype.

I thought you had no more time to devote to this thread. Well at least now that you have fully exposed your true mentality and personality for all the world to see, anyone reading this thread can consider the source before taking any advice you give.

[usually_quiet]

Will using an HDMI cable to connect my TV to the DVD player produce better results with this than the red white and yellow cables?

Red-White-Yellow RCA connection (Composite) => 480i resolution

HDMI connection => up to 1080p resolution

Unless you have an old TV with a built-in up-converter there's no contest. Some receivers offer up-conversion of analog inputs, this works best with the Red-Green-Blue connections (Component). HDMI is the only digital output on your DVD player and if it has up-conversion capabilities, you'll get the best results possible. If it does it will allow you to manually set the HDMI resolution.

I would also try letting the TV do the upscaling from 480p, to see if I preferred that to upscaling by the DVD player.

If the TV is a 720p HDTV, the screens actual resolution will probably not be 720x1280 to match the standard video resolution. Most have an actual resolution of 768x1366 instead. Since the TV will need to scale regardless, it might do a better job by itself. I'd do the same with a 1080p TV because some TVs upscale better than some DVD players.

Also, DVD players sometimes don't do a good job upscaling their own menus. That has been the case with the DVD player I bought for my parents. The 4:3 menu is easier to read if the TV upscales.

[sanlyn]

True mentality and personality? I dunno, haven't we had enough of this?

Lunch. Listening to the soundtrack of O Brother, Where Art Thou? via my Oppo player, MSB Link outboard DAC, ADCOM GFP-565 preamp and head amp, and Grado headphones. It's amazing how lifelike Alison Krauss sounds with that chorus (Down To The River And Pray). Depth. Deep space. The spread of the chorus is wider than the room I sit in, sounds about 20 feet back. Count every voice, place all four choral sections. Alison singing, hell....when she breathes through this setup and you hear her lips part, it's a revelation. Amazing how much better $3.2K sounds than $99.95 at BestBuy. I consider it well spent.

With $10 to #20 budget I'd go with MediaBridge or, even better, ThatCable.com

Time to calibrate my monitor again.

[usually_quiet]

True mentality and personality? I dunno, haven't we had enough of this?

Lunch. Listening to the soundtrack of O Brother, Where Art Thou? via my Oppo player, MSB Link outboard DAC, ADCOM GFP-565 preamp and head amp, and Grado headphones. It's amazing how lifelike Alison Krauss sounds with that chorus (Down To The River And Pray). Depth. Deep space. The spread of the chorus is wider than the room I sit in, sounds about 20 feet back. Count every voice, place all four choral sections. Alison singing, hell....when she breathes through this setup and you hear her lips part, it's a revelation. Amazing how much better $3.2K sounds than $99.95 at BestBuy. I consider it well spent.

With $10 to #20 budget I'd go with MediaBridge or, even better, ThatCable.com

Time to calibrate my monitor again.

You know what they say about people who must brag about their possessions and what they spent on them.

[Hoser Rob]

... I read that. B.S. from the outdfit that claims all digital TV's look alike, too. The O.P. is likely an average joe...

An "average joe"? Not a ... ahem ... connoisseur like yourself?

(Insert derisive snort emoticon here)

Look, here it is:

A cable should have good quality mechanically ... good shielding, connectors etc. I wouldn't really recommend buying them at the dollar store.

Speaker wire does matter. The resistance shouldn't be too high. An audio power amplifier is a current source into low impedance. The sum of the speaker cable resistance and the amp's output impedance (the inverse of the damping factor) should be no more than 5% of the speaker impedance rating.

However, low level signals are voltage source into high input impedance. For audio there are no electrical characteristics that a cable can have that aren't completely swamped by other deviations from ideal in other components. Especially speaker crossovers.

For things like digital audio or video, the impedance of the cable does matter because, unlike with audio, the frequencies involved are high enough for transmission line effects. I can't believe people think that you can have transmission line problems with speaker cable ... maybe if your speakers were 50 miles from your amp ... God, it's stupid. Anyway, for hdmi there's a standard cable impedance. No problems there.

High priced audio/video cables are completely snake oil.

All those perceived differences among cables that don't have electrical faults are 100% placebo effect. Which is very popular with audio/video salespeople.

