zspeedee

I like the advice of "go with the cheapest and work your way up". Makes sense. My PS3 and HDMI DVD players are both within a foot or two of the back of my TV so a 3 foot HDMI cable works just fine for me.

Although I see occasional $20 and $30 HDMI cables here and there, it's weird to see that the prices generally have not come down since I bought my HD TV a year and a half ago.

mariospants

Northwood

Monster makes a good case for how marketing alone can push profits. (Bose is another, but I digress) If it's analog cable, I can lend a sympathetic ear to Monster's marketing, but if you try and push a digital data cable, it's pure hogwash.

For those who think they are buying the 'best product' when buying Monster HDMI cables, I have some dot com stock for you guys, if you want some more of that warm fuzzy feeling ;-)

red_shift

Kaine23

Remember you are not just buying a cable. You are buying that warm fuzzy sensation of knowing you have the best very equipement.

Maybe you can't see or here the difference. What really matters is the way it makes you feel.

If you are the kind of guy who finds pleasure in a getting a good product and a good deal, buy the cheap one. If you want to know you have the best stuff, spend your money.

DesignerP

Anyway, it looks like you fell for the oldest trick in the book. Look at the scales of the "good" and "bad" image... there is more power and thus a wider eye diagram for the "good cable." Everything looks better with more power... How did a cable attenuate the signal so much? IF you boosted the power a bit on the "crappy cable," would the rise and fall times be the same?

Consider a true "random" signal should have a long string of ones and zeros so they both should have the same "full eye opening width" if they have the same power at the input to the cables. Your scope traces don't so I suspect they turned down the signal on the "cheap cables" which is what they used to do at stereo shops to get you to buy $100 per pair analog cables... since everything sounds better with more power just as eye diagrams look better.

Kirk Lindstrom
[www.suite101.com]

kirklindstrom

And yes, monster cable is BS, but at the same time, you have to give them props for pulling off what they do.

xaijin

Also, I didn't see a lot of discussion about crossover noise (does that exist in video?), signal bleed, or signal penetration. With all the crap we've got broadcasting in our homes (Wifi, wireless speakers, mobile phones...) a better designed cable will make a big difference. I wouldn't be shocked if a video cable too close to a computer or microwave generated ghosts like Dad's old Philco when a crow sat on the antenna.

Do you put $35 tires on your new Corvette or do you spend $300 for the Eagles or Michelins? Don't be a cheap. If you're going to spend $2,000 on a giant TV, spend an extra 60 bucks on better cables.

imajoebob

If you like your money, avoid both. Monoprice has done me well over the last few years.

maximum360

I have a 50 foot monoprice dvi cable going from my computer out to my projector and can have it end in HDMI, DVI or the port that Infocus uses on the 4800/4805 (M1-A) just fine and it costs half as much as a 4 foot monster cable.

Also "just saying this line means whatever" on a test equipment is something I hear when someone is trying to pull something on me. You could have just as easily said "The lines in the middle now mean their is a ghost in the room, and wants us to know that he is sorry that he killed a girl 100 years ago on this very spot".

Also their is no longer really such thing as "future proofing" just in the last 5 years I have used: coaxial/rf, rca, s-video,component, vga, dvi-a, dvi-d, dvi-i, M-1A, HDMI 1.0, 1.1, bluetooth, 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11 draft n * 100 differnt types, ethernet 10, ethernet 100, gigabit ethernet etc etc, Dvi Dual Link and we have at least HDMI 1.3 and DisplayPort as choices just this year.

If you think in 5 years you will be using the same connector for anything other than good old speaker wire, color me surprised.

rally9x

I have two other monster cables. They are for my studio microphone goin to my preamp (Drawmer 1969, Mercenary mod edition for all you music gear heads out there). That cable gets rolled over a lot, but mostly I want the best signal path I can get ...and still be able to put my mic in crazy places and not worry too much about an elephant stepping on the cable and killing it.

"Hello Guitar Center, you have a once in a lifetime sale! every weekend, I hate you guys with all my heart, but here is a cable that an elephant broke. Gimmy a new one."

