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[TheBoy]

though for longer lengths, I'd start buying increasingly better quality. Price means sod all in this arena

[Marks DTM Calib]

The issue with such a cable is capacitance which impacts on the time it takes the 0 to change to a 1 or vice versa. The faster the signal, the less time you have available for this change to occur and the data 'eye' to be maintained. The longer the cable, the greater the capacitance.

So if its a short length then pretty much any cable will do the job, start looking at longer lengths and you need better cable to minimise the pulse spreading.

Of course, there is also the issue of the device its connected to, if it has a crappy output then there is less room for margin, similarly, if the receiver has a low quality input then the data eye will need to be better.

Gold on a connector does but one thing, it reduces the rate of oxidisation of the terminals, nothing more (as gold is not that good a conductor) so might slow the degredation of the electrical connection. But beware, all to many of the HDMI connectors have a gold plated screen connection and the equally important signal connections are still tin plated (worth checking).

[Kevin Wood]

Yep, devices do vary in their ability to drive the cable.

I've got 2 identical cheapo 5m cables feeding the TV.

The Set Top Box link is 100% OK. Never get any issues with that.

The feed from the blue-ray player can be hit and miss. Occasionally, I hear a thermostat go over and it causes a glitch in the video and audio, so, clearly the blue ray is a bit marginal at driving the cable. That said, I think it might be set up to upscale everything to 1080p, whereas the STB only outputs 720p, so the bit rate will be much higher.

So, yes, cable length and definition of content combine to challenge the cable. SD over a short distance, any bit of wet string will be fine. HD over longer distances and you might need to find a better quality cable.

.. and you don't always get what you pay for, so expensive doesn't necessarily mean quality!

[chrisgixer]

Paid £30 sobs for a 12metre HDMI to run the tv upstairs from the sky box in the lounge. Just as a frinstance.