5 ms·

Monster Cables is a name I hadn't thought about in ages... I mostly remember them as the company that tried to convince people that digital images would look be

by tqi 2y ago

Monster Cables is a name I hadn't thought about in ages... I mostly remember them as the company that tried to convince people that digital images would look better via a more expensive cable.

ostensible 2y ago
Well, there is now some truth to it. For example, low quality HDMI cable will may be only good enough for low bandwidth, that would limit refresh rate, and/or color fidelity (e.g. chroma subsampling) and/or resolution. So yea, “digital” cables are not immune to signal integrity issues, and better cables do perform better. I understand that monster takes this to the next level of bullshit — but in principle, yes, more expensive cable cable can yield better quality. Or should I say — crappy cable can result in quality degradation
- avidiax 2y ago
  > So yea, “digital” cables are not immune to signal integrity issues, and better cables do perform better. Better cables perform better, but not at all in the way that Monster suggests. Gold plating and oxygen-free copper doesn't matter. Any certified HDMI cable will operate at least to its certification, whether or not it is gold plated with triple shielded conductors. I wish the HDMI forum would officially deprecate all older HDMI standards, so that companies like Monster couldn't advertise that their cables provide "better color, higher resolution, better sound", etc. All the cables in the store would be 8k HDMI 2.2 cables, or they wouldn't be allowed to use the HDMI trademark.
  - whatevaa 2y ago
    Nah, cables oftenly can lie about it's certification, especially when it comes to resistance to interference. This is how you get "bad cable".
  - kbutler 2y ago
    Besides interference and lying about specs, cables can be designed for durability or not. I buy cheap cables from China. They generally work-to-spec out of the...plastic bag, but may not handle frequent plug/unplug cycles or any sort of rough treatment.
  - bsimpson 2y ago
    You're making me wonder about nuance. Since those ports are exclusively called HDMI, I wonder if you could call your unlicensed cable "HDMI compatible." If your TV only supports 4k@60 HDMI 2, no need to go buy more expensive cables with specs you can't use. And even then, unless you're playing time-sensitive games, 4k@60 is probably all you need anyway.
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  Speaking of high quality "Monstrous Cables" and draconian legal remedies: there's K. W. Jeter's Noir (1998), a Cyberpunk novel whose detective protagonist's main job is killing copyright violators so that their still-living spinal cords may be incorporated into hi-fi system cables: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668069 DonHopkins on Nov 10, 2017 | parent | context | favorite | on: Electric Sheep on Ubuntu Linux 17.10 I deserve to be downvoted by the literature snobs, but if you liked Blade Runner the movie (and who in their right mind doesn't?), then you may very well enjoy K. W. Jeter's three written sequels to the MOVIE Blade Runner (not the BOOK DADOES), "Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human", "Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night", and "Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon". There is no book "Blade Runner 1" -- that's the movie. The irony is that Philip K Dick was offered a whole lot of money to write another book entitled "Blade Runner" based on the screenplay of the movie, but he insisted on maintaining the integrity and title of his original book DADOES by re-issuing it with a reference to the (quite different) movie on the cover, instead of rewriting another book called "Blade Runner" based on the movie based on his own book. (Harrumph!) He would have made a lot more money by selling out that way, but he steadfastly refused to do it. However, fortunately for us, after his death, his friend and fellow SF writer K. W. Jeter (who also wrote an excellent cyberpunk novel Dr. Adder which Dick loved) sold out on his behalf and wrote those three books based on the movie (which referenced famous lines like "Wake up. Time to die!"). They explore the question of what the fuck happened after they went flying off into the wilderness (that unused footage from The Shining), and whether Decker was a replicant. (Who would have guessed??!) So even though they're not written by PKD, or directly based on his original all time great book, and not as authentic and mentally twisted as a real PKD book, they are still pretty excellent and twisted in their own right, and well worth reading. They're based on an excellent movie based on an epic book, and written by a friend and author PKD respected, who's written some other excellent books. And while you're at it, check out Dr. Adder and K. W. Jeter's other books too! Especially Noire, for its hi-fi cables made out of the still-living spinal columns of copyright violators. (I suggest you buy a copy and don't pirate it!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_2:_The_Edge_of_Human https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_2:_The_Edge_of_Hu... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_3:_Replicant_Night https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_3:_Replicant_Nigh... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_4:_Eye_and_Talon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_4:_Eye_and_Talon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._W._Jeter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._W._Jeter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Adder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Adder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noir_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noir_(novel) http://www.indiewire.com/2015/12/watch-u-s-theatrical-ending-to-blade-runner-that-features-footage-from-stanley-kubricks-the-shining-97996/ http://www.indiewire.com/2015/12/watch-u-s-theatrical-ending... http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/jeter_k_w http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/jeter_k_w Jeter's most significant sf may lie in the thematic trilogy comprising Dr Adder (1984) – his first novel (written 1972), long left unpublished because of its sometimes turgid violence – The Glass Hammer (1985) and Death Arms (1987); Alligator Alley (1989) as by Dr Adder with Mink Mole (see Ferret) is a distant outrider to the sequence. Philip K Dick had read Dr Adder in manuscript and for years advocated it; and it is clear why. Though the novel clearly prefigures the under-soil airlessness of the best urban Cyberpunk, it even more clearly serves as a bridge between the defiant reality-testing Paranoia of Dick's characters and the doomed realpolitiking of the surrendered souls who dwell in post-1984 urban sprawls (see Cities). In each of these convoluted tales, set in a devastated Somme-like Near-Future America, Jeter's characters seem to vacillate between the sf traditions of resistance and cyberpunk quietism. In worlds like these, the intermittent flashes of sf imagery or content are unlasting consolations. [...] Much of his later work has consisted of Sharecrop contributions to various proprietorial worlds, including Alien Nation, Star Trek, Star Wars [for titles see Checklist]; of some interest in this output are his Ties – they are also in a sense Sequels by Another Hand – to the film Blade Runner (1982), comprising Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human (1995), Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night (1996) and Blade Runner 4: Eye & Talon (2000), and making use of some original Philip K Dick material. The sense of ebbing enthusiasm generated by these various Ties is not markedly altered by Jeter's most recent singleton, Noir (1998), a Cyberpunk novel whose detective protagonist's main job is killing copyright violators so that their still-living spinal cords may be incorporated into hi-fi system cables; the irreality of this concept, and the bad-joke names that proliferate throughout, are somewhat stiffened up by the constant interactive presence of the already dead, a Philip K Dick effect, as filtered through Jeter's own intensely florid sensibility. [JC]
1-6 2y ago
I still see commenters claiming that better cables yield better digital images even after you made this statement. Digital signals usually have some sort of error correction and it’s an all or nothing deal with digital.
- gorkish 2y ago
  It’s technically not an all or nothing deal with hdmi/dvi. That is to say that bit errors do indeed manifest as image artifacts, though normally imperceptible. I think some people understand that error correction is normally present in digital audio, so they naturally assume that video would be the same. But that is not quite true. For one thing there weren’t cheap chips that could do that at gbps data rates when DVI standard was first created. It was not until DisplayPort 1.4 that they added optional FEC. This is required because a bit error in a compressed stream would manifest as an entire macroblock busting, which affects potentially a large pixel area and multiple frames. All that being said it’s unusual to find a cable that is both clean enough to do the handshake and keep sync but noisy enough to give you visible snow. So it’s still quite true that practically speaking, yes, it’s usually an all or nothing deal. Cable quality can and does matter though. I was a BlueJeans customer for a long time before the brief Monster spat, but it endeared them to me, and I still try to buy from them when I need to buy a cable I need to be absolutely sure of.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    > I think some people understand that error correction is normally present in digital audio The only such error correction I'm aware of is when reading data from a CD, which at this point is a tiny part of digital audio. Is there something I'm missing?
    - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
      most digital signaling has error correction. pcie,SSDs, Ethernet etc
      - 2y ago
interpol_p 2y ago
When wiring up my projector, I needed a 10 or 20 meter HDMI cable. The first one I got produced a snowy image on the screen — it wasn't like analogue static, but it was definitely a poor quality image. I replaced that cable with a more expensive one and the image looked correct. It surprised me that there would be a difference in HDMI cables, because I thought exactly the same way — a digital signal is a digital signal
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  Calculations change at 10+ meters. Most cables are not rated past 15.
- avidiax 2y ago
  This is what happens with a damaged or underspecced cable. The HDMI standard doesn't have a way of telling you that you really need an HDMI 2.2 cable and you actually have an HDMI 1.x cable. It just tries to send the signal, and if the analogue bandwidth of the cable is insufficient, then the error correction will be insufficient and you'll get no signal or snow and blocks. This is somewhat of a good thing, since many short HDMI 1.x cables will work for standards that require HDMI 2.x.
- bolognafairy 2y ago
  This isn’t even true with other common ‘digital’ cables. Not all ‘Ethernet’ cables are the same. Someone will give you 100mbit. Some will give you a gigabit. Some will give you even more. They’ve all got RJ45 on them. “All HDMI cables are the same” is an almost-baseless corruption of a very valid critique of Monster et al.
  - bzzzt 2y ago
    RJ45 is just the plug. Ethernet cables are labeled with category 5, 5e, 6 etc.
    - aaronmdjones 2y ago
      8P8C is the plug. RJ45 is a wiring pin-out standard for that plug [1]. It's also a standard for telephony, not networking -- it carries one phone line. A gross waste of pins if you ask me. [1] Not quite. An RJ45S plug has a tab on the side that will not insert into an 8P8C jack.
barbazoo 2y ago
Just checked and the first item that garbage dump that is Amazon advertises is an HDMI cable that’s faster and provides a better picture than others.
kodt 2y ago
Not as bad as this HDMI cable claiming it has "anti-virus protection to reduce virus noises". https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-xbox-hdmi-cable-has-anti-virus-protection/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-xbox-hdmi-cable-has-anti-... https://www.gamesmen.com.au/cable-xb3-hdmi-lx-swivel https://www.gamesmen.com.au/cable-xb3-hdmi-lx-swivel

