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Monster Cables picked the wrong guy to threaten (2008)

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Re: Monster Cables picked the wrong guy to threaten (2008)

#121

Post by nkurz »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #14
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a case of sour grapes, on the part of Audioholics. He seems to have done fairly well for himself, since then.

It's really hard to tell without more detail! I tried doing a bit of digging, but he was a really early staffer to join Audioholics, and was editor-in-chief when he was fired. He's editor-in-chief of another site now, which it looks like he founded. You probably have to do something pretty bad to get publicly fired for cause when you were the editor-in-chief, and him having a new site he made himself isn't exactly an…

I think the answer is that he set up another site called Audiogurus that was advertising itself as being "Audioholics store". This didn't go over well. Here's an article about that hints at it: https://www.audioholics.com/news/audioholics-e-store-name-ch...

And here's a thread about it, which is admittedly hard to read because the "Audioholics" has been replaced the words "Bad Robot": https://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/bad-robot.9451...

Re: Monster Cables picked the wrong guy to threaten (2008)

#123

Post by bzzzt »

bolognafairy wrote: post #53
interpol_p wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When wiring up my projector, I needed a 10 or 20 meter HDMI cable. The first one I got produced a snowy image on the screen — it wasn't like analogue static, but it was definitely a poor quality image. I replaced that cable with a more expensive one and the image looked correct. It surprised me that there would be a difference in HDMI cables, because I thought exactly the same way — a digital signal is a digital sign…

This isn’t even true with other common ‘digital’ cables. Not all ‘Ethernet’ cables are the same. Someone will give you 100mbit. Some will give you a gigabit. Some will give you even more. They’ve all got RJ45 on them. “All HDMI cables are the same” is an almost-baseless corruption of a very valid critique of Monster et al.

RJ45 is just the plug. Ethernet cables are labeled with category 5, 5e, 6 etc.

Re: Monster Cables picked the wrong guy to threaten (2008)

#124

Post by bigtex »

When I worked at Best Buy in the late 90's, we were trained on the virtues of Monster AV cables, which they pushed because they were an accessory with high margins. I recall one time when a sales manager cut open a cheaper version of some cables and discussed how it had less wiring and insulation, which I think he did with Monster cable to show the drastic difference. I think they had like 3 levels of quality, the cheap stuff, the mid-grade stuff and Monster. Even though I worked there I only ever bought the mid-grade because the quality to price ratio was great.

Re: Monster Cables picked the wrong guy to threaten (2008)

#125

Post by kimixa »

jaredandrews wrote: post #36

I had no idea Monster sold anything other than over priced guitar cables... About 15 yeard ago, I knew a guy who exclusively bought Monster... well he had two of them, one from the guitar to the pedal board and another from the board to the amp. But it wasn't because of their alleged improved sound quality or whatever, it was because they had a lifetime warranty. Dude had bought two monster 1/4inch cables and gotten…

We used them at a student union for a similar reason - lots of students thinking they're a rock star swinging mics around and stuff meant we ended up with a lot of damage. Though IMHO the monster cables didn't actually take the damage any better than real "professional-tier" brands, that "no questions" replacement policy was used heavily by us.

Re: Monster Cables picked the wrong guy to threaten (2008)

#126

Post by lyu07282 »

nukem222 wrote: post #86

I don't quite understand the point of litigating businesses in civil court if existential threats are excluded from judgement. What is the reasoning behind a fine being sufficient to incentivize following the law when you can make so much more money not following the law? I also don't understand what the point of shareholders and board members are if they can't be personally held liable for their investments violatin…

Is this a rhetorical question? Cause capitalism, everybody loves capitalism.

Re: Monster Cables picked the wrong guy to threaten (2008)

#129

Post by whatevaa »

avidiax wrote: post #37
ostensible wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there is now some truth to it. For example, low quality HDMI cable will may be only good enough for low bandwidth, that would limit refresh rate, and/or color fidelity (e.g. chroma subsampling) and/or resolution. So yea, “digital” cables are not immune to signal integrity issues, and better cables do perform better. I understand that monster takes this to the next level of bullshit — but in principle, yes, more…

> So yea, “digital” cables are not immune to signal integrity issues, and better cables do perform better. Better cables perform better, but not at all in the way that Monster suggests. Gold plating and oxygen-free copper doesn't matter. Any certified HDMI cable will operate at least to its certification, whether or not it is gold plated with triple shielded conductors. I wish the HDMI forum would officially deprecat…

Nah, cables oftenly can lie about it's certification, especially when it comes to resistance to interference. This is how you get "bad cable".
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