I almost cried recently when someone told they paid $120.00 for a HDMI cable at a local electronics super store. The poor bastard didn’t even know what HDMI was, the salesman scammed him into thinking it was required for his new TV to operate in 1080p. Of course the cables were Monster, the biggest scam in the industry.

Ever wonder why stores like Best Buy only carry ultra-high end HDMI, DVI, and USB cables? Because there is practically zero difference between a $120 cable and a $7 one.

A signal carried over a digital path such as HDMI does not degrade in the way it would over an analog path like component. Over a digital path the zeros and ones either make it to the destination or they don’t. If there is any degradation in the signal and the zeros and ones do not make it to their destination the underlying protocol will either correct the error or fail completely. The picture quality will not degrade as it does over an analog path. If the cable is under 15ft the chances of signal loss are practically nill, even over the flimsiest of cables. In other words, the picture carried over a $120 cable will be identical to the same one carried over a $7 cable.

So with that said, there is zero reason to purchase Monster digital cables. You are just tossing your money way. Monoprice.com has a huge selection of cables at dirt cheap prices. Next time the manbaby at Best Buy tries to pitch you a $120 cable you can tell him to sod off knowing you can get high-quality cables online at 1/17th the price.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 14th, 2007 at 8:11 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.