I was quite appalled to go into Harvey Norman yesterday and to see that they are selling HDMI cables at anything from one hundred and fifty to six hundred dollars! The cables aren’t even that long – they had four metre ones for about $400, with a 10 metre one for a shocking $599. They are covered with the normal marketing stuff – how it guarantees a ‘better home theatre experience’ and general junk like that. The worst offender for outrageously (and needlessly) expensive HDMI cables is a brand called ‘Monster Cables’, but there are others like ‘Gecko’ and ‘PureAV’. Some of these companies even sell expensive optical cables with gold plated connectors! But why are these cables such a rip off? First, there’s the fundamental fact that they are digital cables.
An analogue signal, which is used to carry video and audio in the older Composite, S-Video and Component video standards, can be degraded with a low quality cable, long cable lengths, and possibly interference from other cables (like power cables). It is worth spending a little more on these cables, like the $60 component cable we bought with our DVD player. A digital signal that these HDMI cables carry, on the other hand, is not affected by cable quality. Generally, unless the cable is broken, it will deliver a perfect signal, which means a perfect picture. Basically, a $12 dollar cable from Monoprice, or even the $3 cable that came with my monitor will always give just as good a picture as the $500 Monster cable. Furthermore, all cables that carry the HDMI logo must be certified to deliver an essentially perfect picture (HDMI certification requires less than one in every million pixels be lost, or something like that. A human would have trouble picking up one in five hundred.).
Clearly these Monster Cables are very high quality – but the only thing that means is that they won’t break as easily. And it’s not even like HDMI cables are often in a position where damage would ever be a problem, and even if a cheap cable did break, you could still buy twenty or thirty new ones for the price of getting a single Monster cable!
Monster cables do not ever give you a better picture, sound quality, or any other benefits than the cheapest $5 bargain bin HDMI cables. If you don’t get a perfect picture with an HDMI cable, then it is broken – nothing to do with the quality of the cable. I would advise everyone to never buy Monster brand cables, or any HDMI cable over $100 – unless it’s 30 or 40 metres long or something.
Sorry mate you have it all wrong,
Monster does give you a much better picture.
I spent $1250 on my cables because my plasma looked “crap” now it looks better than
any of my mate that purchased the same TV.
I suggest you go and get a demo and unless you are blind you will see the difference.
But everyone has an right to be tight and by the cheap cables and say Monster is over priced, that why people buy cheap tyres for their cars and have accidents.
Henshaw
Henshaw – Sounds like you are yet another consumer sucked into their scam. As I said, Monster cables are very good, and very high quality. But if you read up on HDMI certification, you’ll see that all certified HDMI cables must carry a perfect picture – even the $12 one that I linked to. As for going and getting a demo – a lot of the time they use dirty tricks like comparing a standard definition video cable to a Monster HDMI cable – in a fair test though, they will both look exactly the same.
Analogue cables are a different matter – you want a fairly expensive cable for them, but nothing near some of the prices Monster have…
Sorry Henshaw but you’re wrong. HDMI cables are digital cables so they either work great or they don’t work at all. As long as the 1’s and 0’s reach the source it is going to be the same image quality.
[...] Expensive HDMI cables are a scam [...]
There is no difference between the expensive ones and the cheap ones. Just ask the IT/Engineering department at any television station (such as the one I work at, and have asked the IT/Engineering department.)
Someone who has a better picture than their friend’s on the same monitor model should bring the monitors side by side and set them up exactly (do it by the numbers, and then do it with a bluegun or some setup using your eyes) Connected to the same digital source, hook a cheap connector AND an expensive connector to the moitors, then switch the cables. The monitors will continue to deliver whatever quality they made before the cable-switch- independent of the cable BUT dependent upon their own internal settings.
TV stations are ‘cheap’ and will go with whatever works, and these guys know their stuff. But it is pretty funny to see people in “best buy” contemplating a $150 USD cable that is a meter long. WTF is wrong with these people who buy-into anything and dont think it thru???
Hi, I too am a fan of budget cables, so this whole Monster Cable must be better, is only really relevant when you use analogue video cables.
As you point out, HDMI is a Digital connection, sending just a rate of 1’s and 0’s along them. It is either going to make the connection or it isn’t.
The UKs Channel 5 Gadget show also found this out in the last series!
So, Save you £/$ on a few more Blu Ray titles instead!