PARADIGM, Monster, Belkin and SimplayHD are some of the more common brands of HDMI cables. Cables can be purchased from a variety of different sources such as major brick and mortar retailers (Bestbuy) or through online retailer such as Amazon.com.
When it comes to buying HDMI cables you basically are paying for brand, materials in the construction of the cable, packaging and of course percentage profit for the retailer. A $10 cable is likely to perform just as well as its $50 counterpart for basic viewing of dvd movies or limited applications, however when it comes to Blu-Ray or high speed applications in whcih there is considerable amounts of data being transmitted then the $5 cable will NOT PERFORM as well as the $50 counterpart.
There is an old addage “You pay for what you get” and we are firm believers in such a philosophy. There is no doubt that major brand manufacturers are adding huge margins associated with their products, take for example: PAR-A-DIGM HDMI Cables….when compared with most other non-branded hdmi cables they are expensive however when compared with other branded hdmi cables they are competitively priced. Also during performance tests against other non-branded or cheaply priced cables for high speed data use such as the Blu-ray movies…the cheaper cables performed very poorly and considerable lag was noticed during the movie.
Even through price doesn’t need to be a factor when purchasing your HDMI cable, you will want to consider cable length. Signal strength deteriorates over long cable runs, with approximately 33 feet being the recommended maximum cable length. Keep this in mind when deciding on your equipment setup. A good quality constructed hdmi cable provides excellent signal shielding and minimal RFI/EMI Interference thus resulting in superior performance, and cheaply priced hdmi cable often times have inadequate shielding resulting in signal loss and poorer image quality.
The basic question should be asked?
If Iam purchasing expensive HD and AV equipment…should I not use quality constructed hdmi cables to connect my devices together to achieve the best results. Why would I choose cheaply priced hdmi cables…..it makes no sense.