[sanlyn]

... I read that. B.S. from the outdfit that claims all digital TV's look alike, too. The O.P. is likely an average joe...

An "average joe"? Not a ... ahem ... connoisseur like yourself?

(Insert derisive snort emoticon here)

Likely not. (Insert second derisive snort emoticon here )

High priced audio/video cables are completely snake oil.

I don't buy price. But most people do: the cheaper the better (Insert third derisive snort emoticon here).

All those perceived differences among cables that don't have electrical faults are 100% placebo effect. Which is very popular with audio/video salespeople.

I don't talk to salespeople about cables. If I wanted advice, I wouldn't come here to read snorts from the herd.

[sanlyn]

You know what they say about people who must brag about their possessions and what they spent on them.

What do they say about people who feel compelled to brag about being cheapskates?

[usually_quiet]

You know what they say about people who must brag about their possessions and what they spent on them.

What do they say about people who feel compelled to brag about being cheapskates?

I worked long and hard, did without and saved for a long time. I've had some of it since 1978; in the long run it's cheaper than buying a $100 player that dies after a year or less and never works that well to begin with. My "stuff" is far from the $30K to $125K some people spend for a single component, and I doubt they get their money's worth. Adcom, Oppo, Grado, Denon....these are big names and far from exotic, except to the Walmart/BestBuy crowd who are getting ripped off every day. I have some $2.98 and $10 HDMI cables as well. You have to shop around. Bargains exist. But assuming that every piece of wire that costs less than ten bucks is alike is up to you. I don't make that assumption, nor do I take the word of those who do.

Since you apparently either weren't raised properly or never paid attention to what your elders told you, bragging about one's possessions and their high price has always been considered vulgar. ...but since you also feel the need to brag about having better taste, better hearing , better eyesight, more intelligence and being otherwise superior to the general public and much of the active membership here, maybe this behavior is more of a mental health issue in your case.


Who is bragging about being a cheapskate? I buy what are generally considered to be average-price consumer products. ...but most of my "cheap" A.K.A. ordinary stuff has lasted a long time, 8, 10, 12, 20 years. Maybe you abuse your possessions if you didn't pay much for them and I don't.

[aedipuss]

quality equipment is great as long as you can afford to keep replacing it as standards change. my grace tonearm on my thorens turntable is wonderful and sounds primo through the all-tube macintosh stuff i have but it's all useless as part of a current a/v setup. so it's all in a different room and only heated up to play the occasional vinyl. listenting to compressed source digital audio through analog tube equipment just has no upside to me, a/b'ing the same music on vinyl and cd and hearing the difference is depressing. just like i wouldn't ever hook up a turntable to a transistor powered amp.

[sanlyn]

Agreed. But some things don't change much. Tonearms like Grace (wish I had one) are made to last, provided you don't treat them the way dj's handle those godawful bonky-bass Technics tables.

Got a $20 HDMI that had to go to a technician, lost a contact inside the shell. Not surprised. I bought it for image and sound, not for construction or price. Tech said it's molded plugs, no way to fix. Okay, another 20 bucks + overseas shipping. Ordered two in case they stop making 'em -- and they did. I checked a few months back, no more 3-meter stock in that model. So I still have a 3-meter spare. Good cheap HDMI's are hard to find. In that respect, most of them really are alike. Friends of mine have the same cable, no problems. You never can tell.

When it comes to good stuff that's a bit more pricey, Black Friday and Dec. 25th can be your friends. Closeouts help, too.

[aedipuss]

mine's a wooden grace 714 on the old ugly td124. most people who look at it think it must be a worthless pos.

i love online holiday deals, in-store first come first served not so much. staples, newegg and best buy on-line deal of the days are all year long treats.

digital cables either work or the 1s and 0s aren't getting to where they belong. trash em. not sure what i think of the "redmere" chipped cables with undersized copper. personally i pass on those and just buy thicker un-assisted cables. i do have 3d and audio return over hdmi so i do use the proper rated cables even though they do weigh a ton and don't bend.

speaker cables i make myself with 12ga o.f. copper and soldier on gold plated ends. i've had copper cables turn green and create flakey connections without the gold ends.