For all other cables in my recording studio (and I've spent literally thousands...lord, probably over $10k, but Id rather not do such mentally damaging math) on a stock pile of shitty cables (Hosa seems to hold the highest percentage).

Generally speaking, the biggest concern is wear'n'tare and noise interferance. I have no idea if HDMI is considered "balanced" or if that even matters. I am nit picky about my video, but I am not as much a video geek as I am an audio recording geek.

kraquehaus

hazmx

Karma in 4D says:

zippyZ said:
who was that famous seer that said "A suckers born every minute"

That would be P.T. Barnum. And if he were alive today he'd be selling HDMI cables too.

HiFi

timsuha

or buy a spool of 10-gauge wire and craft your own HDMI cables and shield them by running them through grounded piping. it'll be cheaper, too!

Bloody_Sorcerer

Agree that Gold is first and foremost used because it is the MOST resistant to corrosion (when they find gold at the bottom of the ocean, it is still gold). Gold is NOT the best conductor of electricity however, it is 3rd (behind Silver and Copper) at normal temperatures.

Ask fans at Candlestick Park (now called Monster Park) if the overpriced cable business is booming :-)

poptall

end of story.

Cell9song

So what were they selling?

CD Sound Rings. Plastic rings that glued permanently onto your CDs, to improve the rotational stability. They used the analogy of swinging a string in a circle, then trying a rock on the end and trying again. You get a much smoother plane with a weight on the outside. Of course, the glue was permanent. And customers, being who they are, routinely stuck them to the wrong side of the discs and brought them in demanding refunds of both the sound ring AND the ruined disc... I had really enjoyed working there until the Monster stuff came through...

mikeymix

at only 8k a meter er something

vertigo

In the interest of this test and digital communication, its hard to tell from their test and screen shots whether they are even transmitting a digital or analog signal through the cable.

Even if the signal is attenuated a bit or not so "clear" you have 1 and 0, there is no .4 or .6 etc. Digital communication also involved parity. Which completely resolve any issues when you have small amounts of noise.

If price doesn't scare you away from these cables their WEIGHT should, they're so heavy they'll break the solder joints holding the HDMI connector on to the PCB.

I will concede that quality of cable does make a difference in analog communication, but mostly at high speed, so monster video cables being used for HD might be a valid investment. But audio is nowhere near the frequency beyond an average cable unless you have long runs with lots of external interferance. (of course)

gimmytaffy

Obviously, bashing monster is what we always do.

There's a reason for that.

This is meant to be a gut check to that.

Based on most of the comments, it looks like the gut check was affirmative.

Do any of you have proof that the expensive cables don't do more than the cheap cables?

First, this is really the wrong question. The onus is on the manufacturer to prove their cables perform better, NOT on the public to prove that they don't.

Second, the only compelling evidence you guys provided was a comparison between some random cheap cable and a Monster cable. If Monster provided the cheap cable, don't you think they might go out of their way to pick a shitty cable that would make their stuff look good? And if YOU provided the cheap cable, don't you think it would have been a good idea to compare more than one? Or at least identify the cable and how much you paid for it so we know what NOT to buy.

Here's a really good article by Jef Raskin that mentions Monster cable:

http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpa...

There is a purely magical belief in the idea that you can hear the difference between different brands of audio cables, for example. You can buy a simple one-meter audio cable with gold-plated RCA connectors at both ends for a few bucks, or you can buy one with "time-correct windings" that the manufacturer claims will "provide accurate phase and amplitude signal response for full, natural music reproduction." Price? $40. Or, if you are especially insecure, purchase a one-meter cable that has "3-Way Bandwidth Balanced® construction for smoother, more accurate sound" for a mere $100 from Monster Cable (http://www.monstercable.com). I've had the fun of testing if people could tell the difference-they couldn't. At audible frequencies small differences in capacitance, inductance, and resistance in a cable will make no audible difference, and there are no significant differences in the pertinent electrical parameters among popular brands.

