Monster Cables is a name I hadn't thought about in ages... I mostly remember them as the company that tried to convince people that digital images would look better via a more expensive cable.
The HDMI standard doesn't have a way of telling you that you really need an HDMI 2.2 cable and you actually have an HDMI 1.x cable. It just tries to send the signal, and if the analogue bandwidth of the cable is insufficient, then the error correction will be insufficient and you'll get no signal or snow and blocks.
This is somewhat of a good thing, since many short HDMI 1.x cables will work for standards that require HDMI 2.x.
Not all ‘Ethernet’ cables are the same. Someone will give you 100mbit. Some will give you a gigabit. Some will give you even more. They’ve all got RJ45 on them.
“All HDMI cables are the same” is an almost-baseless corruption of a very valid critique of Monster et al.
RJ45 is a wiring pin-out standard for that plug [1]. It's also a standard for telephony, not networking -- it carries one phone line. A gross waste of pins if you ask me.
[1] Not quite. An RJ45S plug has a tab on the side that will not insert into an 8P8C jack.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-xbox-hdmi-cable-has-anti-...
So yea, “digital” cables are not immune to signal integrity issues, and better cables do perform better.
I understand that monster takes this to the next level of bullshit — but in principle, yes, more expensive cable cable can yield better quality. Or should I say — crappy cable can result in quality degradation
Better cables perform better, but not at all in the way that Monster suggests.
Gold plating and oxygen-free copper doesn't matter.
Any certified HDMI cable will operate at least to its certification, whether or not it is gold plated with triple shielded conductors.
I wish the HDMI forum would officially deprecate all older HDMI standards, so that companies like Monster couldn't advertise that their cables provide "better color, higher resolution, better sound", etc. All the cables in the store would be 8k HDMI 2.2 cables, or they wouldn't be allowed to use the HDMI trademark.
I buy cheap cables from China. They generally work-to-spec out of the...plastic bag, but may not handle frequent plug/unplug cycles or any sort of rough treatment.
If your TV only supports 4k@60 HDMI 2, no need to go buy more expensive cables with specs you can't use. And even then, unless you're playing time-sensitive games, 4k@60 is probably all you need anyway.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668069
DonHopkins on Nov 10, 2017 | parent | context | favorite | on: Electric Sheep on Ubuntu Linux 17.10
I deserve to be downvoted by the literature snobs, but if you liked Blade Runner the movie (and who in their right mind doesn't?), then you may very well enjoy K. W. Jeter's three written sequels to the MOVIE Blade Runner (not the BOOK DADOES), "Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human", "Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night", and "Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon". There is no book "Blade Runner 1" -- that's the movie.
The irony is that Philip K Dick was offered a whole lot of money to write another book entitled "Blade Runner" based on the screenplay of the movie, but he insisted on maintaining the integrity and title of his original book DADOES by re-issuing it with a reference to the (quite different) movie on the cover, instead of rewriting another book called "Blade Runner" based on the movie based on his own book. (Harrumph!) He would have made a lot more money by selling out that way, but he steadfastly refused to do it.
However, fortunately for us, after his death, his friend and fellow SF writer K. W. Jeter (who also wrote an excellent cyberpunk novel Dr. Adder which Dick loved) sold out on his behalf and wrote those three books based on the movie (which referenced famous lines like "Wake up. Time to die!").
They explore the question of what the fuck happened after they went flying off into the wilderness (that unused footage from The Shining), and whether Decker was a replicant. (Who would have guessed??!)
So even though they're not written by PKD, or directly based on his original all time great book, and not as authentic and mentally twisted as a real PKD book, they are still pretty excellent and twisted in their own right, and well worth reading. They're based on an excellent movie based on an epic book, and written by a friend and author PKD respected, who's written some other excellent books.
