I remember buying audio gear (think receiver, amplifier, cd player) and being the focus of the upsell for 2-5x more expensive monster cables. Once I patiently explained that a cable shouldn't matter for digital as long as the bits got there, and seeing the young sales guy pause and then "get it". And I got the (relatively) cheap cables. Also speaker wire. You can get perfectly good copper cables for less, probably in…
> Once I patiently explained that a cable shouldn't matter for digital as long as the bits got there . Emphasis mine. As someone that sold AV equipment, including cables, in the late ‘00s / early ‘10s, nerds that misunderstood the nuances of this were the single worst group of customers to work with. You could see them coming a mile away. By the time “gold-plated HDMI cables are a scam” gets down to their level of ps…
People frequently did try to claim you would get deeper reds and better blacks and all sorts of audiophile-grade bullshit by spending that extra hundred dollars on magic cables.
While you feel you might have been knowledgeable and honest in intent, the retail electronics industry as a whole is filled with a heady mix of ignorance and profiteering, to the detriment of customers. They’re almost always better served by grabbing cables from an online vendor after leaving the store.
And that’s if the devices they buy don’t already come with a perfectly good HDMI cable, which most do now.