I don't see a point with why the expensive cables are so damn expensive. I used to work at an Office Depot where we sold USB "gold" cables for 35 bucks for 6ft. - and we purchased it - as I saw in the system - for 4.99. The price gauging is ridiculous and needs to stop. I just hope more people out there realize there are places you can go for wholesale pricing, and it'll work just as good as the expensive stuff.

There is no point for gauging the price so, so much.

EGAD! As of the time of this post, 3.6% of you are the ones keeping Monster in business.

I need to sell premium, "high end" ball point pens....

My dad handled the setup of the main TV. He has a crazy expensive HDMI cable for the HDTV cable tuner, but I connected my Xbox via a cheap(in quality not in money) Dynex(best buy's crap brand) HDMI cable and it still looks perfect. If I bought the cables, I'd buy cheapest possible, cause it's just 1's and 0's

monoprice.com

if you aren't it, you should be.

last purchase from there.

2 x 3ft optical audio - $2/ea
2 x 6ft hdmi - $5/ea
1 x dvi-hdmi - $3/ea
2 x 16" sata - $2/ea

spent 23 bucks or so with shipping.

add that shit up at best buy.

fuck, aren't using* it

When we got a new dvd player or tv or something we needed an HDMI cable and my wife, not knowing about monoprice, went to BB and payed $90 for a 6 foot cable. I felt like an idiot for not mentioning it, but when she told me she had bought a cable I asked from where and then cringed when I asked how much. I nearly shat. I paid less than that for a 50 foot rated HDMI cable, INCLUDING overnight shipping. Needless to say it was never released from its blastproof shell and was returned. I ordered the cable and had it shipped for less than $14.00. End of story. Needless to say I refuse to pay top dollar for anything when I can get the same quality (for my non-Spielberg eyes) for so much less. I have never needed nor will I ever need a cable Stat. I can always wait a couple of days.

Sorry Paid not payed (you'd think I could spell)

For digital signals I use cheap but well shielded.
For analog I just make sure there's enough conductor and that there's plenty of shielding.

I've noticed a difference a few times.
Running audio to speakers using cheap, super thin, unshielded speaker wire. You get background hum from equipment and wires in the walls.
Running cheap ethernet cable resuts in connection loss the faster you get (10/100/1000).
Trying to use an external USB-2 hard drive with a cable only rated for USB-1. I kept getting read and write errors until I switched to a generic cable that was rated for USB-2.

I suppose even my good cable isn't monster brand cable. it really is good cable though. I'm only guilty of buying monster brand back in my early days when it was either that or the cheap stuff they sold at Radio Shack. Even then I refused to buy the expensive stuff and only sprang for the bottom end.

I love that guy that goes to all the parties and checks the host's cables. He then spends the rest of the evening telling everyone how inferior those cables are and that he has these designer cables from Europe that you can feel the energy as it passes through them.

I then tell him those are coat hangers and you shouldn't touch them when they're plugged in.

I've had problems with monoprice cabling, so I tend to stay away. I had a 3 foot HDMI cable that would not stay into a vertical connector in my TV because it was so loose (hot glue time!) and some issues with ghosting on long DVI and VGA cables. I currently have the HDMI cable that came with my friend's Xbox 360 connecting my HD-DVD, nothing else I have (currently) is HDMI.

For Component cables, I am rather lucky, as I used to do side work for an electrician I knew who constantly got wiring requests, So I have the full Canare toolset and make Beldin/Canare (like Blue Jeans cable) cabling for all component/digital coaxial audio/subwoofer/analog audio. It costs about $3 per RCA connector, less than $1 a foot for cable for broadcast quality.

I don't spend any real money on cables, but shielding and connector quality makes a difference. I hear the lack of a hum in my sub, and I'm happy. Don't kid yourself by thinking that the cheapest is always as good as a higher priced cable.

Oh yeah...and for speaker cable I use 12ga lamp cord.

@Lizard_King: Lamp cord...nice...

I bought "monster" branded lamp cord 16ga/50 ft for $10...that's guilty pleasure either way you cut it...

I only started using Monster cables cause I get them at cost + 6% :)

Do Coat Hangers Count as Generic or "High End" Cable Brands?

I use monster cables when I get them for free, same with regular cables..... If I don't get them for free, I make them myself :)

monoprice FTW!

If transferring 1s and 0s means no signal loss what so ever, than why do USB cables have trouble transferring 480MBps over a certain amount in length? Espesically when HDMI cables have to transfer data of up to 12Gbps, I think the quality of the cable can matter. So yes, I believe that if I took one of those monster speed rated 1000 cables and put them up against a mono price, both at 4M, with 12 Bits of color, 1080p, 24p or 120hz source, The monster would win, hands down. I can already tell the difference from the cables going from Circuit City off brand and an Monster HDMI 500, but people are blind and think they are being ripped off, think of it this way, if you had a company that sold water, and you got it for 3 cents a gallon, wouldn't you want to sell it for $1.29 just like everyone else?

