Just received the product and haven’t used it yet, but it sure looks physically excellent; the leads have protective caps on them too. Much visual bang for the buck ($4.95 at this time). Got if from here: BlueRigger Premium HDMI Cable 6.6 ft Gold plated With Ferrite Cores, but if out I’m wondering if this might be the same item (same picture and description): Fanatic Digital® HDMI Cable-2 Meter (6 ft) Gold Plated v1.3 HDMI to HDMI Cable with Ferrite Cores.

Will come back with functional review later.

Just in case someone may feel guilty for not paying a lot more for, basically the same thing, let’s look at one of our top of the line offers in premium HDMI, Monster HDMI 1000HD Ultra-High Speed HDMI Cable (2 meters) and do a quick comparison.

For a lot less, the BLUE Advanced supports the HDMI 1.3a/b standard. Any HDMI 1.3 cable can carry up to 10.2 Gbit/s. Hmmm… I suppose the Monster is much better, right? Well… it “guarantees a certified cable bandwidth of 10.2″ Okay, but the Monster also supports “x.v.Color, and Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD”. It turns out that, all of the above, and more, are part of the HDMI 1.3 specs and they are fully supported by every cable that complies to the standard and can be had for about 95% less in the Premium Gold. The expensive brand presentation simply enumerates the HDMI 1.3 specs as if it being HDMI 1.3 compliant was a really big deal. It is not a big deal. Even a cable that costs 95% less is HDMI 1.3 compliant.

My suggestion: if you think that the proponents of the expensive brand have a point when they claim that their product is a lot more durable, buy TWO Blue Advanced wires and still pay significantly less than half of what you would pay for one of the expensive ones.

My personal experience: I’ve never paid ‘a lot’ for an HDMI cable because it makes no sense to pay more. I took home one of the ‘expensive’ ones once because the salesman promised to take it back if I wasn’t amazed by the difference. It made zero difference and I returned it.
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The following are the HDMI 1.3 specs and any certified HDMI 1.3 cable is going to support them.

Maximum signal bandwidth (MHz) 340
Maximum TMDS bandwidth (Gbit/s) 10.2
Maximum video bandwidth (Gbit/s) 8.16
Maximum audio bandwidth (Mbit/s) 36.86
Maximum Color Depth (bit/px) 48

Maximum resolution over single link at 24-bit/px 2560×1600p75
Maximum resolution over single link at 30-bit/px 2560×1600p60
Maximum resolution over single link at 36-bit/px 1920×1200p75
Maximum resolution over single link at 48-bit/px 1920×1200p60

sRGB
YCbCr
8 channel LPCM/192 kHz/24-bit audio capability
Blu-ray Disc video and audio at full resolution
Consumer Electronic Control (CEC)
DVD-Audio support
Super Audio CD (DSD) support
Deep Color
xvYCC
Auto lip-sync
Dolby TrueHD bitstream capable
DTS-HD Master Audio bitstream capable
Updated list of CEC commands (only on HDMI 1.3a,b,c)

VOLO- thank you for bringing a great cable to market at a great price. MY 55 inch LED tv has never looked better!

Cables cost nothing to manufacture and “quality” is nothing more than a few millimeters of insulation and proper (cheap) materials. This cable functions adequately and is priced appropriately.

The difference between a $100 cable and a $50 cable is the sucker buying it. Probability is that the $50 cable is identical to the $100 cable – both manufactured by the same Chinese company and re-branded by two different resellers.

The hazard of cheap cables is that the most horribly cheap cables will receive and transmit interference to other cables/devices e.g. static, lines, or similar aberrations in picture/sound quality. Solution: Buy a few notches up from horribly cheap and stay with insanely cheap. A consumer does NOT need to pay more than $5 or $10 to obtain a quality cable that will not transmit/receive interference. HDMI signals are not strong enough to penetrate relatively weak insulation – a toaster transmits more interference.

The bad news for consumers is that most HDMI cable sellers will not give you enough data on the product to determine if it is sufficient (no standardized interference rating, material description, insulation type/thickness). The good news is that Amazon users will tell you if they are having difficulty.

I should add that (in the unlikely case) if you are routing hdmi cable over more than 5m you will want to look into significantly better cables, however. Running HDMI over lengths beyond just a few meters will cause severe signal loss. This tends to happen when you are *not* installing the input devices (DVD/Blu-ray, home theater equipment) adjacent to the TV – such as routing the cable behind walls, ceilings, and/or floorspaces.

