Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)

#101

Post by chaosmachine » Thu, Apr 01, 2010, 10:30 AM UTC

Pahalial wrote: post #84

Sam_Odio wrote: post #24

Even better: An electromagnetically shielded, gold plated optical audio cable. Sold at Sears [1]. I stopped buying cables retail a long time ago. My favorite supplier: RiteAV. They're (IMHO) the Amazon of cables. Huge selection, modest prices [2], and great customer service [3]. 1. http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_05750807000P?vName=... 2. HDMI cables start at $3.50 - http://www.riteav.com/hdmi-cables-c-141_1…

Not to knock your suggestion, but I've had similarly great experiences with http://monoprice.com . It seems similar to RiteAV, but much bigger and their prices seem on par (maybe 6-10 cents more expensive): http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Monoprice Marginally higher rating, but more importantly a MUCH larger sample size (2338 lifetime reviews vs. 25) Also, as someone north of the border they do ship here, wherea…

Monoprice also sells really cheap mini displayport adapters. They even sell a mini displayport to hdmi adapter (you can't get one from Apple).

Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)

#102

Post by ciupicri » Thu, Apr 01, 2010, 10:42 AM UTC

edd wrote: post #8

How can companies still get away with not shipping these cables in the box with displays?

Both my HP LCD monitors came with DVI cables. The last one even came with a HDMI cable and a DisplayPort cable.

Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)

#103

Post by Tichy » Thu, Apr 01, 2010, 1:58 PM UTC

tedunangst wrote: post #65

Tichy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is this weird thing called error detection/correction.

which HDMI doesn't do.

Hm, no idea, but I find that very hard to believe. I suspect digital transmission of information is almost impossible without error correction. IANAEE, though (I am not an electronics engineer).

Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)

#104

Post by rys » Thu, Apr 01, 2010, 4:05 PM UTC

electromagnetic wrote: post #94

tel wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, nobody is disagreeing. This isn't a defense of Monster, it's a typical It's More Complicated Than That jibe. Don't buy Monster unless that flowchart checks out, but also realize that it's not impossible to see signal degradation on those cheaper digital cables. It's just a lot less likely.

A $10 cable should fail before a $250 cable, however the frequency of failures for an infrequently moved or manipulated cable should still give it a longevity of a few years. A $10 cable wont fail 25 times within the lifespan of the technology it's attached to. HDMI won't exist before you get 25 failures, unless you enjoy hammering nails into you cables or some other bizarre behaviour.

I think most people will gladly pay more for a better cable, but they'd like to pay something comensurate to the engineering effort, and production and material costs. The markup is insane (nearly $200 apparently).

One has to wonder if Monster and their retail partners would make just as much money selling them at $50, due to higher volume, with the added bonus of people not totally misleading everyone with the value proposition.

Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)

#105

Post by electromagnetic » Fri, Apr 02, 2010, 3:13 PM UTC

rys wrote: post #104

electromagnetic wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A $10 cable should fail before a $250 cable, however the frequency of failures for an infrequently moved or manipulated cable should still give it a longevity of a few years. A $10 cable wont fail 25 times within the lifespan of the technology it's attached to. HDMI won't exist before you get 25 failures, unless you enjoy hammering nails into you cables or some other bizarre behaviour.

I think most people will gladly pay more for a better cable, but they'd like to pay something comensurate to the engineering effort, and production and material costs. The markup is insane (nearly $200 apparently). One has to wonder if Monster and their retail partners would make just as much money selling them at $50, due to higher volume, with the added bonus of people not totally misleading everyone with the value…

I spent about $5 more on my HDMI cables than I would have to get ones with a heavy-duty rubberised outside instead of the cheap and tacky bendy-plastic that breaks easily from over-manipulation.

You are right, people will pay more for better quality but misleading people into believing something is better quality by outright lies actually violates most consumer protection laws. I've seen no $250 monster cables at best buy here in ontario, the most expensive I saw was a $60 10ft cable by monster, however the consumer protection act is very strong and very strict here. Best Buy has screwed me over before and the mention of the CPA to a manager gets the problem resolved quickly. It appears they know they're in the wrong in many cases, but people let them get away with it - this is usually on their extended warranties from my experience.

Re: Why you should never pay more than $10 for an HDMI cable (Infographic)

#106

Post by mansr » Wed, Apr 07, 2010, 6:41 PM UTC

Tichy wrote: post #103

tedunangst wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which HDMI doesn't do.

Hm, no idea, but I find that very hard to believe. I suspect digital transmission of information is almost impossible without error correction. IANAEE, though (I am not an electronics engineer).

HDMI does have error correction. Every 8 bits of video data are sent as 10 bits on the wire.