If the market is there, the price will be there, but there is a quality to the cables.

i use a cheap generic hdmi cable and it works perfectly, very good quality video

Most people that use cheap cables can't notice the difference between those and the expensive cables because they are trying them on their cheap-ass Vizios at home. Once you get an Elite or something decent, then you will see that higher-end cables will make a difference.

please stop posting cable comparisons, surveys, and expose's (ex-poh-zay - i can't find the accent mark and dont feel like looking up the ascii code for it).

if there is such a market for these cable stories - gawker should start a new page for them:

cablodo.com?
coppertaku.com?
decabler.com?
HDMIWag.com?
dviist.com?
fleshmonster(cable).com

@ronnsprocket: I was just thinking of saying that. Thank you for exposing the truth :)

Monoprice

@phpkerouac:
sweet names.

I use the hdmi cable that I ordered with my DVD player for $10 (special DVD+HDMI combo on Amazon) and it works fine. But if I got monstor cables for free, you won't see me complaining.

I stopped paying a little more for the name brand stuff when i saw Optical Cable with "Gold Plated Connections".

Now i just look around at sketchy stores that tend to sell $150 Monster Cables for 20 bucks or less which are no doubt models that were replaced with new versions that have more gold.

In terms of digital cable, there IS a difference, in that crappy cables (notice I didn't say "cheap, I said "crappy" -- big difference) will cause higher error rates, and exercise error correction more. When the error rate is sufficiently high, you will notice degraded video or audio. Digital doesn't _quite_ mean "it works or it doesn't", but close. Not so? Somebody back me up here....

my parents have top of the line Monster HDMI cables. When I bought my Apple TV, I got the XtremeMac HDMI. To compare the two I figured an Xbox 360 with Gears of War would be best because comcast hd is kinda shit to begin with. I noticed zero difference between the over priced cable and my $20 cable. I would have stole the monsters if I did.

@thechansen:

I picked up the XtremeMac HDMI cable for my Apple TV as well. My other one is a Philips I picked up for $18 on eBay a couple of years ago.

I use high quality, but inexpensive, cables from vendors like Bluejeanscable. They carry Belden and other brands of cable that measures well and then terminate with good quality connectors. This is a bit higher price than the generic stuff, but I feel it is worth the extra cost. Also, I like to use Volex 17604 power cords on all of my gear. They are under $10, but completely better quality than the cords included with electronics.

funny story, remember that dealzmodo with those $2 HDMI cables...

The guy at radio shack once tried to tell me that I should be worried about electrical interference in my optical cables...

Heh, expensive has 69 votes

@Mandatory_Field: No that's right. Same thing with CDs, DVDs, satellite... everything. With digital signals, redundancy is required as interference can change that 0 to a 1 or perhaps cause it to skip altogether, the difference being that even if some of that redundancy is required, the end-user doesn't notice any of a difference whereas an analog signal you see or hear the interference.

I just use whatever is cheap and works. If it's cheap and doesn't work, then I go for the next cheap thing. I am not going to drop $100 for a three-foot HDMI cable. My $12 one works just fine, and I'm sure I could have gotten it for less if I looked harder.

Mid-priced for analog. Cheap for digital.

Since I no longer own a stereo I don't really worry about audio. Most of the time my gaming equipment is hooked up to a standard def TV by the composite cables that they came with and that works fine for me and my everyday gaming.

When I moved back in with the 'rents a little more than a year ago I was able to use their HDTV. So, I bought the Nintendo brand component cables for the Wii (at the time the only ones that worked with the system as no generics were out). I think the most expensive cable I have is the Microsoft branded HDMI cable for the 360. But it came with my 360 Elite which was purchased for its 120gig storage unit (and because it was black and stood out at lan parties against all the white 360s my friends own) not the HDMI cable. I don't really have a use for it since the 360 came with component cables and they work just fine.

I like my cables like I like my fruit: An Anjou Pear

@Mandatory_Field:
@thechansen: If you get data transmission errors, the results will be a picture that occasionally or regularly gets pixelated blocks and at an extreme the picture will freeze entirely for a moment before the stream can be properly displayed again. Equivalent problems will happen with your sound. With that in mind, you may see these problems on occasion if, for example, you have digital cable and the transmission itself has errors.

I was looking for an inexpensive HDMI cable at big box retailer Best Buy late last year and was accosted by a Blue Shirt who insisted that the color and sound are better with the $130 Monster cable he was directing me toward compared with the "cheap" $60 cable I was inspecting. By his logic, a digital photo you copy onto a pricey name brand flash drive will look better than a less expensive drive...

Annoyed, I promptly hoofed it to Fry's and picked out a nice HDMI cable for under $20 (and recently picked up 10' cables for under $6). Not a monoprice deal, I know, but good enough for me.