I e-mailed Monster Cable and challenged the company to conduct a simple test with its choice of equipment and listeners. My proposed setup was simple: a CD player, an audio cable to a power amplifier, and a set of speakers. All I would do is change the cables between the CD player and the power amplifier, flipping a coin to determine which cable I'd attach for the next test. All the listeners had to do was to identify which was the inexpensive Radio Shack cable and which was the Monster cable. I would videotape the experiment so that a viewer could see what cable I was using and hear what the listener(s) said.

We had a friendly exchange of e-mails, but when I proposed this experiment, I got no further replies. It seems to me that if there were a real difference, the company had nothing to fear.

Jef Raskin was the guy who designed the Apple Macintosh.

If you guys are really interested in "The Truth About Monster Cable," you'd do some kind of comparison between cables YOU bought and Monster cable. You know, like a BattleModo.

On the other hand, if you just want to generate a lot of heat and page views by being contrarian, and slapping your readership upside the head for not "thinking for themselves," well, I guess you accomplished that!

bunny_rabid

Great bit of sleight of hand there.

That is precisely what was demonstrated to the editor when he reports having seen jitter and digital noise.

Of course a 1.2 rated cable it cant handle the bandwidth a Blu Ray player puts out... it was never intended to! Blu Ray players didn't exist when that specification was written.

Wilson:

Next time you meet with Monster, ask them to compare one of the $20 HDMI cables sold at Apple.com that are HDMI 1.3 rated, with one of their 1.3 rated cables, and have them show you the difference in the "tests".

While you are at it, ask them to do the same test with one of the $60 Monster HDMI cables they sell on that same Apple.com site, and the $200 ones they have on their website.

One last thing, why do you think it took a room full of people to explain something purportedly so clear cut.

drcons

1) Tolerated by the ADC's and DAC's on either end (ie maintiain high SnR) or

2) Compensated for by the error correcting mechanisms in either the analog signal codings or the error correction in the digital bitstream.

With respect to these two points and if cost is no object it is always going to be a good idea to select a cable that is going to have good transmission properties, for which you have a few options. You can:

1) Use a certification stamp (which you pay a *lot* for) to tell you that the cable is supposed to meet some minimum spec.

2) Trust the manufacturer's stated spec with regards to your particular requirements (or the requirements of certification)

3) Test the cable yourself.

Even if you don't have or care about professional test equipment, you do have eyeballs and eardrums (which are quite adept at detecting digital dropouts). So option 3 becomes quite attractive when you realize that you could conceivably blow through 20 cheap HDMI cables (any or all of which may have performance adequate for your application) before you could justify buying even one such expensive Monster cable.

As for the in-wall argument, you are asking to make a future-proof bet -- you are asking the cable to live up to a specification that doesn't exist yet, which it may or may not do. If you are dead set on making the kind of investment that doing this would absolutely require, you'd simply be better off installing conduit or fiber in the first place; it might even be less expensive. Consider though if you had made that future-proof bet 5 years ago you wouldn't even have an HDMI cable in the wall anyway!

John Laur

I have had two Monster component cables come apart on me, one coax, the sleeve and connector both fell off of the XBOX Monster cable (the one with the SPDIFF audio add on cable), and lastly a silly little S-Video cable from Monster fell apart.

Monster cables are crap PERIOD. <-- there's another period, take that Monster!

axiomatic

I haven't tested Monster vs. lamp cord, but I've tested Monster vs. Audioquest, and the noise floor on Audioquest is fully 50-60% lower than on Monster. So assertions that "the cable is irrelevant," at least for analog, are quite obviously untrue for anyone who's bothered to actually do measurements.

Not that I expect anyone to keep their opinion to themselves when it's uninformed. What's Web 2.0 if everybody doesn't get to spew their ignorance freely?

johnsomething

tinkertank

I will say from experience with Monster cables and the retail employee discount that they are worth the 10 bucks I pay over the 100 bucks the off the street schmuck pays. There is a blue cable that is still pricey but about a third of Monster called APC or something that is the same quality of materials that I go with since I am an equipment abuser.

TheRedMonkey

dreux36

Do any of you have proof that the expensive cables don't do more than the cheap cables? Or are you just going along with what every other troll says? Even if you agree with the trolls, don't be a troll.

Think for yourself.

