CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[kal]

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HOME THEATER QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Sign up for our newsletter and receive Home Theater Questions & Answers right in your inbox! This question is from our March 24, 2008 newsletter.
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Q: Can you recommend somewhere to buy HDMI cables and switchers? Is there a difference in HDMI cables? I've seen some selling for hundreds of dollars! What should I look for?

A: One of the best online manufactures for HDMI cables is Blue Jeans Cables. Excellent quality cables using good parts at affordable prices. No matter what the marketing/sales guys tell you there is absolutely no need to buy esoteric "boutique" cables costing hundreds of dollars. Bits are bits! Spend your money elsewhere!

You can safely run lengths up to about 50 feet reliable with cables from Blue Jeans Cables at resolutions up to 1080p. A high quality 25-30 foot HDMI cable should not cost you more than $50-75 USD. Longer cables often need to pass through walls, so make the cable you use is CL2 rated for fire/insurance reasons. If you need to run longer cables, see our HDMI extender information further below...

For longer HDMI cable runs, make sure to go with a thicker gauge wire. The thicker the wire, the smaller the gauge number or "AWG". If you run extremely cheap HDMI cables with thin gauge wiring for very long distances, you may have problems with what are known as 'sparklies': Little bright flashes of light that appear on the screen from time to time. These are due to data dropouts.

I would recommend either of their two top of the line cables for your main HDMI cable run to the projector (usually more than 20'). Even the most expensive cables they make aren't very expensive.

For very short lengths you can use just about any HDMI cable. We've had no problems with the Chinese made $5 six-foot HDMI cables from Blue Jeans Cables. They're quite well made for the price and work well. You do not need to spend $100 on a 6 foot HDMI cable! Not to mention any names (starts with "MON" ends with "STER"), but whatever you do, stay away from the incredibly overpriced highly marketed cables. While the cables are well made, it's our guess that 95% of what you pay for is marketing.

For HDMI switchers we recommend this low priced 3x1 Smart HDMI Switcher:


If you want something with discrete IR remote the two that do stand out in other forums as being bulletproof and are often recommended by other online sites like Audioholics and Secrets of Home Theater & High Fidelity for their reliability are the following:

OPPO HM-31 Certified HDMI 1.3 and 1080p Switch (3 inputs, IR remote, HDMI 1.3):


As well as the Radiient Select-4ce 4-Input HDMI Switcher (4 inputs, IR remote, HDMI 1.2 only I think if that matters to you):


We used to recommend the Monoprice HDMI switchers but we've had enough emails from owners to no longer recommend them. It seems they can be problematic with certain sources, requiring you to unplug/replug and power on/off devices in certain orders to get things to re-handshake again properly. The ones we recommend above are a little more money than the monoprice HDMI switchers but if they work without hassles the extra $20+ is worth it in my mind.

A note about HDMI cable lengths:

Even the best HDMI cables are only certified to approximately 45 feet when used as Category 1 ("Standard" 1080i/720p at 74.5Mhz) or 25 feet as Category 2 ("High Speed" 1600p at 340Mhz). The distances are reduced in electrically noisy environments or when lower quality (less expensive) cables are used.

For longer cables (up to 200') consider an HDMI extender:

http://www.curtpalme.com/Products.shtm#HDMIExtenders


Kal

[kal]

Register to remove this ad. It's free!

HOME THEATER QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Sign up for our newsletter and receive Home Theater Questions & Answers right in your inbox! This question is from our March 24, 2008 newsletter.
________________________________

Q: Can you recommend somewhere to buy HDMI cables and switchers? Is there a difference in HDMI cables? I've seen some selling for hundreds of dollars! What should I look for?

A: One of the best online manufactures for HDMI cables is Blue Jeans Cables. Excellent quality cables using good parts at affordable prices. No matter what the marketing/sales guys tell you there is absolutely no need to buy esoteric "boutique" cables costing hundreds of dollars. Bits are bits! Spend your money elsewhere!

You can safely run lengths up to about 50 feet reliable with cables from Blue Jeans Cables at resolutions up to 1080p. A high quality 25-30 foot HDMI cable should not cost you more than $50-75 USD. Longer cables often need to pass through walls, so make the cable you use is CL2 rated for fire/insurance reasons. If you need to run longer cables, see our HDMI extender information further below...

