What is the best cable?

In the age of HD-quality content, the HDMI cable reigns supreme as the most popular connection type. Older connectors like VGA and RCA cables don't handle HD movies and video games as well as HDMI does – they just weren't made for high-definition content. HDMI's prime contender is the DisplayPort connection standard. Some people, often Mac and PC users, prefer DisplayPort, but the standard just didn't catch on like HDMI. You can find HDMI ports on pretty much everything – though they're rare on smartphones and tablets – and you need an HDMI cable to connect those ports.

You would be hard-pressed to find a home theater setup that doesn't use HDMI cables. TVs, Blu-ray players, cable boxes and video game consoles have all adopted HDMI as their standard video and audio ports. Compared to previous connection methods, HDMI is simple and easy – you just plug your cable in and you get both audio and video, and you don't need to worry about multiple cables. You can find many PC monitors that use HDMI ports, but the standard isn't as dominant in the PC industry as it is in the TV industry.

HDMI Cables: What to Look For

Ever since the introduction of the HDMI standard, there have been many HDMI cable manufacturers. In order to be marketed as an HDMI cable, each manufacturer has to send its products in for testing. If a cable doesn't pass the tests, it cannot legally be sold as an HDMI cable. So, if every cable has to meet the same minimum specifications, what sets them apart from each other? Let's take a look at how these cables work, and then we can sort out the things that matter.

The best HDMI cables serve one purpose: to transmit video and audio data from one device to another, like your Blu-ray player to your TV. The inclusion of audio along with video in an HDMI cable is one of the reasons HDMI is the connection standard. With old VGA and RCA connections, you had different connectors for audio and video, which can get annoying.

So, your HDMI cable acts kind of like a pipe, into which the data from your Blu-ray player flows. As that data exits the pipe, your LED TV decides what to do with it. What this means is that the HDMI controllers on your Blu-ray player and TV will have much more of an impact on your viewing experience than your HDMI cable. The cable is a dumb pipe, and the HDMI controllers are the brains. For this reason, there is no such thing as an HDMI 1.4 cable, only HDMI 1.4-compliant devices.

Because HDMI is a digital signal, you get either a perfect transmission or nothing at all. What this means is that there is no difference in picture quality between the cheapest HDMI cable you can find and the most expensive. They'll both get 100 percent perfect images. There are some claims that better construction means less data loss in transmission, which can produce a better, more responsive picture. But that's not likely to make much of a difference, if any. Should your TV detect any data loss from your Blu-ray player's transmission, it simply requests the data again – at very high speeds. Most people simply can't notice a difference here.

• In General, the market forecasts are quite optimistic, so buying real estate in Dubai, especially unscheduled objects, Houses For Sale in United Arab Emirates, has become a very popular way for investors and end users. Excellent business conditions and a growing industry attract a large number of people from all over the world. The overall picture of the market is very contradictory - despite the large number of new supplies, prices continue to rise. But buying an unscheduled property in the United Arab Emirates will make you a winner if you are ready to stay on the market for a long time.

• Which is the best cable company?
• Who has the best cable deals?
• What is the best cable service?
• What is cable TV?
• Sky Dish cable