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If you go buy a TV from Comet or Currys (or any out of town retailer), they’ll swear blind you need to pony up upwards of £50 for a Monster HDMI lead, which is 99% oxygen free, and was hewn from the very depths of the poles of one of Jupiter’s moons, and that with anything less, you’ll not be able to see every hair and blemish on Harrison Ford’s face when you watch Bladerunner on Bluray.

Cobblers.

With analogue connections (i.e. SCART), the signal made its way through as a set of subtle waves. The subtlety of those waves could be destroyed if the cable was of a poor quality. It could lead to flat colours, a ‘halo’ effect around people, or shadows in the picture. People would pay ridiculous amounts of cables which did make a difference, albeit subtle. To most folk, it was so subtle that it really didn’t matter. The hard-core home-cinema type would tell you until they were blue in the face that it made a difference, but it mattered not one jot to everyone else. There was such thing as ‘cheap’ or ‘bad’ cables. I’ve had a few, and they were poorly made, and poorly shielded, so they did produce a pretty dire picture.

Along comes HDMI, and it uses a digital connection. It’s all pulses. On-off-on-off-on-off. The digital simplicity of ones and zeros. With HDMI, if the signal gets through, it gets through. It either does, or it doesn’t. What that means, is that the cable either works, or it doesn’t. If the cable is ‘bad’ you’ll know it – big blocks on the screen, or odd sparkly colours, because chunks of the picture information is missing. It’s very similar to how Freeview breaks up when a lorry rumbles past your house.

Basically, you need a ‘decent’ cable. One that makes a good connection at both ends, won’t slip out or wobble, and shields itself from any interference from other cables, like power leads or speaker wires. These stupidly expensive cables are just that – stupidly expensive. I found the cable pictured at the right for £14.99 in Wilkinsons. It’s 1.5 metres, and has gold-plated ends (so they won’t tarnish). I’ve got three of them now, and they work like a charm!

Since buying an HD-ready TV about two years ago, I’ve slowly been replacing bits of my TV/Audio kit, as we gadgety-geeky types are often wont to do. In doing so, I’ve upgraded to Sky+ HD, and have upscaling DVD players and other fun things. As a consequence, all my kit is now connected via the HDMI. I used to have a spaghetti of SCART leads packed down the back of the TV. They were thick and bulky, and always drifting lose (a major issue with SCART).

Using HDMI cables has been good. I’ve actually got more HDMI devices than inputs on my TV, plus I need to send the signal in two directions to the TV and projector, so there’s a switch box in the mix too. All told, there’s about six HDMI leads in there now, including these Wilko cables. I’ve been using them quite happily for some time, and they give me perfectly good picture quality. The Sky+ HD box comes with an HDMI lead which is, to be honest, a bit cheap and nasty when you look at it, but even that works perfectly fine. As I say, a lead either works, or it doesn’t. My ‘best’ cable, is a Belkin lead I bought some time ago which was probably nearer £30, and that is no different to these newer, cheaper leads. Wilko actually sell cheaper leads still, and I think even they would work fine.

The Monster leads Comet and Currys push onto you are sold simply for the profit margins. The wholesale costs on them is closer to £10, but they sell them for about £50. They use it to recoup any losses they might have made price matching, and giving you a better deal.

That’s how they getcha!