by tqi 2y ago

Monster Cables is a name I hadn't thought about in ages... I mostly remember them as the company that tried to convince people that digital images would look better via a more expensive cable.

ostensible 2y ago

Well, there is now some truth to it. For example, low quality HDMI cable will may be only good enough for low bandwidth, that would limit refresh rate, and/or color fidelity (e.g. chroma subsampling) and/or resolution. So yea, “digital” cables are not immune to signal integrity issues, and better cables do perform better. I understand that monster takes this to the next level of bullshit — but in principle, yes, more expensive cable cable can yield better quality. Or should I say — crappy cable can result in quality degradation

avidiax 2y ago
> So yea, “digital” cables are not immune to signal integrity issues, and better cables do perform better. Better cables perform better, but not at all in the way that Monster suggests. Gold plating and oxygen-free copper doesn't matter. Any certified HDMI cable will operate at least to its certification, whether or not it is gold plated with triple shielded conductors. I wish the HDMI forum would officially deprecate all older HDMI standards, so that companies like Monster couldn't advertise that their cables provide "better color, higher resolution, better sound", etc. All the cables in the store would be 8k HDMI 2.2 cables, or they wouldn't be allowed to use the HDMI trademark.
- whatevaa 2y ago
  Nah, cables oftenly can lie about it's certification, especially when it comes to resistance to interference. This is how you get "bad cable".
- kbutler 2y ago
  Besides interference and lying about specs, cables can be designed for durability or not. I buy cheap cables from China. They generally work-to-spec out of the...plastic bag, but may not handle frequent plug/unplug cycles or any sort of rough treatment.
- bsimpson 2y ago
  You're making me wonder about nuance. Since those ports are exclusively called HDMI, I wonder if you could call your unlicensed cable "HDMI compatible." If your TV only supports 4k@60 HDMI 2, no need to go buy more expensive cables with specs you can't use. And even then, unless you're playing time-sensitive games, 4k@60 is probably all you need anyway.
DonHopkins 2y ago
Speaking of high quality "Monstrous Cables" and draconian legal remedies: there's K. W. Jeter's Noir (1998), a Cyberpunk novel whose detective protagonist's main job is killing copyright violators so that their still-living spinal cords may be incorporated into hi-fi system cables: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668069 DonHopkins on Nov 10, 2017 | parent | context | favorite | on: Electric Sheep on Ubuntu Linux 17.10 I deserve to be downvoted by the literature snobs, but if you liked Blade Runner the movie (and who in their right mind doesn't?), then you may very well enjoy K. W. Jeter's three written sequels to the MOVIE Blade Runner (not the BOOK DADOES), "Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human", "Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night", and "Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon". There is no book "Blade Runner 1" -- that's the movie. The irony is that Philip K Dick was offered a whole lot of money to write another book entitled "Blade Runner" based on the screenplay of the movie, but he insisted on maintaining the integrity and title of his original book DADOES by re-issuing it with a reference to the (quite different) movie on the cover, instead of rewriting another book called "Blade Runner" based on the movie based on his own book. (Harrumph!) He would have made a lot more money by selling out that way, but he steadfastly refused to do it. However, fortunately for us, after his death, his friend and fellow SF writer K. W. Jeter (who also wrote an excellent cyberpunk novel Dr. Adder which Dick loved) sold out on his behalf and wrote those three books based on the movie (which referenced famous lines like "Wake up. Time to die!"). They explore the question of what the fuck