I notice a fairly solid section of opinion on forums that would promote the idea that using one HDMI cable could give a better picture than another.

I tend to be of the opinion that they either work or they don't but say a cable was causing a misread of 1% or 0.1% of the data? How would that manifest itself.....no video, the so called "sparklies", or could it result in subtle errors or faults in the picture thus perhaps giving some credence to the above view.

Yes, yes, no. :) HDMI video data is encoded for TMDS and then encrypted for HDCP. No way random data loss can cause uniform change to video content. You have significantly higher odds at winning Powerball twice. :)

larry

Thank you for the concise answer which has given me both reassurance and subject for study! :)

Simply put it'll either work or not. Now, if it's not working, there are some degrees of not working, from minor sparklies, to major sparklies and lines to complete snow and no picture at all. However, all are pretty much unacceptable unless it's really a secondary system that you care little about. Unless you're getting obvious cabling problems like sparklies, then there really isn't any difference between the cables for your particular system and application..

Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't differences between the cables, but the differences are not relevant for your system if both are working properly, they're both providing 100% of everything necessary. But if you change what you're asking of the cable by increasing resolution, framerate etc, or otherwise increasing the data rate you're sending over the cables, you may discover that one cable is sufficient for the task and another is not.

But again, if the cable is working and sufficient for the task and you're getting the full picture with no degradation (which is obvious with the sparklies), then there is nothing you can do to improve the picture by using different HDMI cables.