Brian Lam

I came across this point in a discussion on AVSforums (or similar site). In order to be certified for the HDMI spec, a cable must be able to transmit a signal over the length of the cable while only losing (degrading, not perfectly tranmitting) ONE PIXEL PER BILLION. At the (roughly) 2MP resolution of 1080p, that's one pixel per 500 frames. Anyone who can notice a difference like that is either a) lying; or b) God.

Moral of the story: buy the cheapest cable you can find that has the official HDMI logo on the packaging. Problem solved.

ggraves82

toddwmac

loaderboy

dolo54

Hagar

"A $50 Monster cable would cost me about $10"

That is a 20% markup. That is a little over $8 cost to Best Buy.

I don't think we should be ragging on Monster nearly as much as we should be on BB's case. Monster may make $6 per cable whereas BB is making $40.

Citroen

Lagphree

The demo that monster showed used what's called an Eye Diagram, which is a way of showing the performance or signal degredation in a digital channel (i.e. the cable). It's a fact that digital signals degrade over long and poorly electrically matched channels. Thinking of a digital channel as purely ones and zeros is an incredibly simplified way of thinking about it. The digital signal needs to be modulated and error corrected because of the channel effects. This is effect is an analog signal.

This is a run on, but the fact is that Monster is correct in saying that cables can have an effect on digital signal performance. However, they should be ashamed of the test they used, because they're are $7 cables out there that put Monster t shame.

crichols82

mthrndr

This just reads like an infomercial...

dufus

JimByte

Darkest Daze

1. How "small" is the hank of each one of these two cables? Ok, they are of the same length, but, are they looped up at an equal number or loops?
2. Why did't both cables fed to carry the same signal? Are these two different signals (720p and 1080p) of the same voltage magnitude, or not?
3. Is there any chance, probably on video, to show us how the oscilloscope reading varries, if the connected cable is being moved and bended here and there?
4. What is the voltage magnitude accepted by the HDMI specs, relative to these oscilloscope readings. Is it equal to the low one, or the greater one? Is it lower or higher, and how much?
5. If this Monster's cable is clearly better than the low and cheap one, does this mean that all the other cheap HDMI cables are the same bad? How can we be convinced that there's no other cable manufacturer in this planet, who can provide another cable of an equal performance at a *fraction*, say, 1/2, or 1/3 or 1/4, of the Monster's price?

ccoyias

IN the far future there may be a point to installing a Monster cable but right now and in the near there's no reason whatsoever. I'd bet by the time 1440p at 120Hz in 12 bit colour comes around we'll have forgotten what HDMI was and moved onto the next connection they can make a wad of cash off.

OrangeDrink

Here's one chance for them to say what they have to say. Think for yourself. Listen.

I think the negative responses are too be expected given the credulous reporting. As to thinking for yourself, taking sales talking points with more than a grain of salt is thinking.

Another reason why the responses are negative is because the comparisons made by Monster aren't all that enlightening: rock bottom generic cables may not have the bandwidth of Monster Cables. I think I'd be more impressed if they showed that HDMI certified Monster Cables made a significant, repeatable visible and empirically testable improvement over cheaper HDMI cables.

If monster hadn't spent so much time trying to convince people that Monster Speaker Cables make an audible difference vs. good quality speaker cable--a contention which is not generally borne out by double blind listening tests--then people would be less skeptical.*

*I'm not saying that Monster Cables are bad or that one can't hear the a reduction in quality with a bad cable, only that super high quality speaker cables are overkill and not audibly different than 12 gauge A/C cable for typical home speaker runs.

Skeptic

but they're still too expensive vs the actual benefit you get

RastaSega

BTW, I'm going to go to monster HQ with a $5 monster cable for a repeat of the test.

Brian Lam

hbcobra

The number one reason is free cable replacement. You can rip the thing in half and go exchange it at guitar center for free, as many times as you can possibly muster. This has saved me more money than I could keep track of. They also reduce hums and feedback when used in live settings. I may have spent $60 for each patch cable, but I will never have to buy another one again.

Oh, and the power conditioner/filter works wonderfully. No complaints.

