http://gizmodo.com/5286435/monster-supe ... -superthin

So what do you do if you're a company that sells expensive high-quality cables for home theater equipment when the market starts shifting from analog to digital?

Plan A: Keep producing super thick cables with all the shielding and materials that were used in the analog versions and convince people it still makes a difference and is worth the high price.

Plan B: Once people start getting wise to the act, do the exact opposite and come out with a super thin cable that gets ride of all the unnecessary coatings and layers you once said make a difference and market it as more convenient to still justify the high price.

100% agree with you.

Over 12 bucks a foot, yeesh.

Sadly, even Wallymart has bought into this. I thought I could pick up some cheap cables there, instead I was met with this overpriced Monster crap. Needless to say I dug a bit and bought the $12 cable and not the $70+ one. And it works just fine.

I have access to wholesale prices for cables and lets just say even the cheap and standard issue quality cables have a fairly nice mark-up to them so I think a lot of people would be shocked to find out the percentages Monster makes on it's products.

If I had to guess though Monster is probably very good about splitting those mark-ups with the resellers, by setting high MSRP's for them to go by, and it would explain why so many companies like stocking their products and pushing them on customers. If you make $5 profit selling a standard HDMI cable and $20-30 profit selling a Monster cable which one are you going to start stocking? If you're Futureshop - than just Monster.

GOOD LORD! I just looked at the prices of HDMI cables at Futureshop. That easily quadruples the price of getting a new DVD player to match my TV.

I'm late to the game on this thread, but I saw a thing on CBC a long time ago where they tested (on a very, very pricey piece of equipment...) one of those million dollar Monster cables vs some 6 dollar sucker they bought online. And to nobody's surprise, They both worked perfectly. Case closed.

yep hdmi cables are super scams

one thing they didnt test was the Bandwidth. Thats where they nearly got sued.

Yes monster cables are overpriced. They cost futureshop well under 100 and they sell them for three times that. Which is retarded. I know what they cost cause I was a technician there - seein what they sold them for made me sick.

in some cases, a real cheapie cable doesnt have the bandwidth of a more expensive one which has higher quality components. Some HD tv's require alot of bandwidth. You may or may not notice sound dropping out. If it does, get a better quality one.

Personally I think if FShop knocked 200 bones off the monster cables - they'd sell MORE. Trust me, they can knock off about that and still make profit - it just wont be 250% anymore. So I definately agree. SCAM and overpriced.

I think that was an episode of Market Place because I saw it as well.



Exactly. As long as it has the bandwidth (and some don't) it should be a 100% exact representation of what was sent through it. I forget what the current HDMI 1.3a spec is for required bandwidth but I seem to recall 10-12GB/Sec?

That Marketplace episode pissed off alot of people in the home theatre business. In one part for good reason - the cables ARE overpriced. But they were not accurate in the report. I spoke to many professional home theatre installers and they said Bandwidth is a factor that wasnt covered and should have been before they dumped on businesses.

They did installs for people who opted for the cheapie hdmi cable and ended up with sound issues on they're lcd tv's - as it needed the bandwidth for the audio signal. Not all tv's have this issue - but alot do.

I read somewhere that HDMI cables can be wired to work on Cat5e cable. Dunno how or if this is feasible, but if so, you could turn a 6 foot HDMI to 100+ foot with just Cat5e.

Yeah thats right, I always look for hacks to solve a problem first lol.

I wouldn't be surprised if it can be done but I would be surprised if that 100+ foot hack-job would work without a repeater at some point of the connection. Signal strength would be problematic at a certain point and when your display starts interpreting 0's as 1's (or vice versa) you'll run into problems where an expensive high quality cable will be better than a junky one.

"One final issue detracts from the Cat5e solution. Due to the extreme bandwidth requirements of HDMI and DVI digital video these transformer-driven systems require two runs of Cat5e, one of which must be a shielded Cat5e. If the project is taking place in a retrofit situation you cannot use a single run or an unshielded dual run....And it is ultimately the least expensive solution if you must install a run of more than 100’. "


Interesting indeed.

My $10 HDMI cable works just fine.

free monster cable FTW

Otherwise I wouldn't have it