Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)
My patience for the line, "It is digital. It either works or it doesn't" ended a long time ago.<p>"Digital" signals are analog signals, but the only difference is that they are restricted to being above or below some threshold. But around that threshold there is a gray area where you can't really tell whether your signal will be interpreted as 1 or 0.<p>I am not defending the need for high-end HDMI cables. But saying "It's digital so don't worry" is wrong.<p>There are reasons that "digital" cables use twisted pair. Wow, even some "digital" cable standards specify the number of twists per inch required for reliable operation. And wow, some cable standards even specify shielded cable is required. I wonder why.<p>Here is a fun exercise for those that think "digital" signals don't need engineering steps to protect signal integrity: build all of your cables (or PCBs for that matter) with straight signals and you will have an excellent time trying to debug why your communications don't work. Bonus fun for making the cable length 1/4 of your signal wavelength.