As for the Monster in home video setups. No idea. I'm a damn fire hazard.

zombieparty

iamnotdrtran

mwhyde

toddwmac

You never see Monster HDMI or DVI cables bundled with PC monitors, nor do they market to PC users.

If they are so wonderful, why don't PC manufacturers market these cables as an add-on with each monitor ? It's a great upsell... if you can make it.

And their new foray into power conditioning... are you kidding me ? For the price of their $200 power surge line conditioner I can power my Bravia on an APC 1500 watt backup BATTERY ! Are they going to tell me that their unit will preserve my electronics better than a device rated for PC use ? I think not.

dacheeze

devillion says:
Thank you for this. Gizmodo rarely has this high level of original content (not really a criticism, just saying).

I'm not sure I'd call regurgitating a Monster Cable presentation "original content."

Wilson Rothman repeats Monster Cable's Talking Points as (quote) "Here are Monster's truths:" Monster's truths? WTF?

You could call them opinions, statements, contentions, explanations or whatnot, but what you can't reasonably call them are truths. An objective reporter who really hadn't "drinkin' Lee's Kool-Aid," for example, would not call Monster Cable's press statements "truths."

This is not a good example of journalism. Its the kind of thing Consumerist writes up as an example of bias :-p Perhaps I should just mosey on over there and submit this and see what happens...well maybe not. I wouldn't want to start a fight inside the Gawker family, but really, the author may need some sort of cult deprograming now that he's been indoctrinated by the Monster sales pitch. Nobody but him, it seems, is buying it.

Once again, I'm not saying Monster Cables are bad, just that they are way overpriced and often way unnecessary and that this post really didn't cover the issue very well.

Skeptic

ysirotin

As some have said here, they are a great marketing company, like Bose. They spend HUGE amounts on sales trainings to 'convert' any newbie sales associate to start feeding the machine. Often times awarding the top writers free trips to California to drive Noel's cars. But you get there and you can only drive IN his high end cars, not actually drive them. Big whoop!

One more note regarding their cable expertise....I can't remember how many patents they claim to have but I do remember that a great deal of them were for the packaging and NOT the actual products. They took out a patent for the blister packaging for every type of cable termination so the cables look all neat in there. Hah!

My .02 regarding HDMI is; if you care somewhat for picture quality, get the middle of the road stuff. The tweeky high end community calls it the Law of Diminishing Returns, wherefore you pay an exponential amount of money near the top for fractionally small gains in performance. The best bang for the buck is in the middle.

With regards to speaker wire, gauge is far more important then any fancy metallurgical hubbub. Simply the bigger the better.

CptCosmo

banmojo

banmojo

I posted this link earlier this week:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

Classic sales pitch is to get you nodding your head "yes" before trying to close the deal. So he says COMPLETELY OBVIOUS things like "Bandwidth is going up" (yes) and "Not all cables are the same" (yes) and "Digital information can degrade on a long wire" (yes) to get you nodding your head right before sneaking in the pitch: "Monster cables are worth what we charge" (yes).

It's an old Jedi Mind Trick. [handwave] Those cheap cables aren't the ones you're looking for.

A better comparison would be for you to go out and buy a bunch of HDMI cables, then see if there's a visible difference between THOSE (the ones YOU bought) and the Monster cable.

My guess is that you're going to find a cable out there that gives you a Monster quality picture for a lot less than the Monster price (yes).

bunny_rabid

I agree that lamp cord for speaker wire and the crap RCA cables that come with the electronic components you buy degrade the signal but also that these premium cables are just snakeoil.

Just get good quality generic cables with good shielding and this should rival anything that Monster makes.

As for gold plated contacts, most audiophiles and videophiles (as well as geeks and nerds) I know connect and disconnect equipment fairly regularly that contacts are routinely subjected to enough friction to prevent corrosion.

Now any of you guys want to buy my 6ga speaker cable? Made from 100% OFC, broken in. Only $300 a foot.........

rcorrino

Quattuor

pharmboy

mkant

toddwmac

devillion

If you are not buying your cables (regular or super high quality) from Monoprice you are throwing away your money.

Monoprice rocks. I love their cables. Honkin' high quality at sweet prices.

