£29 HDMI cable from Currys?

[Johnboy54]

Hello to all.

Bought a new 50 inch smart TV a couple of weeks ago from Currys. Lad said I needed this silver HDMI cable. Half price at £29. I said I didn't because I read a report a while ago from Which? I think, saying buy the cheapest you can find as there's no difference in picture quality, and expensive ones are a con. Lad said cos I was running a Virgin box to the smart TV, the power and signal the TV needed could not be met with any other type of cheap cable. Said they could not guarantee the TV would work properly without one.
Well... last night for some reason the signal to the TV just went. TV OK cos I played my USB stick OK. Determined it must be the HDMI cable loose. Checked but it was OK. Just now, I've connected two £1 HDMI cables off Ebay together with a £1 connector block to replace the super-duper cable. TV now works and picture is perfect!
Have I been conned?
Thanks.
John

 

[bernardgreen]

You could have got a better CON-necting HDMI cable here

http://www.russandrews.com/product-KIMBER-HD29-HDMI-cable-2729.htm

For almost all domestic use a £5 cable will be more than adequate.

 

[Lucid]

Cheap cables from online retailers and Pound Shops might meet a basic standard good enough to get a picture on a short distance; say under 3 mtrs. For most people that's all they need.

Better made cables might not be all that more expensive but should have solid copper conductors of a thicker gauge, better individual conductor shielding, better over all screening and so be more reliable long term as well as being less prone to radiating interference as well as having greater immunity to external interference. It doesn't take a £29 cable to provide all that though. The difficulty is in knowing how a cable is constructed without cutting in to it.

If you can prove that the Currys cable is faulty then take it back. What they have said is sales BS. The salesman may have been trained to regurgitate this stuff without really understanding the science well enough to question the company's line on add-on sales.

 

[SimonH2]

Yep, the sales pitch was pure BS.
It is true that a lot of "cheap" cables will have poorer performance - but it's all or nothing. It will either work, or it won't - there is absolutely no "better picture quality" from any cable improvements once you've passed the threshold for "works".

Definitely take the faulty cable back - and insist on your money back, not a replacement expensive cable.

 

[JBR]

Ah, Currys. That says it all.
One place I'd never use.

 

[winston1]

Take it back. Currys have lied to you. But you knew that from the Which report before you bought it, so why on earth did you buy it?

Also TVs don't get their power from a Virgin box, they get it from the mains.

 

[Belle427]

http://www.audio-forums.com/threads/the-cable-test-listen-and-decide.105155/

Quite an amusing read, just read until page 3 no need to listen to anything.
Not hdmi related but well worth looking at.

 

[Johnboy54]

Been to sunny Scotland for a few days.
Thanks for all the replies.
I'm copying and pasting and printing the main points to take with me to Currys.
I read the link you posted ch427. Now that was funny! The reveal said it all.
Not the same as HDMI as you said, but perhaps the hype and principal are the same.
Thanks again.
John

 

[TimS15]

If you're still looking for cables, we tend to stick with Amazon Basics range of HDMIs - generally for convenience.
Cheap, reliable & work fine!
£6.99 for a pack of 2...

 

[Mr Gear]

Take it back, swap it for a £29 USB printer cable instead - your printouts will be sharper, the colours brighter....

Can't believe Currys et Al still get away with this.

It's a digital signal, the 1's and 0's either get through or they don't.
Echoing the comments above, as you've found for standard length cables you don't need to pay more than a few quid. The argument perhaps is stronger for pricier items with better shielding and higher quality materials as cable length increases.

 

[Johnboy54]

In response to winston1, as I said at the start, the lad said the power and the signal the 'smart' TV needed via the HDMI cable could not be met by a cheap cable. Inferred the TV could be damaged by a cheap one which would not be covered. I know nothing about 'smart' TV's, and the argument that these kind of TV's needed an expensive cable to work was something I couldn't dispute. I now know better.
And thanks for the last 2 comments.
Copied and pasted.
John

 

[winston1]

In response to winston1, as I said at the start, the lad said the power and the signal the 'smart' TV needed via the HDMI cable could not be met by a cheap cable.
John

Which as I said was a lie. A smart TV does not get power from an HDMI cable. That lad knows nothing about what he is selling except possibly the amount of his commission.

 

[Sam Gangee]

I'm copying and pasting and printing the main points to take with me to Currys

If they give any hassle, simply tell them that you are going to the local Trading Standards office to seek advice. That should quash any argument.

we tend to stick with Amazon

If everyone buys from an on-line bookshop that pays negligible UK taxes, the UK will go the way of Greece. My advice is to buy locally whenever possible (but avoiding the High Street rip-offs). There's still a few honest UK shops and on-line stores, which provide reliable goods at keen prices AND good technical advice for free.

 

[Lucid]

I'd be careful about throwing around accusations of lying, especially where the Johnboy54 is going to use such information as the basis of their complaint to the company.

As I see it, all we have is the recollection of a conversation in which the Johnboy54 admits he was unable to challenge the technicalities. That's not to say I doubt his word; it's just that what the salesman said and what John understood may be two slightly different things. Since none of us were there to witness the exchange then we are not in a particularly strong position to accuse anyone of lying.

From a technical point of view a HDMI cable does carry a voltage-albeit only 5 Volts-and it is used to power the HDMI receiver chip for the HDCP handshake in the sink device be that a TV or AV receiver or HDMI splitter. Any cable which has met the HDMI certification standards should be capable of delivering that voltage for all the cable lengths. It's debatable whether all of those Chinese made cheap cables go through initial certification testing and whether the cables in the production run are consistent and of the same quality as any that might have been certified, but that's a whole different conversation.

There's a lot more to HDMI cables than meets the eye, and that's part of the problem. While cheap cables may well work fine the consumer doesn't really know the construction of what they're buying and whether it's a good enough cable to still be working in 3~5 years. It's the same story with expensive cables except there's a whole army of marketing men trying to spin some kind of justification for the price and often from irrelevant or misleading data. One could argue that cheap cables are so cheap that does it really matter if they don't last that long. In some senses I'd agree, except when the cable goes belly up just at the wrong time. Of course that's exactly what appears to have happened with Currys' expensive cable, but does anyone know whether it's just a cheap cable in expensive clothes?

 

[SimonH2]

If everyone buys from an on-line bookshop that pays negligible UK taxes, the UK will go the way of Greece. My advice is to buy locally whenever possible (but avoiding the High Street rip-offs). There's still a few honest UK shops and on-line stores, which provide reliable goods at keen prices AND good technical advice for free.

It's not so much the tax*, but it's the way they use that (and abuse their dominance to dictate illegal pricing restraints**) to gain an unfair advantage over those local options.

* What they do is neither illegal nor immoral. Before anyone goes on about tax avoidance - let me point out that I doubt if anyone on this forum does not have at least one tax avoidance scheme in place (I have several). They aren't usually called that - the more normal names are things like "pension" and "ISA".
Yes it's "not good" (for us), but that's what the rules allow and that isn't going to change without full international co-operation - and even this it's hard to actually think of a way that the rules could be implemented without actually making things worse.

** Specifically a clause that says if you sell on Amazon, you cannot offer any cheaper prices elsewhere. AFAIK our competition authorities have sat around with their fingers in their ears shouting "la la la" on this issue.

BTW - similar issues apply to buying stuff on eBay. At least they have now hived off their "looks like a bank but isn't and doesn't give you the legal protections a real bank would" PayPal - but there are still some really dodgy clauses designed to distort the market in their favour.

So please try and buy local - but don't fall for the outright saleman's bull manure.