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4k Televisions is there a point?

abillybob

By abillybob
in AV and Multimedia Related

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sted

sted

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To be fair, I've found Curry Pc World's prices quite competitive lately. Not always the cheapest, but usually cheap enough that I'll buy from them rather than order online and wait. Perhaps they've finally realised that if they don't offer prices comparable to online, they'll go out of business!

 

Some things they still rip you off on, especially cabling of any description, but appliances and electronics seem fairly priced now.

 

not to mention the price in store is often higher than on the website so if you dont preorder it you overpay

abillybob

abillybob

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To be fair, I've found Curry Pc World's prices quite competitive lately. Not always the cheapest, but usually cheap enough that I'll buy from them rather than order online and wait. Perhaps they've finally realised that if they don't offer prices comparable to online, they'll go out of business!

 

Some things they still rip you off on, especially cabling of any description, but appliances and electronics seem fairly priced now.

 

Yeah I was quite surprised!! But as you say they where still trying to sell me a HDMI cable for £30, Ha. You mad bruh!?

tmcd35

tmcd35

Posted
Posted
Yeah I was quite surprised!! But as you say they where still trying to sell me a HDMI cable for £30, Ha. You mad bruh!?

 

But, but, but...it's gold plated to improve signal quality and shielded to prevent electrical interference...:getmecoat:

HarryMonkey

HarryMonkey

Posted
Posted
To be fair, I've found Curry Pc World's prices quite competitive lately. Not always the cheapest, but usually cheap enough that I'll buy from them rather than order online and wait. Perhaps they've finally realised that if they don't offer prices comparable to online, they'll go out of business!

 

Some things they still rip you off on, especially cabling of any description, but appliances and electronics seem fairly priced now.

 

The last couple of times that I've bought from Currys they've been happy to price match other local retailers (Richer Sounds etc.).

jon_nais

jon_nais

Posted
Posted
the thing about john lewis though is that they give a 5 year guarantee on the TV's they sell, same as Richer Sounds, tbh I find both of these retailers give decent deals.
abillybob

abillybob

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But, but, but...it's gold plated to improve signal quality and shielded to prevent electrical interference...:getmecoat:

Oh of course forgot about all of that, for a £30 cable I'd expect all of the connectors to be made out of Solid Gold! ;)

 

the thing about john lewis though is that they give a 5 year guarantee on the TV's they sell, same as Richer Sounds, tbh I find both of these retailers give decent deals.

 

So do PC World, that was one thing I checked when I ordered and my TV will come with 5 Years Guarantee :)

sonofsanta

sonofsanta

Posted
Posted
Is there anything sadder than watching your fellow man get sold a gold plated optical lead?

 

Buy SANDSTROM AV Gold Series S2OPT314X Digital Optical Cable - 2 m | Free Delivery | Currys

 

Oh. Wow.

 

Not sure if that's better or worse than the £90 gold plated HDMI cable from the same brand, wherein the gold plating isn't the part making the connection (and there's literally zero difference between HDMI cables in terms of connection quality).

 

No, no, you're right. The optical one is worse. That's a staggering level of Idiot Tax.

LosOjos

LosOjos

Posted
Posted
The worst part is that it's an optical cable so the gold plating will have absolutely no impact.

 

Lol

 

Ben

 

Yup. All these luxury cables are a waste of money; in analogue gear, fair enough, it really does make a difference (although I'd argue only an audiophile would be able to tell the difference between a decent piece of cable and a "luxury" cable). Problem is retailers are cashing in big time on that old analogue mind set of signal interference and connection quality and totally mis-selling digital connectivity cables. They either work or they don't; end of story!*

* OK, I know when you get to certain lengths of cable, cable thickness becomes important, but that's quite a specific case

jon_nais

jon_nais

Posted
Posted

So do PC World, that was one thing I checked when I ordered and my TV will come with 5 Years Guarantee :)

 

Then I do apologise, when I had a quick look at the site they were just stating a 1 year manufacturers warranty.