OK, enough of that...

Windhawk

xthemusicmanx

xthemusicmanx

mesiikittie

Went to the local hi-fi shop to buy me a whole bunch of banana plugs for my new speakers and amp's. At the shop a eager salesman presented me with monster banana plugs priced at 18$ per piece. I told the dude that 18$ per piece was insane and no way in hell would I buy those from him, and I left the store.

it didn't take long before I found me another shop that sold gold plated banana plugs for a buck per piece.. I practically emptied the store's stockpile and left it with 32 plugs, went home to set up my 7.1 surround with a pair of stereo woofers.

18$ for a single banana plug. Its friggin insane!

Prelude

Now, as a long-time Gizmodo reader, I wasn't expecting an intelligent, credible or well-presented article (Why would I?), but this post actually lowers the bar in my mind. It reads like the diary of a con-man's unwitting mark, evangelizes bad science, and has the grammar-use and narrative tone I expect from general chat in WoW.

To Wilson Rothman, some advice: Don't be bamboozled - be more confident in your opinions. I'd also suggest becoming a better writer, but then you'd have to give up your Gizmodo gig.

chudmonkey

Aaron Martin-Colby

If you have the money to buy a Porsche why in the hell would you drive a Pinto?

There is no question that Monster Makes good cables and that one should use decent cables. There are two real issues: How good do your cables need to be until they are good enough and why should anyone should pay 500% mark up for good cables instead of paying a reasonable price for good cables.

Skeptic

Monster cables in my experience are very good cables. There are much better cables for the price but most monster stuff is pretty darn solid.

Yes you CAN hear the differnce between speaker cables and interconnect cables. Filtered power may make a difference in the performance in audio and video installations, depends on your neighborhood

To notice these differences you needs to be a critical listener, have good equipment and good sources. Typically you need to upgrade all of your cables just changing 1 won't make a differnce.

Digital signals to degrade over the length of a cable. if digital was perfect, as the electrical engineers make it sound, there would be no need for error correction.

Cables are a componet of your audio visual system. Spend the time to determine what you need for your compenents and run length. It does make a difference.

Don't use 18awg, unterminated, untinned lamp wire from a garage sale with your $1000 audio setup because someone told you it didn't matter.

Just because somthing is overpriced doesn't mean it isn't doing a good job.

Techguy1138

paulca82

@mikespit1
I don't take the car salesman's word for it I race the darn things.

xthemusicmanx

xthemusicmanx

Think of buying Monster cables as paying sticker price on that Porsche. Sure, you could take the car salesman's word for it, but you could save a boat load of cash by doing your homework.

mikespit1

If you connected all the audio equipment up with HDMI cables you'd have a point. But you didn't.

bitfactory

Dinobyte

xthemusicmanx

My father in law asked me if he should get the $120 or $36 HDMI cable for his 50 inch Bravia... a setup where it might actually matter. I told him to find the cheapest one, for all the reasons you guys laid out. He came back with a $100 1.5 meter cable, 'just in case'. Give people your version of the facts, and then let them do what they're going to do.

vince77

jmdecombe

jmdecombe

Unlike what Noel Lee and co. would like you to believe, you're not paying for a top end cable. What you're paying for is licensing from HDMI, Dolby, Simplay, et al. The fact is you can purchase cables as good if not better quality than Monster for a fraction of the cost. The caveat is that you just need to do about five minutes worth of research.

Yes, the Monster cables performed better than generic_hdmi_cable001, (they refused to disclose the brand of cable) but the reality is that the techs most likely screened for the worst of the worst cables explicitly for the presentation.

I spoke with Mr. Venuti about the spec, I asked him what the point of enforcing the spec and going after "counterfeitters, and instead let the market decide. He basically said that the little sticker is used as a stamp of approval for cables.

For consumers with deep pockets that need assurances that their cables have been excessively quality tested, I say go for it. Personally, I'll keep buying my $7 cables from monoprice.com.

mikespit1

Maybe if Monster didn't package their cables in blister packs that the stores give you a hard time about returning after you open them then people could actually TEST their cables to see if they get better picture quality. Until I actually start seeing these jitters and such I'll stick with the far cheaper cables I get from pricegrabber.com.

