OT: Why are HDMI cables so expensive

They can be had for $3 via mail. Box stores make almost nothing on the TV but gouge you for the accessories. *NEVER* buy this stuff from brick and mortar stores.

Both cables are $3 cables made by the same $.08/hr person in the same third world country. One is in $57 packaging and one comes with a baggie and twist tie.

n a sunny day (Fri, 12 Sep 2008 09:31:20 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :

HDMI supports HDCP content protection to 'close the analog hole'. That means if Hollyworld thinks your monitor or TV has been misused, by for example hackers to record copyrighted material from HDMI, then they can blacklist your monitor model, and your screen will stay black.

If not for closing that analog hole, It would indeed have been much simpler to stream transport stream (just like in sat TV, or terrestrial digital TV) and have a decoder with card in the TV (so no analog connections).

In fact some of the new TVs have an ethernet connector.... so you can play movies from the PC via the home network. You need then to run 'media server' software on the PC. Media server software is available for MS, Linux and Mac.

"s'a joke, son. Jes' a joke." Electrons are indistinguishable from one another even in principle--you can prove this experimentally by looking at the counting statistics.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Bubble envelope packaging, most likely. Postage is pretty cheap out of Hong Kong.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

So, maybe HDMI is not so good after all?

But an audio guys once told me that the electrons coming out of a tube are of a whole different pedigree, a lot cleaner, almost sterilized since it's hot in there ...

Well, here's the least cost-effective one i could find - Jeez!

Bob

Good to know. Some of the stuff that comes out of the speakers has been pretty well crapped up again, unfortunately....

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

That's because it all went digital. In and of itself a great idea, but ...

On one little TV here it's so bad that you could hear the distortion almost all the time. Oh well, you get used to it just like that rattle from the back of the car. On the DTV boxes the hiss is pretty bad, too.

It's always only a matter of time until some standards committee or a mediocre EE group screws things up.

Joerg, When are you going to give up and get cable ?:-)

...Jim Thompson

On a sunny day (Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:34:43 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :

Looks like the problem is with the TV...

Something wrong with your hardware?

Here in Europe we have mp2 audio for sound on DTV, and the quality, if they do not use really low bitrates, is OK. Hiss ? never.

Also some stations now use Dolby Digital here, AC3, and the same: quality pretty good. But I use the PC and a good soundcard :-) There are adjustments you can make for compression in playvback with AC3, I do remember seeing it in MS windows in Power-DVD, that may have influence on signal to noise.

Well you can test yourself by downloading some AC3 test material, it can be very good.

Of course if broadcasters play from old video recording analog tracks, and do not know that digital audio stops at 100% and has no 'headroom', like one station I know, then all bets are off. Maybe the age of sound technicians is over? Now the coffee girl does the sound between bringing round the coffee?

We were just forced to go satellite. Talking about the pits! The slightest rain and it's out. Local/Network TV? Well they're $4 per channel, if they allow us to have them. The four "OTA" networks are more expensive than HBO!

On a sunny day (Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:12:25 -0500) it happened krw wrote in :

Maybe your dish is too small? I have 83 cm, and the only way the signal 'goes' is if a thick thundercloud is between my dish and the sat (it does not need to rain, the cloud can be miles away). But rain by itself does next to nothing. Or maybe you have weak sats, the broadcast sats here are extremely strong.

Really?

As long as they do come out the other end. Sorta my point.

I wish I could. Satellite (Dish) is getting to be a real drag and I've only had it for a couple of days. ...and I used to despise Adelphia/Comcast/Cox/Time Warner.

Don't think I can go bigger. It's whatever is there.

between

Dish.

Never. Unless this whole DTV over the air collapses in 2009. It does collapse every night but I am hoping that they crank up the power and re-shuffle some to VHF once the analog signal must go. UHF-digital is quite unreliable out here.

Many stations out here seem to be run on a shoestring budget. But hissing audio is fine, audio has never been very good in the US with movies. Guess that is because we are used to listening to AM radio for hours when on the road.