As a new PS3 160gb owner – I was faced with a 50/60/70/100 dollar HDMI cable choice from the store where I purchased it and other big box stores where the sales people knew less than I did. One very honest and smart guy told me to save my money and buy one from Amazon. So I did… As a backup I purchased the more expensive one as a comparison on my 56″ JVC HD-ILA (JVCs DLP projector 720P) and found absolutely no difference on screen with either Blue-Ray disk or Game play … and returned the $100 one the next day…

I cannot speak of 1080i or 1080p HD sets – but after tax a $100 spread is something worth considering. The PS3 is picky sending signals out to a monitor or TV – but this works as advertised … and my wallet is all the better for it.

I’ve purchased these in the past and they work as any other HDMI cable will. However, watch the price on shipping, because it can change on you in mid purchase. Costing you twice as much as you expected. Even then it’s still pretty cheap at $2.00 per cable. Also note, after you make a purchase, go look at the price of the cables. They jump to $0.51 cents a cable, but then go back to $0.01 a cable after an hour or so.

The 3 ft. is my favorite length to connect any electronics that happen to be very close to each other.

Just in case someone may feel guilty for not paying a lot more for a premium brand, it should be stated that at this length – 3 ft., you will get as good a service from a no-brand cable as you would from a super-expensive rip-off. An HDMI 1.3 cable should be able to carry, error free, all the signal your electronic equipment may put out.

The FUD campaign attempting to attract buyers toward the more expensive brands makes a series of claims. I will address them, as they may apply to this specific cable.

- Signal attenuation is less over a more expensive cable. – TRUE, BUT that’s irrelevant on a 3 ft. length. The HDMI consortium stated that even the cables that were not ‘certified’ as ‘Category 2′ or ‘High-Speed’ will meet the requirements at lengths of 6 ft. or less. At 3 ft., it would be a waste to consider an ‘expensive’ alternative. In addition, the newer devices have sufficient processing power and are sensitive enough to properly interpret even the more ambiguous ‘digits’ they receive.

- The expensive cables are better engineered and their contacts are less likely to break. – TRUE, BUT how many times is one going to plug an HDMI cable in and out of an HDMI socket over the cable’s lifetime? 5 times? 10 times? The ‘better engineered’ claim has no practical importance. If your cable works on ‘day one’ the odds are that it will be left in the back of your box for many month or years before it is unplugged and plugged back in. If this cable is purchased for home use, the ‘better engineered’ claim should not be of a major concern.

- The more expensive cables are ‘future proof’. – NOT TRUE. Claims are made that, if you buy the more expensive wires you won’t have to buy new ones when ‘new standards’ emerge because the more expensive wire will support them. This is untrue on 2 different levels. First, your cheap cable was purchased to work with some very specific devices which need HDMI 1.3 and will never support the ‘new standard’. The new standards will be supported by new electronic devices but, for as long as you keep the existing ones, you will still need this cable to connect them. Second, the emerging HDMI 1.4 specs call for physically different connectors so, no matter how large a bandwidth the existing expensive cables may support, it won’t matter because you still won’t able to plug them into an HDMI 1.4 port so… there go your $5 or… there go your $200, depending on your having purchased a ‘cheap’ or a ‘top of the line’ HDMI cable.

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Here are the HDMI 1.3 specs supported by both this cable and its more expensive alternatives.

Maximum signal bandwidth (MHz) 340
Maximum TMDS bandwidth (Gbit/s) 10.2
Maximum video bandwidth (Gbit/s) 8.16
Maximum audio bandwidth (Mbit/s) 36.86
Maximum Color Depth (bit/px) 48

Maximum resolution over single link at 24-bit/px 2560×1600p75
Maximum resolution over single link at 30-bit/px 2560×1600p60
Maximum resolution over single link at 36-bit/px 1920×1200p75
Maximum resolution over single link at 48-bit/px 1920×1200p60

sRGB
YCbCr
8 channel LPCM/192 kHz/24-bit audio capability
Blu-ray Disc video and audio at full resolution
Consumer Electronic Control (CEC)
DVD-Audio support
Super Audio CD (DSD) support
Deep Color
xvYCC
Auto lip-sync
Dolby TrueHD bitstream capable
DTS-HD Master Audio bitstream capable
Updated list of CEC commands (only on HDMI 1.3a,b,c)
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My personal experience: I’ve never paid ‘a lot’ for an HDMI cable because it makes no sense to pay more. I took home one of the ‘expensive’ ones once because the salesman promised to take it back if I wasn’t amazed by the difference. It made zero difference and I returned it.

My father paid 60 dollars for a shorter Monster Cable, I paid 1/12 of the price and still got the same high quality image and noise protection that he did. The only difference was that my cable didn’t have the monster sticker on the connectors.

I have used and tested this cable on my PS3, and Laptop leading out to various LCD and Plasma HDTV displays, and I have seen no difference in quality from my father’s monster cable.

If you are looking for quality and performance without the brand name and price, then this cable is the answer to your problems.