Go to best buy and talk to one of their guys there and say if i buy one of these monster cables and i don't like it can i return it, they will say yes, now go buy a $200 HDMI cable. Now go test it at your house, now you can see if its the cable or your PS3. The next day go return the cable for your cash.

I know I can rule out whether it is the cables or not with buying a different brand...but how can I rule out whether it is the TV or the PS3? I don't have any other HDMI device to test the cables on. So I won't know if the PS3's HDMI socket or the HDTV's HDMI socket is defective....though I've tested both sockets on the TV and both work when I can get the cable to work on the PS3...so the TV is probably fine.

Well the first thing u should do is get a better quality cable and see what happens. If it still doesnt work then if you have something else that uses HDMI try it with your TV with the same cable. If thats OK then it must be your PS3's HDMI socket so u shud probz contact Sony youll just have to hope theyll either repair it or get u an 80GB PS3.

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.

its posible the cable could have damaged the PS3. by wiggling it.

@akuma587
I figured this out after I bought the cable. I bought into all the gold-plated crap and realized this...I knew I should have been smarter than that because I understand how computers enough to know that a digital transfer will always be the same. An HDMI cable is basically just a USB cable in all honesty.

@BULLDOG
I didn't wiggle the thing around in the socket, just the wire around to different positions.

i did the same as others, just bought two 8 ft cables online, i think i paid maybe $4 a piece and they work just fine.

a couple questions, 1st do you have any other devices connected via hdmi to your tv, like your cable box or maybe a dvd player? do they work? with what cable?

2nd, any friends got an hdtv that you can try to hook up your ps3 with your and maybe one of their hdmi cables?

if you try these things you can determine exactly which is the problem child, hopefully neither the tv or ps3 obviously. but if you have another device that works through hdmi on your tv, you know its not the tv's ports. if your ps3 works on someone else's tv with their cable and not yours, you'll know it's just crap cables, but if it works on their tv with your cable then then sharp has bad ports, but if it doesn't work on another tv with a different cable, then it's the PS3... anyways, like i said hopefully just bad cables. good luck!

Yeah...I don't have any other devices I can test the cable with. But I do have a friend who has a TV I can test with. So I'll go try that.

cool, hope it's just the cables, i had friend who had trouble with a psychlone cable.

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?