happened after they went flying off into the wilderness (that unused footage from The Shining), and whether Decker was a replicant. (Who would have guessed??!) So even though they're not written by PKD, or directly based on his original all time great book, and not as authentic and mentally twisted as a real PKD book, they are still pretty excellent and twisted in their own right, and well worth reading. They're based on an excellent movie based on an epic book, and written by a friend and author PKD respected, who's written some other excellent books. And while you're at it, check out Dr. Adder and K. W. Jeter's other books too! Especially Noire, for its hi-fi cables made out of the still-living spinal columns of copyright violators. (I suggest you buy a copy and don't pirate it!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_2:_The_Edge_of_Human https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_2:_The_Edge_of_Hu... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_3:_Replicant_Night https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_3:_Replicant_Nigh... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_4:_Eye_and_Talon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_4:_Eye_and_Talon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._W._Jeter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._W._Jeter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Adder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Adder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noir_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noir_(novel) http://www.indiewire.com/2015/12/watch-u-s-theatrical-ending-to-blade-runner-that-features-footage-from-stanley-kubricks-the-shining-97996/ http://www.indiewire.com/2015/12/watch-u-s-theatrical-ending... http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/jeter_k_w http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/jeter_k_w Jeter's most significant sf may lie in the thematic trilogy comprising Dr Adder (1984) – his first novel (written 1972), long left unpublished because of its sometimes turgid violence – The Glass Hammer (1985) and Death Arms (1987); Alligator Alley (1989) as by Dr Adder with Mink Mole (see Ferret) is a distant outrider to the sequence. Philip K Dick had read Dr Adder in manuscript and for years advocated it; and it is clear why. Though the novel clearly prefigures the under-soil airlessness of the best urban Cyberpunk, it even more clearly serves as a bridge between the defiant reality-testing Paranoia of Dick's characters and the doomed realpolitiking of the surrendered souls who dwell in post-1984 urban sprawls (see Cities). In each of these convoluted tales, set in a devastated Somme-like Near-Future America, Jeter's characters seem to vacillate between the sf traditions of resistance and cyberpunk quietism. In worlds like these, the intermittent flashes of sf imagery or content are unlasting consolations. [...] Much of his later work has consisted of Sharecrop contributions to various proprietorial worlds, including Alien Nation, Star Trek, Star Wars [for titles see Checklist]; of some interest in this output are his Ties – they are also in a sense Sequels by Another Hand – to the film Blade Runner (1982), comprising Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human (1995), Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night (1996) and Blade Runner 4: Eye & Talon (2000), and making use of some original Philip K Dick material. The sense of ebbing enthusiasm generated by these various Ties is not markedly altered by Jeter's most recent singleton, Noir (1998), a Cyberpunk novel whose detective protagonist's main job is killing copyright violators so that their still-living spinal cords may be incorporated into hi-fi system cables; the irreality of this concept, and the bad-joke names that proliferate throughout, are somewhat stiffened up by the constant interactive presence of the already dead, a Philip K Dick effect, as filtered through Jeter's own intensely florid sensibility. [JC]

