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Electronics Retailer Busted in Video Cable Quality Hoax
Monster Cable makes some great looking cables. In the world of connectors, the cable manufacturer's color schemes and aesthetics are unmatched. But do they actually make your television signal look better and your stereo signal sound better?This claim (by Monster itself) been a point of contention that many have attempted to prove, but a little scam found at a certain unnamed electronics retailer shows that some are being a little dishonest in attempting to show that supposed difference.
The above picture from CrunchGear shows a setup where people are asked to see whether they can see the difference between high-priced Monster Cables and the lower-priced alternatives you can buy online at places like monoprice.com and bluejeanscable.com. However, this is far from a fair test. Where the "Monster" image is run through one of the company's HDMI cables, offering a high-definition digital picture, the other image is run through a set of low-definition composite cables.
It's a cheap trick, definitely. Don't fall for it yourself. In general, the cheapo cables are just fine for typical home theater setups -- any place where you're running less than six-feet worth of cable. It's only when you're running long lengths of cable, the sort you might install in your walls, that you may just want to think about upgrading.
And if you're a serious high-end sound buff, you already knew all this and have your own favorite silver-lined, oxygen free cables anyway, right?
From CrunchGear
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Comments
4
Subscribe to commentsJonathan H.Apr 7th 2008 5:19PM
I suppose next you're going to tell me that lamp cord (zip cord) has the same sound qualities as some of the lower end audiophile cables. It all boils down to how good one's ears are & do they know what to listen "FOR or TO" or what to look for when listing to cables or vidio.
ErwinMar 4th 2009 4:57PM
Jonathan, you are still thinking analog - remember we are now in the digital world. HDMI is digital, this means there is no difference between the information going over a cheap cable or a monster cable. Its just bytes. No color signal, no sound wavesforms, just bits and bytes. As long as the right bits and bytes go from one side to the other with the right speed you cannot tell the difference in sound/audio quality between cheap or expensive cables.
For longer length cables (say >15 feet; >5m), quality may suffer because of loss of bytes when even the built in HDMI error correction cannot repair them, resulting in digital errors: stutter, blocks, frozen picture. In the digital data transfer world there are no such things as "less sharpness", "better colors", "more definition", "white noise", "color shifting", "loss of contrast", "loss of saturation" etc ... those are all from the analog world. Do not believe a salesman when these terms are used to refer to a HDMI link!
Compare how your PC works - your digital photo's do not change in color or contrast when the binary information is going through the cable from you hard drive to the CPU and then via a digital DVI cable (which is HDMI without sound) to your flatscreen. Modern TV's with HDMI are like computer monitors. Modern DVD/Blu-Ray/PS3 players connecting via HDMI are small computers. Its all digital! And very bad business for Monster Cables still living in the analogue world. Although for analogue links like audio speaker cables they still have good stuff.
So, in short, the picture (and sound!) of a flatscreen connected with HDMI is either good or it is very bad or no picture at all.
Ofcourse build quality of cables may differ but I still would advise to start with the cheapest HDMI cable you can find. It will save you (a lot of) money.
hdmicables02Feb 10th 2012 1:40AM
Monster Cables are looking good...The HDMI Cables from Monoprice.com are of good quality and can be easily available at cheap rate...Thanks for the information and the post...
RichieDec 14th 2007 5:09PM
Best Buy in Ocoee Florida did something very similar to this with high def dvd player. They have 2 exact tvs next too one another with one hooked up to the high def dvd and the other to a "regular" dvd player to "show you the difference". All they did was lessen the contrast, brightness and sharpness on the "other dvd" to make the picture quality look bad. We took the remote and adjusted it back and you couldnt tell the difference between the two. Scammers.