DVI Cable for home cinema

I'm looking for help choosing a cable for my setup - I've got a Radeon 9800pro in a SFF, and I have a VGA output to a TFT, but now want to connect the alternative DVI cable to my new 26" LCD TV.

My first query is, being digital, is there any perceivable difference in quality between cables? - I read somewhere that there can be a difference in quality, but I'm loathed to buy a ~£40 cable if a far cheaper one will produce the same results.

With that in mind, can anyone recommend a cable from a UK source that is cheap? I need a 5m DVI cable, as the TV is a fair bit away from the PC table.

Much thanks. :)

I will say no, theres no difference, others will disagree.

edit: I got my 5m dvi cable off fleabay for a tenner.

i'd say, if you don't get the absolute bargin basement jobbie, you should be ok.. anything bottom-end-hifi should be fine, don't get something costing 50p from taiwan..

Its digital. It will either work, or it wont.
If it doesnt work, its faulty. There is no middle ground with a digital based cable.

Thanks guys, i was hoping that you'd say that they're much the same.

Now, I've seen aria have a cable once for ~£8, but they sold out ages ago. Can anyone suggest a place for a 5m dual link DVI for about that?

(pref black!)

Cheers!

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Originally Posted by stud

Thanks guys, i was hoping that you'd say that they're much the same.

Now, I've seen aria have a cable once for ~£8, but they sold out ages ago. Can anyone suggest a place for a 5m dual link DVI for about that?

(pref black!)

Cheers!

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try audiovisualonline.co.uk - very good for cables

as for digital cables either working or not.. its nonsence. a poor quality cable can easily digrade over certain parts of the signal, or drop the odd bit here and there. its not a problem with 99% of computing because of ecc and so on, but with digital links to display and audio equipment this is not the case due to latency, as a result of which, a very poor quality cable can drop quality.

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Originally Posted by 5lab

as for digital cables either working or not.. its nonsence. a poor quality cable can easily digrade over certain parts of the signal, or drop the odd bit here and there.

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Which means the cable is faulty. It really *is* that simple. A digital cable has to carry a 1 or a 0. If a bit gets dropped, its a faulty cable.

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Originally Posted by 5lab

its not a problem with 99% of computing because of ecc and so on, but with digital links to display and audio equipment this is not the case due to latency, as a result of which, a very poor quality cable can drop quality.

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DVI doesnt have any error checking like ECC.
All digital cables (like almost every electronic device) will have a clock that is used to sync the signal between the two devices. On DVI, this is called Transition Minimized Differential Signaling, or TMDS for short. Latency will not be introduced on a low quality cable, if the worst happens it will miss the clock signal, it will not take extra time to get to the other end.

Again, If a bit fails to reach the other end of the cable, its faulty. If there is any image problems due to a poor cable, its faulty.

A working £8 digital cable is no better than a working £80 digital cable. They both get the bits from one end to the other and the image displayed.
If it works, it works ! :)

Cables can make a HUGE difference but you only really notice it once you hit a certain length.

For 5m or below, any cable will do the job just fine, the further you push over that, the more important the cables quality will become.

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Originally Posted by Agent

Which means the cable is faulty. It really *is* that simple. A digital cable has to carry a 1 or a 0. If a bit gets dropped, its a faulty cable.

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depends on the standards. you could say that a monitor with a single stuck pixel is faulty, but the manufacturer would disagree. you could claim that ANY noise appearing on an analog cable makes it faulty, but unless you've lots of money to spend you wont find someone who disagrees. a cheap cable *may* drop bits, and you *may* not notice- i mean, each pixel is only displayed for 1/60th of a second - you really think you'd notice if it went a bit blue?? but the picture quality would drop a bit..

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DVI doesnt have any error checking like ECC.
All digital cables (like almost every electronic device) will have a clock that is used to sync the signal between the two devices. On DVI, this is called Transition Minimized Differential Signaling, or TMDS for short. Latency will not be introduced on a low quality cable, if the worst happens it will miss the clock signal, it will not take extra time to get to the other end.

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no, but latency would be introduced if they put ecc on..

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Again, If a bit fails to reach the other end of the cable, its faulty. If there is any image problems due to a poor cable, its faulty.

A working £8 digital cable is no better than a working £80 digital cable. They both get the bits from one end to the other and the image displayed.
If it works, it works ! :)

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but a jippy cable might not be noticably faulty. lets say a cheap cable drops 1% of bits passing through it (a fairly high rate).. it'd probably still look reasonable to the naked eye, but it wouldnt look as good as a high quality set..

you can't claim that a cable either works or it doesnt, as if that was the case there would be no need for ecc on data transmissions at all, ever. networking would almost instantly increase in bandwidth by a huge amount..

Hmmmm, this has turned into an interesting discussion(!).

I must admit, last night I found a site which claimed over 5m introduced new issues (http://www.tech-plus.co.uk/system/index.html) first time I've seen such a statement.

I believe that at 5m+ the quality of a cable is important - I'm with 5Lab's reasoning. Quality matters IMO !!!

buy a cheap one and buy an expensive one and if you can see a difference, keep the one you like best, it really is as simple as that.

I'm with the cheap ones, if they work at all, they work well enough for me. As for spending £100 or other silly amounts that people do, just put that money towards a life :D

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Originally Posted by Clunk

just put that money towards a life :D

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you say that.. and yet.. looking at your system.. need i say more??

No, you neednt, it runs great with cheap cables :)

chortle:D

Thanks for all the replies guys.

5lab - your link was good, i saw a 5m cable for £20, but in the end I went through Amazon, and got a 16' Belkin PureAV for ~£28 including P+P. I decided I wasn't going to mess around with a cheaper cable, even if my limit was £20. On the bright side, the cable only 1/4 of this length is sold by Dixons for £40.

Cheers once again.