1-6 2y ago

I still see commenters claiming that better cables yield better digital images even after you made this statement. Digital signals usually have some sort of error correction and it’s an all or nothing deal with digital.

gorkish 2y ago
It’s technically not an all or nothing deal with hdmi/dvi. That is to say that bit errors do indeed manifest as image artifacts, though normally imperceptible. I think some people understand that error correction is normally present in digital audio, so they naturally assume that video would be the same. But that is not quite true. For one thing there weren’t cheap chips that could do that at gbps data rates when DVI standard was first created. It was not until DisplayPort 1.4 that they added optional FEC. This is required because a bit error in a compressed stream would manifest as an entire macroblock busting, which affects potentially a large pixel area and multiple frames. All that being said it’s unusual to find a cable that is both clean enough to do the handshake and keep sync but noisy enough to give you visible snow. So it’s still quite true that practically speaking, yes, it’s usually an all or nothing deal. Cable quality can and does matter though. I was a BlueJeans customer for a long time before the brief Monster spat, but it endeared them to me, and I still try to buy from them when I need to buy a cable I need to be absolutely sure of.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  > I think some people understand that error correction is normally present in digital audio The only such error correction I'm aware of is when reading data from a CD, which at this point is a tiny part of digital audio. Is there something I'm missing?
  - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
    most digital signaling has error correction. pcie,SSDs, Ethernet etc
    - 2y ago

interpol_p 2y ago

When wiring up my projector, I needed a 10 or 20 meter HDMI cable. The first one I got produced a snowy image on the screen — it wasn't like analogue static, but it was definitely a poor quality image. I replaced that cable with a more expensive one and the image looked correct. It surprised me that there would be a difference in HDMI cables, because I thought exactly the same way — a digital signal is a digital signal

mixmastamyk 2y ago
Calculations change at 10+ meters. Most cables are not rated past 15.
avidiax 2y ago
This is what happens with a damaged or underspecced cable. The HDMI standard doesn't have a way of telling you that you really need an HDMI 2.2 cable and you actually have an HDMI 1.x cable. It just tries to send the signal, and if the analogue bandwidth of the cable is insufficient, then the error correction will be insufficient and you'll get no signal or snow and blocks. This is somewhat of a good thing, since many short HDMI 1.x cables will work for standards that require HDMI 2.x.
bolognafairy 2y ago
This isn’t even true with other common ‘digital’ cables. Not all ‘Ethernet’ cables are the same. Someone will give you 100mbit. Some will give you a gigabit. Some will give you even more. They’ve all got RJ45 on them. “All HDMI cables are the same” is an almost-baseless corruption of a very valid critique of Monster et al.
- bzzzt 2y ago
  RJ45 is just the plug. Ethernet cables are labeled with category 5, 5e, 6 etc.
  - aaronmdjones 2y ago
    8P8C is the plug. RJ45 is a wiring pin-out standard for that plug [1]. It's also a standard for telephony, not networking -- it carries one phone line. A gross waste of pins if you ask me. [1] Not quite. An RJ45S plug has a tab on the side that will not insert into an 8P8C jack.

barbazoo 2y ago

Just checked and the first item that garbage dump that is Amazon advertises is an HDMI cable that’s faster and provides a better picture than others.

kodt 2y ago

Not as bad as this HDMI cable claiming it has "anti-virus protection to reduce virus noises". https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-xbox-hdmi-cable-has-anti-virus-protection/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-xbox-hdmi-cable-has-anti-... https://www.gamesmen.com.au/cable-xb3-hdmi-lx-swivel https://www.gamesmen.com.au/cable-xb3-hdmi-lx-swivel