Starhub has a nice free offer to bundle in some HD channels if you are already subscribed to the standard def equivalent. All very nice!! Just for $2 a month and I get to enjoy about 10+ channels in HD.

All good except that Starhub doesn’t supply a HDMI cable with the set top box rental. It does, however, come with a complete set of component and composite cables. Since I have a good stock of HDMI cables that I am selling on ebay, I gladly supplied myself one of them

To my slight disappointment, the HD content is only available up to 1080i. It’s not full HD, just one step away from full 1080p. 1080i may be more commonly known as “HD Ready”, which happens to be what my TV supports up to anyway. So even if the cable content does come in 1080p, my TV won’t support it anyway.

Overall, I’m very happy with the crisp picture quality with HD TV. And for the price of 2 canned drinks a month, I’d encourage everyone to take up HD.

Apart from better picture quality, the HD set top box also performs faster than the non-HD model.

For the HDMI cable, I’m selling them cheap on eBay. Please do not get cheated into paying for those overpriced ones at the large electronics outlet, nor fall for cheap, poor quality ones on eBay.

Search for my listings, under the seller name “jasonyzs”.

I was surprised for a moment. How’s that possible??

I should state that, it sure is possible to fabricate such a cable. It’s easy to just take any wire and put any sort of connectors at both ends. But watch out!! They are likely not to work.

The engineer in me knows that HDMI and VGA/RCA connections carry completely different type of signals. HDMI is pure digital and VGA/RCA are pure analog. There’s no way you can just take a cable, hook up the components and they will work.

For a start, if your equipment doesn’t get fried, you should already be lucky!

In reality, what you really need is a coverter box. A dedicated piece of equipment that converts HDMI signals to RCA or VGA.

So, be warned, don’t get suckered by simple cables that appear to do the trick. No such thing!!