And while you're at it, check out Dr. Adder and K. W. Jeter's other books too! Especially Noire, for its hi-fi cables made out of the still-living spinal columns of copyright violators. (I suggest you buy a copy and don't pirate it!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_2:_The_Edge_of_Hu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_3:_Replicant_Nigh...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_4:_Eye_and_Talon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._W._Jeter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Adder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noir_(novel)
http://www.indiewire.com/2015/12/watch-u-s-theatrical-ending...
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/jeter_k_w
Jeter's most significant sf may lie in the thematic trilogy comprising Dr Adder (1984) – his first novel (written 1972), long left unpublished because of its sometimes turgid violence – The Glass Hammer (1985) and Death Arms (1987); Alligator Alley (1989) as by Dr Adder with Mink Mole (see Ferret) is a distant outrider to the sequence. Philip K Dick had read Dr Adder in manuscript and for years advocated it; and it is clear why. Though the novel clearly prefigures the under-soil airlessness of the best urban Cyberpunk, it even more clearly serves as a bridge between the defiant reality-testing Paranoia of Dick's characters and the doomed realpolitiking of the surrendered souls who dwell in post-1984 urban sprawls (see Cities). In each of these convoluted tales, set in a devastated Somme-like Near-Future America, Jeter's characters seem to vacillate between the sf traditions of resistance and cyberpunk quietism. In worlds like these, the intermittent flashes of sf imagery or content are unlasting consolations.
[...]
Much of his later work has consisted of Sharecrop contributions to various proprietorial worlds, including Alien Nation, Star Trek, Star Wars [for titles see Checklist]; of some interest in this output are his Ties – they are also in a sense Sequels by Another Hand – to the film Blade Runner (1982), comprising Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human (1995), Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night (1996) and Blade Runner 4: Eye & Talon (2000), and making use of some original Philip K Dick material. The sense of ebbing enthusiasm generated by these various Ties is not markedly altered by Jeter's most recent singleton, Noir (1998), a Cyberpunk novel whose detective protagonist's main job is killing copyright violators so that their still-living spinal cords may be incorporated into hi-fi system cables; the irreality of this concept, and the bad-joke names that proliferate throughout, are somewhat stiffened up by the constant interactive presence of the already dead, a Philip K Dick effect, as filtered through Jeter's own intensely florid sensibility. [JC]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1678420/Blade_Runner_Enha...
A slightly odd review: https://youtube.com/watch?v=vAmXzVuFEoA
All that being said it’s unusual to find a cable that is both clean enough to do the handshake and keep sync but noisy enough to give you visible snow. So it’s still quite true that practically speaking, yes, it’s usually an all or nothing deal. Cable quality can and does matter though. I was a BlueJeans customer for a long time before the brief Monster spat, but it endeared them to me, and I still try to buy from them when I need to buy a cable I need to be absolutely sure of.
The only such error correction I'm aware of is when reading data from a CD, which at this point is a tiny part of digital audio. Is there something I'm missing?
FEC and other types of error correction or recovery is ubiquitous in wireless audio and communications applications including phone calls, Bluetooth, VoIP, wireless microphones, and digital radio. Responsibility for the error correction is sometimes part of the underlying transport mechanism and sometimes incorporated directly into the codec. Encryption & privacy requirements for audio also mean that we solved these problems long ago. IIRC that the WWII SIGSALY encrypted telephone between the US and UK required and implemented error correction.
By contrast, most audio-over-IP formats do not (they rely on the IP-level checks).
Anyway, thanks for pointing out the rather important world filled with codecs that we actually live in.
That's not been my experience with hdmi or dvi. Bad cables or bad connections can result in artifacts in the display. Sometimes bad cables can result in difficulty negotiating but a good result if negotiate succeeds. Bad cables can result in frequent dropouts as the signal quality varies around the threshold.
Differences in cable construction may lead to more or less longevity in difficult environments: frequent connection cycles, movement in the cable, heat/humidity/other environmental stuff, tight bends, etc.
Certainly, once you reliably meet the threshold SNR for accurate reception, a better cable doesn't help much.
Does that need oxygen free, cold extruded in zero-g cables? No. But a well made cable is likely to last longer in challenging environments.