HDMI Cable comparisons

I have lots of premium aftermarket cables from various price ranges, and I hear the differences pretty easily. I also have three or four sets of component video cables, and in the analog video realm it's also easy to spot the differences.

But HDMI is digital. It either transmits the bits or it doesn't. It seems to me that HDMI cables would be the easiest to review and test, because you could take screen shots of signal passed through one vs. another, and it would be easy to determine if one cable had more dropouts than another, or better color saturation, or whatever. It could also be done to determine which cables work better for the longer runs, which booster links keep the signal intact over long runs, and all that jazz.

But to my knowledge no one is doing this. When you consider that there are Sound & Vision, Ultimate AVMag, The Perfect Vision, Home Theater, and others, HDMI is de rigeur for HDTV, and HDMI 1.3a-compliant cables range from $4 from PartsExpress to several hundred from AudioQuest, that it would be ripe for reviewing.

I suspect there's so little difference that the mags don't dare publish a comparison test or shootout and lose a significant amount of advertising revenue that they'll otherwise keep simply by keeping their mouths shut.

Cynical, yes. But given that you can find reviews on all manner of interconnects, speaker cables, power cords, demagnetizers, and power conditioners, why aren't there any comparison tests of HDMI cables?

09-30-08: Pictura
The British What Hi-Fi Sound and Vision magazine has an extensive review of cables including video cables. ... I have experience with component video cables before and I can say that there is an improvement over the original cables that come with the electronics. I am using the Monster Cable Video 3 Component now. I also use a PS Audio Ultimate Outlet for my TV and DVD player and the colors are definitely richer. The best thing to do is to borrow a few cables at different price points and make a value judgement. The Pioneer Elite plasma is a very good plasma. You should be able to see a difference between the cables. You also need a top notch Blu-ray player to get the best out from the Elite.

Anybody can see the difference in component cables. What's interesting in my experience is that when switching to an HDMI upconverting player, the picture is better through a $20 HDMI cable than through a $250 set of component cables.

09-30-08: Kenk168
FWIW, I tried both the economy (28AWG @ $3.96) as well as the thicker gauge(24AWG), higher cost HDMI 1.3a compliant monoprice cable and have to give my nod to the later. Better color saturation, richer, better contrast. Plus it's only $6.97 for a 3ft.

Well, that's understandable. You need at least an acceptable level of mechanical and materials build quality. But would a 2M $375 AudioQuest HDMI-3 be worth the money?

Blindjim: Marantz *does* offer a $2000 Blu-ray player with HDMI output, though I suspect you're talking about much higher priced components. It's not that HDMI is a "mid-fi" interface. It hasn't shown up on the megabuck components because most of them have much longer R&D times to bring something to market. They couldn't afford to "bet the farm" on one format of HD disc over another. The big companies like Onkyo, Sony, Marantz, etc. could throw more people and development money at an HDMI-based product than the smaller upper high end companies can. They'll get around to it eventually.