As well as being a keen audiophile I am also a videophile. This is a review of power cables regarding their effect on picture quality for a LCD tv. There are some audiophiles who accept the benefits of power cables for amps, but think AC does not matter for LCD or Plasma because it is all 'Digital' This is IMO an unfortunate view. In fact, the difference of power cables on picture quality is easier to discern than audio. When you A-B audio cables with the same piece of music, you can only do this a few times before your hearing goes around the bend. With video tests there is no such problem. Visual comparisons are more obvious (or perhaps more obvious to someone with a visual NLP type bias).
The cables compared are Stock, Furutech G-320Ag and Audioquest NRG-1.5. All cables here are the C7 aka the Figure of 8 connector. A Plasma TV uses a standard IEC connector, so your range of cables to choose from is limitless. But LCD TV's are normally hardwired or use the C7 connector. There are only a handful of specialist C7 cables on the market.
I will also mention that in the past I have had an all Audioquest cabled system for audio and video. This was when I used a UK power strip and all the cables were UK plug versions. Even back then, the benefits on picture quality when using AC cables for the LCD and BLU-Ray player were indisputable. The reason why I went to a US socket power strip, was the range of US cables is so much larger, and UK cables have a performance limiting fuse in each plug.
EQUIPMENT
Sony 46" HX909 LCD and Marantz BD7004 blu-ray player. The Marantz player is considered a quality above average model, but the LCD was considered the best money can buy and Sony's top model for 2010.
SETTINGS
For this review there was no sharpening, edge/detail enhancement, or any manipulative effects used on either the LCD or blu-ray settings. Motion processing was the only thing turned on and set to CLEAR 1 (considered the most natural of the Sony motion processing modes). All tests were done with blu-ray movies.
TEST DISCS
Batman Begins, Quantum Of Solace, The International, Avatar. I extensively use 4-5 scenes from each of these movies for A-B testing and know them very well.
REVIEW
After having very nice picture quality and great gains with the Audioquest UK cables last year, I sold them off and moved to a US power strip. Wanting to try something different I purchased a 1.8m Furutech G-320Ag.
After the great results with the Audioquest, I was expecting a similar gain and was bitterly disappointed to be truthful. The Furutech changed the picture for the better in a minute way that could probably be considered subjective. I would certainly not be on this forum encouraging people to make this upgrade.
I was not ready to blame the Furutech, as compared to before, I had also changed other equipment such as power strip brands. But I just stopped watching blu-rays. In hindsight this was because of the drop in picture quality to what I had previously. I tried to buy various other C7 power cables, such as an Oyiade, but this was out of stock. So after a few months I purchased a new 1.8m Audioquest NRG-1.5 from the Needle Doctor dot com.
When changing from the Furutech to the the Audioquest on the LCD TV I got the great picture back i had previously. Less grain, less hash, less picture noise, less judder, better colour, deeper blacks, sharper picture, more detail. All an indisputable improvement that I was not 'trying' to see.
The Furutech cable gave none of these gains. Since it was unused I then put the Furutech on the Marantz blu-ray player in place of its stock cable. Here there was a subtle impovement, that may be subjective and imagined. Either way I liked it and am keeping it on. I hope to get another NRG-1.5 and see what the comparison is on the blu-ray player itself.
GRAIN
One major effect on using the Audioquest power cable on the LCD, is the removal of grain from the picture. Even from older blu-ray movies. This seems counter intuitive, because 'expert' A/V reviewers will claim that the grain is inherant in the source of the picture.
So why does using high end power cables on the TV and Blu-ray player remove the grain?
I have a theory that imperfections in the source of the picture are exacerbated by the unclean power. All TV's have a chipset that does the processing of the picture. When the power is unclean, the chipset and tv processing struggle harder, and thus minor grain, noise and imperfections are more shown up. New all digital movies like Avatar look good on most equipment, because the seamless color tones are easier for the processor to resolve, but older movies are a different kettle of fish.
A perfect example was the new blu-ray editions of Alien and Aliens. Both these movies have been remastered, but still look grainy and old. The sequel, Aliens, despite being 7 years newer, has a more grainy look because it was filmed on low quality film stock. I tested them both before and after. There was just a complete clean up of the picture. Aliens especially was miraculous how good and better it looked afterwards.
The movie 'The International', is one that I have seen on different tv's and blu-ray players with noise and grain. There was not a speck of grain in my final setup. Clean clean clean is the word to describe this, but with all the detail and texture, not just looking clean because of manipulated smoothing.
NOISE/HASH/DETAIL
All improved subtely. You can just see more detail in the picture when noise and hash are removed. The picture just becomes easier on the eyes.
JUDDER
Even with Sony's excellent CLEAR 1 motion processing, you get judder in fast pans. But when using the Audioquest NRG-1.5 a lot of this judder was removed. There is a scene in Avatar that consistantly has judder with the stock and Furutech cables, but was gone with the Audioquest. A minor improvement overall, because the judder was not that bad to begin with.
BLACKS
For those calibrators out there, I found that after using these Audioquest NRG cables, both the UK versions last year, and the new US one now, the picture became darker. What I thought were good settings for gamma e.t.c had to then be changed. Why this happened I'm not sure, but like my theory about the grain, I believe the unclean AC power lessens the ability to resolve true deep blacks. So when using these cables the Tv is now displaying deeper blacks and requires a re-calibration of equipment.
(note that my prefered picture adjustments were only done AFTER all these a-b tests)
CONCLUSION
The Furutech cable is one that gives AC cables a snake oil reputation. You get what seemed like a very minor improvement that probably would not be noticed on lesser quality equipment.
The Audioquest NRG-1.5 cable is just the bees knees and I could not live without it. Im kicking myself that I waited 6 months to get another of these.
Im sorry I cannot do a bigger comparison of different products. The amount of quality C7 power cables out there can be literally counted on one hand.
PROVISO 1 - All the Audioquest power cables have 2 RF ferrite stoppers on each end. When I used the Audioquest NRG-3 last year for my amplifier, having the filter ON seemed to clean up the sound and give a blacker background. But when taking them OFF, I realised they were constricting the sound. Life had been breathed back into the music by not having ferrite on the amps AC cable. But for the digital devices like TV and blu-ray, it worked better having them ON. It is possible that the big gains in picture quality using Audioquest over Furutech may be just these RF stoppers and nothing else.
PROVISO 2 - I have very unclean AC power. If you have good AC power perhaps you will not see any benefits from using these AC cables.
PROVISO 3 - Like audio systems, the better your equipment the higher the gain from using highend AC cables. I suspect you may not see much benefit buying a specialist power cable for a $500 tv.
Please post your thoughts and experiences with AC cables for LCD and Plasma's!!
