Just ordered a Component Video cable from a guy called Mark Grant who is based out of Beverly, East Yorkshire.....

I'd previously ordered some high grade Mains cables for my HiFi from a similar home based pro and I can honestly say the cable that arrived today is utterly superb.

The cables & plugs are of the highest grade and the workmanship is top drawer..... If you were looking for off the shelf stuff, I'd suggest you'd not find anything as good.

The price? I got a 3/4 meter component cable, delivered for £39.50. The order was taken and dispatched over the New Year holiday, with a few automated and one personal email keeping me info'd on delivery and it arrived today. I did some looking for decent cables of similar quality and I was looking at £90+

The picture doesn't do it justice, but this really is a top job and made a BIG difference to my DVD picture for the HD side of my TV...



I've no contact with the guy at all but I won't be hesitating to order from him again....

Check out his other cables at Hi-Fi and Video Cables and Interconnects, UK Cables Shop

 

Why component and not HDMI ? With a digital signal, as long as it gets through it is fine, so £10 Maplin ones are as good as the esoteric stuff. You know I care about such stuff Al, but if there's no gain then my pocket ain't having the pain. Still a very good price for a good looking cable though.

I'm swapping my DVD player for an upscaling HDMI DVD-R/HDD/FV to free up the component sockets on my telly for a 500gb media HDD. Next year when (hopefully) the dust has settled (and prices dropped) I'll get a combo BD/HDDVD player too.

 

I gave you 30 minutes...... and I won my own raffle you'd be the first to answer, with Dazza a close second....

AND I knew exactly what your response was going to be!!! So I prepared the following.....

I've just spent the last few days experimenting with HDMI and I have seen a clearer benefit using the analogue output from the back of my new HDMI DVD. When playing, the HDMI interface was fraught with Audio crackling and I even posted in Computer section to see if anyone had an answer (only Dazza answered saying he'd had similar issues with his 42" LG HD TV). Like Dazza, I swapped the DVD & cables out a few times, but could not get rid of the audio problem.

That's not to say that HDMI per-se is worse than component, just that in my case, it appears to be. The colour saturation on High School Musical (I know, I know but this was a good test as it is very colourful) was very intense through HDMI, but through the component side it had settled right down and a lot of the 'edginess' to some of the straight lines has gone. The picture looked very natural. I'm putting this down to the analogue nature of the component output as we know Digital can be 'harsh'.

As for the cables, I agree about the digital side. However a well prepped cable that makes a good connection (even optical) is essential to getting a good signal (transfer less so). But as I'm using analogue, then a decent cable is essential for getting the bandwidth through. Same as speaker cable really.. and we know what differences can be made here...

I'm also not convinced that the HDMI format is stable and ready. My experience suggests my (and Dazza's pre 50" TV) has some compatibility issues. The newer ones seem OK. So in order to get my HDMI finally working I was looking at getting someone out to fix it. But after reading through many AV forums, I was also not convinced that the Digital signal is any better. Even with the purity from source to TV answer, many experts were arguing that there simply was no major benefit of digital in all cases (seems there's no difference from the Audio argument).

I also like the fact that the signal is in a native, uncompressed format and it does appear my TV likes the signal better. The DVD simply provides as much scaled HD resolution as the TV can handle (scaled 1080i in my case). But lets not get sidetracked on what the source resolution was (480 or 720 max? Or that HDMI is also scaled and converted....)

This is not to say that I won't be going digital in the future. I'll be forced this way when I get the Terrestrial or Sat HD format (when it's a little more popular and cheaper)...

Audio aside, I simply saw a better picture for my eyes so I'm not calling the guys out.

 

Not far behind... :-)
Dave has defo got some form of scobby post radar...
look there he is... Radar Operator first class Watson

 

Ping

 

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Here he comes

 

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any media drives you recormend Dave, I know you read alot...so have a good idea whats out there...

 

Dazza, haven't looked into what's best, just bought the cheapo 500gb one from Maplin's. £130 and works out of the box (you PC people have to install drivers and stuff I believe ). Plugged it into the plasma just using the composite leads so far and the picture even on a low-res 700mb downloaded rip was acceptable. When I can get the TV off the wall to access the sockets ( bad design) I'll test the component and scarts, along with the digital audio output. For the cash, so far, it's pretty impressive.

Al, you've experimented much more that me and I'll trust your results. I just don't have the time TBH. I know I'll be hooking up a Sony DVD-R/HDD/FV via HDMI as my TV only has one set of component sockets which I'd like to use for the Media HDD. Gotta redecorate and move the TV first though, and God knows when I'll have time for that