PS3 HDMI issues

[kingofwale]

jkimball said:

akuma587 said:
HDMI cables are all more or less the same. Not even a trained professional will notice the difference between a $100 Monster cable and a $5 off brand cable (as long as the cables are both HDMI 1.3, but that only makes a difference in audio and other features that have yet to be implemented). It is a DIGITAL cable. 1's and 0's look the same no matter how you send them. You needed to worry about which component cables you bought because they were ANALOG and could be very different. A higher brand cable might last a little longer, but it would have to last 20 times as long for that cost difference to take effect, which it never will.

You don't need to go buy a Monster Cable. You are wasting your time and money that way. But believe me, people who spent $100 on a cable will try to convince you and themselves that it is better.

This has to be the most popular internet myth ever! I hear over and over and it is quite funny to a (former) electonrics engineer like myself. I wonder how this rumour even started.

Digital signals are still sent as waves - just like analog signals. In fact they are sent as square waves which is HARDER do to than an analog wave. Because the digital timing is critical theyare MORE likely to suffer degradation/signal problems. If an analog signal is distorted you get a crappy picture. if a digital signal is distorted your options range from dropped pixels - pixelation- nothing.

Now because digital signals are so fragile, a lot of error correcting data is sent with the digital stream so digital *connections* rarely fail. That reliability has nothing to do with the cable - a crappy cable will generate so many erros that even the error corection can't cope and the signal will be lost.

There was never a big difference between $100 Monster VGA cables and $5 VGA cables. There isn't a big difference between $100 HDMI cables and $5 HDMI cables. But a bad cable - of any type - will cause just as many problems in digial as it does in analog.

I recommend the OP hook up the cable to wave generator, run it into an oscilloscope and see how the shape is. Sounds like a grounding problem - perhaps a worn inner shell?

 

All I can say is... Thank you very much! This is the most detailed description of digital vs analog signal post I've ever read online. Thanks for educating me.

 Whenever I buy cable/headphones, I always buy the most expensive one I can afford, not that I think it will make the signal better, I just don't want it to break on me.

I bought headphones, adaptors, cables via eBay for garbage price, and they are just like the price... Garbage, most of them broke on me within a month.