There seems to be a lot of talk about expensive "high-end" HDMI cables vs. the regular cheap stuff. One camp of people seem to be alleging that if it's a digital signal, the 0s and 1s will either get through or they won't. On the opposite end you have people talking about interference, signal drop-out, syncing issues etc.

I can appreciate that there are people out there who have a more discerning eye than others, but using the human eye to test integrity of data transmission seems kind of silly to me. There HAS to be a way to check data integrity reliably and objectively with a piece of hardware (or software). Haven't these tests been done? Fine, if there is some loss, then I think double blinded visual tests could be used to see if the human eye can actually discern a difference, but it seems as though we're still arguing about the basics.

PC World did an extensive test.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,121777-page,1/article.html

There are ways to measure the quality of digital signals in timing and in level. They are, oddly enough, called Eye Diagrams or Eye Charts. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_pattern) The wiki page linked is very sparse, but any decent amount of google-fu should provide you with more data than you could ever want. Most receivers can more than make up for the degradation caused by most short-to-medium run cables in a digital domain problem (assuming no MFG defects) but it's really the combination of the two (Hmm, a system who'd have thunk it) that determines whether you have issues or not.

There are ways to measure the quality of digital signals in timing and in level. They are, oddly enough, called Eye Diagrams or Eye Charts. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_pattern) The wiki page linked is very sparse, but any decent amount of google-fu should provide you with more data than you could ever want. Most receivers can more than make up for the degradation caused by most short-to-medium run cables in a digital domain problem (assuming no MFG defects) but it's really the combination of the two (Hmm, a system who'd have thunk it) that determines whether you have issues or not.

Go to: http://www.simplayhd.com/index.aspx

This organization is testing now. Any product with this certification is guaranteed to work in a system where all components have the SimplayHD logo.