So what if some dude with extra money pays a premium for a brand name? If it wasn't for them helping with the profits, Best Buy wouldn't be able to sell us a $400 dollar dual core laptop at a razor thin margin.
Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)
71–80 of 106 posts
Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)
#72My patience for the line, "It is digital. It either works or it doesn't" ended a long time ago. "Digital" signals are analog signals, but the only difference is that they are restricted to being above or below some threshold. But around that threshold there is a gray area where you can't really tell whether your signal will be interpreted as 1 or 0. I am not defending the need for high-end HDMI cables. But saying "It…
The real time to worry about the quality of those cables is when you go over 6 feet.
Unless you are making your own cables, I don't see why.
If the >6 feet cheap cable you bought doesn't work properly then it is faulty and you can get a refund.
Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)
#73Monoprice.com. That is all.
Except when you're buying a new TV and you're at the checkout, you realize you need a cable to finish your hookup. This is why you never see a $10 cable in a retail store, like the poster above mentioned. It's all about the psychology of needing it now instead of being able to wait 4 more days.
Does your city have a Fry's electronics? Last time I was there, they had HDMI cables on sale for something like $4; I bought a gaggle of them.
If you don't have a Fry's, you're missing out on something wonderful. Every Fry's about a hundred people who absolutely and completely despise every single aspect of their jobs, and have been forced to wear white button-down shirts with ties.
Fry's sells everything. From green laser pointers, to 2 post telco racks, to embedded computer parts, to washing machines, to televisions, to cheap chinese toys, to candy bars, to tasers and pepper spray and home security gear.
Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)
#74My patience for the line, "It is digital. It either works or it doesn't" ended a long time ago. "Digital" signals are analog signals, but the only difference is that they are restricted to being above or below some threshold. But around that threshold there is a gray area where you can't really tell whether your signal will be interpreted as 1 or 0. I am not defending the need for high-end HDMI cables. But saying "It…
There is still a qualitative difference between digital and analog signals. With analog signals, you can always get higher fidelity by upgrading components (until something else becomes the bottleneck). With digital, there are gradients of "wrong" but there is only one "right." Once you hit the threshold of bits not being flipped, getting more expensive and higher-quality components will not get you better-sounding playback. A digital cable can achieve literally perfect playback. Analog cannot reach perfection, which means it's always possible to improve.
I'm not an electrical engineer so I don't know what the threshold of perfection is, but if the consumer reports can't tell the fancy cable apart from the Radio Shack equivalent of two-buck chuck, I'm not going to worry about it.
On an unrelated note: this is a listing on amazon for 6 feet of digital audio cable for over a thousand dollars. Read the comments. Comic gold. http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/dp/B0...
Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
The original poster is precisely correct from my experience. The only time I purchased a cable online was when I bought someone a gift that required the HD cable. All the other times, we ran around the corner to Shopko and paid whatever their price was because we had a new HD system setup and wanted it in HD. Now. I really don't think it's a casual purchase for most people, and I certainly never considered buying mor…
Also, when you're buying a $3,000 TV, $100 for the cables doesn't seem that bad, relatively speaking.
And when you've paid $150 dollars for a disneyland park hopper pass, that $12 slice of pizza and small soda doesn't seem that bad either, but you're still being taken to the cleaners.
Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)
#76I suspect Monster has it in their catalog for government contract fulfillment where they can just drop it in without any review of cost when A/V components are ordered (seriously). It's not aimed at people who actually look at price tags.
Have you ever gone into a Best Buy or similar and seen the cable selection? The "cheap" cables are $50, and the Monster cables are sold right beside them. Many people compare prices on the TV before coming into the store, but are not armed with good information when the salesperson tells them that their $1200 TV is worthless without $250 in cables.
It's more insidious at a Best Buy where large purchases like HDTV with accessories are often financed and the salesperson says they can have the best without paying for it (right now).
The average consumer has no clue and doesn't want to learn that digital is digital, not like analog. All they know is when there is poor signal they get nothing on their TV (or blocky) where on their old TV they at least got a viewable picture with noise.
Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the point of the "either works or it doesn't" is a comparison versus analog. With an analog signal you could get slightly better results by getting better cables (or worse with worse cables). If you have a poor digital cable it flat out doesn't work. If the cable you're using works, buying a more expensive cable isn't going to make it work any better. Either the 1s and 0s made it from the source to the destin…
Clearly you've never had an Ethernet Cable that got caught in a door. Or was terminated poorly. Or doesn't have the insulator sheath under the crimp. Or run parallel to a set of Florescent light ballasts. All of these events can reduce performance on Ethernet without causing it to fail outright. There is a reason why every single TIA/EIA 568 cable plant is carefully tested for things like Near End Cross Talk (NEXT),…
Anything running over Ethernet has packets with checksums. Yes, noise will cause packets to drop, and that results in lower overall throughput, while connectivity still remains possible.
The signal running over HDMI is not packet-based. You don't have any mechanism like with TCP where packets can get dropped and resent later. So if interference causes bits to flip on an HDMI connection, you will immediately see the interference on your TV, and it won't be pretty; it would probably look something like an HDTV antenna signal that loses reception--missing or discolored chunks of the screen or sparkly pixels. The effect is immediate and disruptive.
The end result is that Monster Cable might do a better job of keeping your picture intact during a freak electrical storm, but there is no practical difference otherwise. If you are able to see a picture with HDMI, and you don't expect any wildly varying levels of RF interference in your environment, your cable is as good as anything else.
Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)
#78A possibly apocryphal story about Quad using a surprising source of speaker cables:
Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)
#79My patience for the line, "It is digital. It either works or it doesn't" ended a long time ago. "Digital" signals are analog signals, but the only difference is that they are restricted to being above or below some threshold. But around that threshold there is a gray area where you can't really tell whether your signal will be interpreted as 1 or 0. I am not defending the need for high-end HDMI cables. But saying "It…
The real time to worry about the quality of those cables is when you go over 6 feet.
Not really, I have 2 $12 25 foot hdmi cable that work just great. I bought the cheapest one I could find because, hey, if it doesn't work I'm only out $12. But it's been working great for a couple years now.
Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)
#80My patience for the line, "It is digital. It either works or it doesn't" ended a long time ago. "Digital" signals are analog signals, but the only difference is that they are restricted to being above or below some threshold. But around that threshold there is a gray area where you can't really tell whether your signal will be interpreted as 1 or 0. I am not defending the need for high-end HDMI cables. But saying "It…
If a cable has an HDMI logo on the box, it is guaranteed to work. Specs are specs.