Those inexpensive cables are working great, no signal dropouts or other oddities.

And a quick word for the audio and videophiles out there, I've worked in broadcast TV, film, and high-end post houses for sound and I will tell you, the pros are not buying Monster cable.

Buy inexpensive cables with quality, not cheap cables that break.

/rant

After hearing that Monster cables sound the same as coat hangers and that $300 cables were made with $15 worth of components, I'll be sticking with my generic cables until they actually prove worth the crazy price.

@phpkerouac: Thank you for this post...how many times are we going to have 'monster cable makes money! ackkkkk!'?

All accessories have mad, mad, mad markups. Why is MC the focus of so much anger? Where's the 'do you buy extended warranties?' type post? I don't understand the continued fascination with a company that recognized a need and is now the best at marketing their product.

No, I'm not a MC rep, I don't sell them and I don't use them, I just don't get all the hate directed at one company for being successful.

Yeah, but if the expensive cable makes you think it looks/sounds better, then it's doing its job.

I feel like a dunce when I got our HD cable box and spent $35 for a GE HDMI cable at the store since I couldn't find anything cheaper and wanted it the same day.

I saw previously that Big Lots! had GE brand HDMI cables for like $5 a few months back but was out of stock. This weekend, stopped by Big Lots and saw two GE HDMI cables for $5-6 bucks. Bought one for future use anyways.

@zer0zen:
Buy inexpensive cables with quality, not cheap cables that break.

I just realized I'm implying Monster cables break which isn't the case. Rather, the ultra cheap cables out there may be of questionable quality so:

Buy inexpensive cables with quality, not expensive cables of the same quality or cheap cables that break.

I think I got it that time. XD

@ronnsprocket: Monoprice.com. If you aren't it; You should be. Truer words were never typed in a post my friend.

I'm gonna say what alot of people have been saying, monoprice, if it doesn't come with the electronic I purchase I go monoprice, or make my own depending on if I have/can get the materials easily, also I try to avoid HDMI where I can, I've had compatibility issues with HDCP in the past am generally not a fan of hardwired DRM.

5 bucks for my 6 ft HDMI at monoprice. You would be stupid to get it anywhere else.

For analog cables I get RCA (Their component and A/V Stereo are dirt cheap here, around $6 for 10ft). Optical, Monster (Also cheap, around $20. Only got 2: for the stereo and the AirPort Express). And HDMI, XtremeMac (Got one for my AppleTV for $40. Been working better than the Monster my brother has)

And for speaker wires... Just use a 100ft roll of Monster THX. Got it in a fire sale for 30 bucks.

(Note: I like the idea of Monoprice, but it isn't convenient for me, since I'm not in the US right now).

Generic.

monoprice.com FTW!

(except for that creepy baby that has been on the front page for years)

i have both, i purchased some nice used cables for my speakers because of the banana connectors on the ends, and have some $100 type hdmi cords on my 50" tv, due to it being in the wall, so i do buy expensive cables but not because i think they sound or look better, its based more on usage and if they will be exposed.

wife factor

Gizmodo must have serious issues. This topic is around every two weeks.

Anyway.

Cable is not just wire wrapped in plastic.

If you use the simpilstic "the cheaper just works fine", would you accept your enterprise network to be built with the cheapest CAT 5 chinese cable, just because is the cheaper you found?

Hey!, a cable is just a cable!!!, or isn't?

A cable is just a cable. Same materials, different packaging. I've been a long time audiophile and technophile and honestly, that extra $250 doesn't justify itself unless you're Steve Jobs.

I use to care about cables back in the late 80's, not I don't care as much these days. In fact, i recently recycled those old Monster audio cable to hook up the component video and audio using the one's included. Since the tv is shielded already, everything looks and sounds great.

@Asvetic: Coat hangers, or paperclip chains, maybe?
Cracked my up, thanks for that!

I wired my house with speaker wire that was $50/500ft or some crazy cheapness. I used 4 spools.

The other day going through my box of "misc" cables I found 1/2 a spool of monster 12 gauge speaker wire (oxygen free I'm sure).

I'm sure there was some point to that anecdote but I kinda forgot what it was.

The most criminal aspect of Monster Cables' business is that they obscure the heirarchy of HDMI completely: you won't find it explicitly on their box that a cable is Category 2 HDMI 1.3. The result is that you can spend $150 on a $10 length of cable that isn't even future-proof. Totally scheisty.

For digital, cheap stuff...as long as you can tell a high voltage from a low voltage you're fine. For analog cables, all high quality. For analog audio, it's all Monster StudioLink or Mogami.

@ronnsprocket: try [www.dealextreme.com], they've got all that for even cheaper--and shipping's free (it just takes about half a month to get there, but there's always the EMS upgrade option).