Elliuotatar

Wow. I never thought I'd hear the day that something was cheaper at an Apple store.

bigTrue

timsuha

calaverasgrandes

Sky516

sfarrar

I'd still like to know what purpose a gold plated optical audio cable serves. Does the gold help reflect that light the extra few millimeters that much better to guarantee the best audio I can get?

I'm happy with my $14 HDMI cable and $7 optical audio cable in my home theater.

neekap

strider_mt2k

Also, I don't even know how great Monster cables are. I suspect you're paying a lot for the name and marketing. If I have a/v equipment that warrants it, I usually just go to a place like bluejeanscable.com that has a good reputation and makes good enough custom cables with an excellent price/performance ratio. Anything beyond that is overkill unless you're a serious audiophile.

Brandson

They have a company. They produce a product that does what they say it will do. They make a price for that product. People buy the product.

I won't ever buy a monster cable unless it's the cheapest cable available. 99.9% of the readers here at Giz hopefully won't either.
That's the great part though: everyone has a choice.

This seems, for lack of a better analogy, getting pissed off at Jaguar for selling overpriced lame cars that get one from point A to B when they could be making cars like Hyundai.

zephyr_words

- you or they didn't say where the low-grade 10-meter cable came from. What would have been more useful (albeit not from Monster's perspective, perhaps) is to compare a number of cables; dirt cheap, mid-range and theirs.

- There is an argument that it is worth putting in better cables for long runs and wiring a house. No doubt; a better cable will have less signal loss, pickup less interference, etc. But the question is when that signal loss, etc leads to data loss. I can't tell from the graphs on screen how much the signal loss is there, but if it doesn't cause interpretation errors, then it won't be an issue. Every cable causes some signal strength loss; the issue is if that is a problem or not.

- Durability is an issue, but I don't think that most people plug in and unplug their cables that often. Sure, if you are constantly switching equipment, spend the extra for cables with better headers, sleeves, etc. But otherwise, I think it's a waste.

- Future proofing; perhaps, but most new standards are going to involve new connectors, so unless you run raw cable and put the ends on yourself, you are going to need to do new cable runs.

- As you say, good components can deal with weaker signals; they have better amps and receiver components that can interpret a weak signal better. When I am plugging a device into a TV and they are next to each other, I'll use cheap cables and only upgrade if there is a problem. And if I was wiring anything over a distance like 10 meters, I'd look at using a HDMI amp or repeater.

Richard Baguley

yooper1019

zippyZ said:
who was that famous seer that said "A suckers born every minute"

That would be P.T. Barnum. And if he were alive today he'd be selling HDMI cables too.

The only thing monstrous about Monster Cable are their (read: Noel's) profits. Let's just hope they don't spread out their interests and venture into the oil industry: just imagine "Premium Quality High Performance Gasoline CERTIFIED for your 2-ton Hummer" - $500/tank.... Chug chug chug goes the kool-aid

lightshow

calaverasgrandes

Hahahaha!! Associating Quality with Price is the consumers biggest blunder and the Marketers biggest Achievement!

Its Called Premium Pricing!

Of course Quality Control does Up the Price, but in the end you are paying to have "monster" written on your cable.

I fall between the Late Majority and a Laggard, depending on what Product is being sold.

I'm the Smart Consumer.

Patience is a virtue, in your Wallet and your decision making.

Don't Buy Monster, $120 for 2 metres of Cable....what a joke.
I wish I thought of this earlier.

For Every 2 metres, $1 manufacturing , $10 scraping money for R&D from Suckers or Innovators(hehe, thats what marketers call them), $15 for Promotion, $2 for contacts and the Rest is all profit.

bob fisher

moo083

UHMinSoCal

Brian Lam

So monster has a point good cables do matter, now is a $50 monster cable better than a $5 newegg/monoprice/cheap(price) cable HELL NO! Unless you are unlucky and the cable has a ton of cold solder joints, you should be fine.

jackelmatador

darrinjc

So long as Monster delivers the margin and the brand image, people will be convinced to buy the product.