For longer HDMI cable runs, make sure to go with a thicker gauge wire. The thicker the wire, the smaller the gauge number or "AWG". If you run extremely cheap HDMI cables with thin gauge wiring for very long distances, you may have problems with what are known as 'sparklies': Little bright flashes of light that appear on the screen from time to time. These are due to data dropouts.

I would recommend either of their two top of the line cables for your main HDMI cable run to the projector (usually more than 20'). Even the most expensive cables they make aren't very expensive.

For very short lengths you can use just about any HDMI cable. We've had no problems with the Chinese made $5 six-foot HDMI cables from Blue Jeans Cables. They're quite well made for the price and work well. You do not need to spend $100 on a 6 foot HDMI cable! Not to mention any names (starts with "MON" ends with "STER"), but whatever you do, stay away from the incredibly overpriced highly marketed cables. While the cables are well made, it's our guess that 95% of what you pay for is marketing.

For HDMI switchers we recommend this low priced 3x1 Smart HDMI Switcher:


If you want something with discrete IR remote the two that do stand out in other forums as being bulletproof and are often recommended by other online sites like Audioholics and Secrets of Home Theater & High Fidelity for their reliability are the following:

OPPO HM-31 Certified HDMI 1.3 and 1080p Switch (3 inputs, IR remote, HDMI 1.3):


As well as the Radiient Select-4ce 4-Input HDMI Switcher (4 inputs, IR remote, HDMI 1.2 only I think if that matters to you):


We used to recommend the Monoprice HDMI switchers but we've had enough emails from owners to no longer recommend them. It seems they can be problematic with certain sources, requiring you to unplug/replug and power on/off devices in certain orders to get things to re-handshake again properly. The ones we recommend above are a little more money than the monoprice HDMI switchers but if they work without hassles the extra $20+ is worth it in my mind.

A note about HDMI cable lengths:

Even the best HDMI cables are only certified to approximately 45 feet when used as Category 1 ("Standard" 1080i/720p at 74.5Mhz) or 25 feet as Category 2 ("High Speed" 1600p at 340Mhz). The distances are reduced in electrically noisy environments or when lower quality (less expensive) cables are used.

For longer cables (up to 200') consider an HDMI extender:

http://www.curtpalme.com/Products.shtm#HDMIExtenders


Kal

[VideoGrabber]

Kal wrote:
> ...with cables from both companies... <

Ah... The only cable company mentioned at all was bluejeans. You need two for "both".

> If you run extremely cheap HDMI cables with thin gauge wiring for very long distances, you may have problems with what are known as 'sparklies': <

The best recommendation would be what length you could trust each cable (28 AWG, 26, 24, 22 and AWG) to operate effectively (say, at 1080i/720p). I've never seen that anywhere myself, but would like to.

[WanMan]

I've compared Monster HDMI cables to $7 HDMI cables from Monoprice and was surprised that even my belligerent eyes couldn't tell a difference. Of course, as long as the digital bit being sent onto the cable is the same bit received at the other end of the cable everything else is a moot marketing point.

[WTS]

I bought a Monoprice 4-1 and it wouldn't work on 1080P, so I bought an Oppo and it works like a charm. For a long HDMI cable (25') I bought BJs best china cable (series 2) and it works great at 1080p.

[kal]

[kal]

[massta]

Any of these switches do a "blend" instead of a "hard" switch?

I guess I'm looking more for a "mixer" than a "switcher", anyone know of any?

Thanks,

[WTS]

If you want something to do a HDMI blend you'll be looking at alot money for that little box. Why would you want to do a blend?

[massta]

[WTS]

Well then I guess you already know what is available for this. Are you blending in the analog or digital domain?

[massta]

[WTS]

Sounds interesting.

[cynix]

I'd like to say a big thank you to Bluejeanscable.com for excellent service.

I'd just ordered the Moome HDMI input card for my NEC XG135 from this site and on the recommendation of this thread also ordered a 25' HDMI cable from Bluejeanscable.com .

Unfortunately they sent the wrong cable (correct length but wrong type), but responded immediately to my email by sending the correct cable and by saying there was no need to return the first one. That was on Friday and the new cable has arrived first thing this morning (Monday) here in the UK, so I can now connect up both HDMI inputs on the Moome card when it arrives.

IME it's rare for problems to be sorted out so quickly and positvely when they occur, so have to give them 10/10 for after sales service here.

[viktorz]

ebay will help us ))