 

Gold plated optical cable! chuckle!!!!

pcstru

pcstru

Posted
Posted
Yup. All these luxury cables are a waste of money; in analogue gear, fair enough, it really does make a difference (although I'd argue only an audiophile would be able to tell the difference between a decent piece of cable and a "luxury" cable).

Most cables aimed at audiophiles will show no measured differenced to an 'ordinary' piece of wire with adequate capacity for the power and adequate shielding. The vast majority of claims are just absolute rubbish with no rational basis and the Hi-Fi press generally collude with suppliers of such snake oil by not subjecting these cons to proper double blind testing by listeners or a set of objective measurements made on appropriate equipment.

tmcd35

tmcd35

Posted
Posted
For analogue cables *some* of the claims may actually help improve the overall quality and reliability of the connection and/or output. For digital cables...nope. 1, 0, CRC - it's either there or not a bit of gold plating isn't going to change that.
tmcd35

tmcd35

Posted
Posted
It was an half agreement with what you wrote. Digital cables it makes zero difference, it can't. Most, as you say, analogue cables the reality is, shall we say, over egged by manufacturers to sell needless products to those that don't know better. That said, analogue signals by their very nature can be influenced by environmental factors. Audiophiles in particular are known to pay extra for quality cables because they can and do make a difference. Unfortunately it's been a long time since I last looked up the specifics and really can't be asked to do an interweb trawl. All I know is for analogue, in certain circumstance, it can make a difference.
pcstru

pcstru

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Posted
Ok. I think specifying cables to be adequate in terms of power handling and shielding pretty much covers it for domestic Audio. Outside of that, there are some circumstances in venues where impedance issues in long cable runs may warrant balanced line level cables. That should never be the case in a domestic set-up. I can't think of any claim that isn't a con that is not covered by those three.
mikecain

mikecain

Posted
Posted
I had to step in once in currys, when a sales person was tring to sell one of those gold plated optical audio leads. I asked how it improves the transmission of light etc listened to him babble for a while and told the customer to go buy one over the road for a fiver. The bloke said cheers I will mate and walked away. I just cannot stand to listen to rubbish spouted by sales staff.
truebluesteve

truebluesteve

Posted
Posted
It was an half agreement with what you wrote. Digital cables it makes zero difference, it can't. Most, as you say, analogue cables the reality is, shall we say, over egged by manufacturers to sell needless products to those that don't know better. That said, analogue signals by their very nature can be influenced by environmental factors. Audiophiles in particular are known to pay extra for quality cables because they can and do make a difference. Unfortunately it's been a long time since I last looked up the specifics and really can't be asked to do an interweb trawl. All I know is for analogue, in certain circumstance, it can make a difference.

 

Agreed - we were getting a lot of hum from one of our Hall sound systems and we tracked it down to a very cheap 10m jack to jack cable that we had used. We replaced it with one that cost £10 and it worked a treat. I certainly think spending stupid amounts of money on them is just pointless, and if there are improvements I suspect they are so small as to be undetectable to most of us

Pottsey

Pottsey

Posted
Posted (edited)
Oh. Wow.

 

Not sure if that's better or worse than the £90 gold plated HDMI cable from the same brand, wherein the gold plating isn't the part making the connection (and there's literally zero difference between HDMI cables in terms of connection quality).

That’s not 100% true, well I agree on the gold plating having zero impact. But there are lots of versions of HDMI cable and the quality of the image you can get out of them is different.

For example a HDMI 1.4b cable can handle a much higher quality image then a HDMI 1.4a cable.

 

Doing 3D 1080p the A cable will cap out at 24fps while the B hill go as far as 120fps. I didn't realise how big a difference a HDMI cable made until I swapped one and image improved massively.

Edited by Pottsey
truebluesteve

truebluesteve

Posted
Posted
Ok. I think specifying cables to be adequate in terms of power handling and shielding pretty much covers it for domestic Audio. Outside of that, there are some circumstances in venues where impedance issues in long cable runs may warrant balanced line level cables. That should never be the case in a domestic set-up. I can't think of any claim that isn't a con that is not covered by those three.

 

I'd agree with that. There's also not a lot of point in connecting expensive cables to cheap sound equipment!

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