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You're ready to make the plunge into the world of High Definition television. You've set aside some money and budgeted for a new TV, home audio, and DVD player. You walk into your local home theatre store and pick out your equipment and you think you're done with your purchase when the salesperson tells you "Of course, you'll need cables to hook all this gear up!" For a typical home theatre set-up, you can expect to purchase several HDMI or Component Video cables, a Sub Woofer cable, several Fiber Optic cables, and several dozen feet of speaker cable. Soon you'll be peppered with a sales pitch on why you need to spend $300+ on a "high-end" HDMI cable and why it's necessary to spend $100 on a sub-woofer cable. Next thing you know, you'll be staring at a sales receipt that includes over a $1000 in cables and wondering "do I really need all this?" Before you go out and spend a small fortune on cables I recommend that you take a moment to read this article. It could end up saving your hundreds.
Although not all cables are created equal, you may end up paying an unnecessary premium for luxury cables that perform no better than the lesser expensive cables. In essence, you're mostly paying for marketing and how "cool" the cable looks when hooked up to your equipment. The main cables that carry the signal from your source to your TV will either be a Component Cable, SVideo cable, or HDMI cable.
HDMI is a new digital interface that offers true digital signals from your devices and has a transfer rate of 165 megapixels per second (nearly 5 Gbps). What this means to the consumer is that you can enjoy a 100% digital picture and audio in its purest form, with the highest level of detail and clarity. Given that all HDMI interface cables are 100% digital, you will NOT notice any visible or audio difference between a luxury cable and a less expensive one! Recent tests conducted by PCWorld Magazine using precision testing tools showed you can get just as good performance from a $30.00 HDMI cable as you can from a $300.00 one, with virtually no loss in quality.
Component and SVideo cables are Analog based and will always carry a performance hit. Unless your television is compatible with the new digital interfaces, you'll have to contend with some distortion and signal lose when it comes to analog cables. Though there will be some differences between the luxury brand cables and the less expensive brands, the differences would be negligible and barely noticeable by the human eye.
The cable hype is not just limited to TV connections. Audio is another sector where the same hype to buy the most expensive cables come into play. I recently experienced this first hand. I purchased two cables for comparison. One was a "top of the line" subwoofer cable for $150 while the other was a decent, less expensive cable for about $30. I started with the $150 cable, hooked it up and played several DVD scenes from Finding Nemo. The bass coming from the subwoofer was superb! It was thundering out crisp and clean bass without any distortion, even at the highest levels! I was impressed and expecting a let down with the $30 cable. I switched out the cables and played the same scenes at the same levels. The result? They sounded virtually identical! In fact, to my ears there was no difference at all! Both were pumping out beautiful clean sounding, distortion free bass! I returned the $150 cable and kept the $30 one, saving myself about $120 in the process.
Follow these simple rules and you'll be on the way to saving a lot of money.
- Do your homework! Don't impulse buy and spend the extra money on cables just because it's convenient or you’re being pressured by the salesman. Instead, do some comparisons and ask questions to people who may have more knowledge that you do and don't have a biased opinion. I suggest asking around the AVS forums (www.avsforum.com).
- Don't go TOO cheap! A poorly constructed cable is still a poorly constructed cable. If you try to go with the absolute bottom of the barrel cables you can expect their performance to match. The key is to find the balance of price vs. quality. I suggest checking out the Phillips cables from Sam's Club or cables from Acoustic Research. Both are much less than Monster and AudioQuest and the quality of the build are just as good.
- Don't let appearance fool you! Just because the expensive cables look super-cool it doesn't mean they'll perform any better than some of those Plain Jane cables. What really matters is construction on the inside.
- Trust in your own eyes and ears! Ultimately, you're the one who needs to be happy with the picture quality and sound. Let your own eyes and ears be the determining factor in what you purchase.
I suggest finding a retailer with a 100% money back return policy, and purchasing two sets of cables so you can do your own comparison. Purchase a top-of-the line cable from vendors such as AudioQuest or Monster and then purchase the same cable type from Accoustic Research or Phillips. Take them home and switch them out. If you can see or hear a difference in quality that justifies spending 4 to 10 times the price of the cables, then I suggest sticking with the higher end cables. Most likely you'll find there is little to no difference between them and will happily be returning the "high-end" cables.
In conclusion, it mostly comes down to being an educated shopper. You'll probably spend countless hours comparing and researching televisions and audio equipment trying to find the set-up that offers the most bang for your buck. The same care and attention to detail should be applied to your cable options as well. When all is said and done, you'll be enjoying the same beautiful picture and crisp sound without paying the premium of the luxury brand cables, which essentially offer you little more than fancy looks.
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