ATTENTION: All the apparently ignorant consumers of Australia.
Electronics retailers like JB Hi-Fi, Dick Smith, Harvey Norman, etc. are misleading you and will try to sell you HDMI cables for ridiculous prices – anywhere from $49 to $299!!!
YOU CAN BUY A PERFECTLY GOOD HDMI CABLE ON EBAY FOR UNDER TEN DOLLARS!!!
Only yesterday, I witnessed a clerk in JB Hi-Fi at Highpoint deceiving his customers saying “You need to spend money to get the best quality”.
OH MY GOD THIS IS A TOTAL MYTH!
HDMI is a DIGITAL signal and even the $8 cables on eBay have HIGH QUALITY SHIELDING. They just wouldn’t work without it. HDMI is not as affected by EM interference, like the “old” kinds of cables. If you are getting interference THE SIGNAL WILL CUT OUT IT WILL NOT GO FUZZY!
As for bandwidth, if you’re using 1080p, you should probably get a cable marked “high speed”. STANDARD CABLES ARE GOOD ENOUGH FOR 1080i AND BELOW! Anyway, this is not an issue because YOU CAN GET HIGH SPEED CERTIFIED CABLES OFF EBAY FOR EIGHT DOLLARS!
The ONLY thing you need to worry about with HDMI is cable length. As cables get longer, the signal gets weaker (attenuates). That said, UNLESS YOUR CABLE IS OVER 10 METRES LONG, LENGTH IS NOT AN ISSUE!
Please, Australia. Stop buying your HDMI cables in shops. Then, I will stop openly weeping every time I see a salesperson trying to flog a $79.95 cable to a poor defenseless customer.