Oh, and monoprice.com is the place to shop. AND I have 30 foot runs of S-Video, HDMI, and component (all monoprice.com) from a/v stack to my ceiling mounted projector.

justsayyes

Spend your money on better equipment. Hell, pay extra taxes if you really have that much of a hole burning in your wallet.

storm

curiousj

Don't get me wrong, I own the HDMI free cables that Comcast gives out with their DVR's to use for broadcasting signals, but on my 1080P Player to my 1080P TV I use Monster and see an obvious difference in picture quality in a terrestrial setting.

Ryn01599

When did a summary of a Monster Cable PR Event magically transform into "The Truth About Monster Cable?" That really isn't an accurate summary of this post. Perhaps "Monster Explains Itself?" or "Monster Cable Touts Self-Proclaimed Superiority?

I wouldn't call Wilson Rothman concession that "crappy" cables are ok to send SD to to an HD set much of a concession nor would I characterize a summary of a presser as a "balanced" article.

Skeptic

All Monster is doing is catering to uneducated people that want HD but don't know anything about electronics. These are the people that go to the "car dealerships" of media stores and line the gold pockets of the sales-people when they could have gotten the same deal for thousands less had they had known what they were doing.

bdkennedy1

http://monoprice.com/home/index.asp

gutterisatool

surfdaddy

Monster resorts to a commonly used practice known as "specs-manship". If you can prove on paper that your product performs in a certain way, under certain circumstances (usually in a laboratory environment), you can claim superior performance and a resulting premium market price. Total nonsense. Lordargent made an accurate statement in the prior posting: "Who uses 33 feet of cable?" Most people need about 5 feet. I recently outfitted my masterbedroom with a nice Sharp Aquos 1080p LCD with all the trimmings. I balked at the non-sensical price of Monster Cable. Instead, I purchased some $7 HDMI cables online. They work perfectly. No artifacting...no dropouts. Oh yeah...and for anyone who talks about Monster having greater "clarity", tell them to get their head examined! Just as we discovered in the 90s that Monster speaker cable produced frequency performance advantages that were beyond the physical capabilities of most people to hear, if you can see bit-related errors from an HDMI signal, you need to get a job with the circus.

All kidding aside, here is my advice. Go to a retailer, buy the cheapest one, if it doesn't work, take it back and get the next better product. (For HDMI cables at Best Buy, this means you have three levels of pricing choice for the same type of product.) If you're really smart, buy the cheap ones that get endorsed here on Gizmodo.

S1965

jimcord

waterdrop

Polybius

The interesting thing is that 1080p video is a very recent development, but Monster has been happily selling their overpriced HDMI cables for many years. What argument could they possibly make to justify their price before 1080p came around? And the argument that "it's more durable" is completely irrelevant unless you are moving your equipment around all the time.

I also believe the big markups claim. "Bargain" retailers like Best Buy and CompUSA have been boosting their profit margins for years on accessory and cable sales, because people generally don't know better.

redman042

I meant 700%. As in the store buys the cable for $7 and sells it for $50.

edcrosay

Real audio engineers would sooner use LAMP CORD then a monster cable....and let me give you a perfect example of why and how this is.

Take the cables from your amplifier going to your speakers. If you think that the difference between a monster cable vs same gauge OFC wire matters consider this. The SPEAKER IS THE WORST PART OF THE WHOLE EXPERIENCE. At 5% average efficiency vs the .000001% difference in cables which by the way is below the noise floor. The speakers have more distortion than the cables, amplifier, source put together. It is the nature of the beast.

In triple blind tests listeners could not differentiate between brands of cables and LAMP CORD.

There is a reason Monster spends so much on advertising vs actual product value. They sell to fools who think the cables matter. (especially in a digital connection...it is either good or not).

This from the same group of marketers that brought you DIGITAL SPEAKERS (you know the ones with the red/black terminals). ROFL.....who was that famous seer that said "A suckers born every minute"

zippyZ

jedibugs

Noel sells snake oil and everyone in the true high cable market knows this- he sells his shit at fry's, best buy and the like! No true high-end store wants anything to do with him.

jimcord