Question on Home Entertainment systems

[StirCrazy]

Ok sence I subscribed to consumer reviews I will post one of there recomendations

"Retailers may push high-priced accessories such as premium video cables for a TV. As a rule, choose regular alternatives. Those fancy versions can cost twice or more as much as standard items but aren’t likely to give you much performance benefit. "

personaly if you can put togeather a tv cable with crimp ends you can build you own ultra high quality componant cables for cheep. but enough RJ6 cable to do your 3 runs, and buy 6 cable to RCA adapters. cut your cable crimp the ends and put the adapters on. the ends are usaly 2 or 3 bucks each, cable in bulk is about 10 bucks for 30 feet and the crimper is 25 bucks if you don't know anyone with one and the cable ends are a buck each usaly.

using R/W/Y works but leave a bit to be desired, as I had to use that on the ship untill I made the new runs.

there isn't a differance between ultra expensive and normal cables aside from shielding which will only come into play if you have interferance from something which is normaly a thing of the past with new output laws on electronics, but the ultra cheep ones are that ultra cheep and you may not get as good of a picture.

One this is if your TV only has a "S" video input you are waisting your time with Blue ray, as I believe S Video has a max of 480i which is less than a regular DVD (which is 480p) I got a blue ray for christmas (the sony one) and it is wild but I can only use the 1080i as I only have componant inputs and you need HDMI to get the 1080p it still is a better picture than my old dvd player was.

Now I have to replace my 50" TV with a new one with HDMI and my reciver with one that has HDMI througputs instead of componant, but that will have to wait till this summer when I retire and get my severance pay

Steve

[bullit67]

OK yes there is alot of snake oil out there but you get what you pay for and cheap cables are just that cheap just like a cheap car you cant expect a hyundia to preform like a Porsche but you might not need a Porsche just a Mazda. The cheap cables dont have any shielding and this can cause noise problems when you have a mass of cables hanging behind your A/V rack it is almost impossible to keep all your interconnects clear of your power wires and all your speaker cables clear of your interconnects and so on. The most impotant part of the cable is the connection you want a tight fit and you want to keep it clean I know a lot of A/V nuts who clean all there connections once a year or more. I know it sounds crazy but a good example is my in-laws thought there TV was shot so they went out and bought a new one My brother in-law took the old one down stairs set it up in his sons room cleaned the connections and put on new BETTER cables and it is like a new TV again.

One of the best things you can do for your A/V gear is a power conditioner. (I am about to use that swear word) MONSTER makes a few good ones for a price the average guy/girl can afford until recently these were a ultra high end only item costing thousands of dollars now you can get a Monster power conditioner for around $200 they are also a high end surge protector as well as a conditioner. I use to get a lot of noise on my big screen from the microwave in the kitchen once I got my Monster power conditioner it went away. I also found I had to recalibrate my TV (I use a calibation disk)

But I think what it boils down too if you are happy with the picture and sound from cheap cables then that is all that matters. If you go out and buy a Good cable and you think it sounds better then hey fantastic. It is kind of like the thinking that Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Sound is in the ear

Just my 2 cents