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Biggest Rip Off

D

djellison

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Feb 2, 2007
2,229
4
Pasadena CA
OK - I was just in a computer superstore and saw what, in my opinion, is the worst rip off I've ever seen.

A 1.5m HDMI cable... for £68.99

I got 3m ones, off Amazon, for £1 each.

That's a 69:1 ripoff ratio.

I almost wanted to stand and wait for someone to pick one up just to ask what the hell they were doing.
 
djellison said:
OK - I was just in a computer superstore and saw what, in my opinion, is the worst rip off I've ever seen.

A 1.5m HDMI cable... for £68.99

I got 3m ones, off Amazon, for £1 each.

That's a 69:1 ripoff ratio.

I almost wanted to stand and wait for someone to pick one up just to ask what the hell they were doing.
Click to expand...

Most stores like Currys, Comet etc will try and get you to buy one instead of a cheaper one when you buy a TV or dvd player saying it gives a better picture blah blah. While I don't doubt it may be of better quality the difference would be so unnoticeable that it is pretty much a rip off. I paid £10 for my HDMI cable and that was the max I was going to pay.
 
At 35' I'd want quality or the reassurance that the 35' was built in such a way that it didn't lose quality over the span of the cable. Monoprice doesn't have the highest quality cables but I find them to be quite acceptable for my needs. If I needed something that was 35' long I would use monoprice and buy two. The $450 cable is truly a waste of money.
 
Using Best Buy as an example of rip-off is well, not right. We all know Best Buy rips off everyone of their cables sales at very high margins, so its a given.

Now, if it were to be like a mom & pop electronic type of store, that would be different.
 
jessica. said:
At 35' I'd want quality or the reassurance that the 35' was built in such a way that it didn't lose quality over the span of the cable. Monoprice doesn't have the highest quality cables but I find them to be quite acceptable for my needs. If I needed something that was 35' long I would use monoprice and buy two. The $450 cable is truly a waste of money.
Click to expand...

Monoprice had some more expensive 35 foot cables which I guess are better made, and even then, the most expensive one I found was around 40 bucks.

Gizmodo did a test a few years ago, where they got some audiophiles and expensive stereo equipment and did a blind test to see if they could tell the difference between speakers hooked up with Monster Cable speaker wire and a coat hanger. They couldn't.
 
I doubt there is much of a difference, but at 35' you'd want to be sure you know?
It's a long way for transfer.
 
a friend of mine owned a high end stereo shop.

he sold high end power cables that cost 300 euro's.

how can people believe that 6 foot high end power cable can make a difference when the cables in your wall are 100 foot long and are made from the cheapest copper out there?

he didn't know nor did he care but he took the money anyway. he made a solid 1000% profit on those.
 
andiwm2003 said:
how can people believe that 6 foot high end power cable can make a difference when the cables in your wall are 100 foot long and are made from the cheapest copper out there?
Click to expand...

Because people will believe whatever the morons working at Best Buy (and no offense to any BB employees here, but most of them are morons) tell them.

HDMI is digital, meaning one cable won't provide better picture quality than another. It's all ones and zeros going across, and either you get a perfect picture, or you don't get one at all. If you're using a cheap cable and you get a picture and sound that doesn't cut out, you will see absolutely no benefit from going to an expensive cable.
 
yg17 said:
Because people will believe whatever the morons working at Best Buy (and no offense to any BB employees here, but most of them are morons) tell them.

HDMI is digital, meaning one cable won't provide better picture quality than another. It's all ones and zeros going across, and either you get a perfect picture, or you don't get one at all. If you're using a cheap cable and you get a picture and sound that doesn't cut out, you will see absolutely no benefit from going to an expensive cable.
Click to expand...

Not trying to start a war here but don't they have different kinds of quality of HDMI cables? I've seen like 800 and 10,000 kinds of HDMI cables, the 10,000 ones being more expensive. Can't remember what the numbers stood for though...

Me? I have a $50 one that serves its purpose. I must agree though that stores jack (pun?) :D up the prices for them seemingly because they're the "new" thing.
 
spaceboots06 said:
Not trying to start a war here but don't they have different kinds of quality of HDMI cables? I've seen like 800 and 10,000 kinds of HDMI cables, the 10,000 ones being more expensive. Can't remember what the numbers stood for though...
Click to expand...

Nope, it's all a joke. It's the nature of a digital signal. You either get a perfect signal, or you get none at all. There's no concept of snow or static or other things like that as with an analog signal. If you're able to rig up an HDMI cable with coathangers and successfully get that stream of ones and zeros from your Blu Ray player to your TV, it won't look any worse than an expensive Monster HDMI cable.

If you buy a really crappy cable, the stream may get interrupted and you'll have dropouts, and you'll want to invest in a better cable. But, if a cheap, crappy cable is working perfectly for you, then there is no reason to use anything else.
 
yg17 said:
Nope, it's all a joke. It's the nature of a digital signal. You either get a perfect signal, or you get none at all. There's no concept of snow or static or other things like that as with an analog signal. If you're able to rig up an HDMI cable with coathangers and successfully get that stream of ones and zeros from your Blu Ray player to your TV, it won't look any worse than an expensive Monster HDMI cable.

If you buy a really crappy cable, the stream may get interrupted and you'll have dropouts, and you'll want to invest in a better cable. But, if a cheap, crappy cable is working perfectly for you, then there is no reason to use anything else.
Click to expand...

720p connector and a 1080p connector would output different picture, maybe that's what the numbers concerned.
 
yg17 said:
Nope, it's all a joke. It's the nature of a digital signal. You either get a perfect signal, or you get none at all.
Click to expand...

Not quite true. If that was the case there'd be no need for error correction algorithms. The less the signal needs correcting the better.
 
spaceboots06 said:
720p connector and a 1080p connector would output different picture, maybe that's what the numbers concerned.
Click to expand...
No. There's no such thing as a 720p cable and a 1080p cable. All HDMI cables are capable of 1080p. These numbers are something that Monster pulls out of their ass to make their cables look better.

bartelby said:
Not quite true. If that was the case there'd be no need for error correction algorithms. The less the signal needs correcting the better.
Click to expand...
Yes, that is true. Error correction can only do so much though, so if you're getting good audio and video from a cheap cable, chances are, there's not much EC taking place. EC wasn't designed to fix a constant stream of errors, rather just an odd bad packet or two every now and then, so if there were a lot of errors, you'd notice it as EC wouldn't be able to keep up with the stream.
 
yg17 said:
No. There's no such thing as a 720p cable and a 1080p cable. All HDMI cables are capable of 1080p. These numbers are something that Monster pulls out of their ass to make their cables look better.
Click to expand...

Ah, I see. Well if that's the case I must say Monster has probably made a fortune already on something they shouldn't really have.
 
yg17 said:
Nope, it's all a joke. It's the nature of a digital signal. You either get a perfect signal, or you get none at all. There's no concept of snow or static or other things like that as with an analog signal. If you're able to rig up an HDMI cable with coathangers and successfully get that stream of ones and zeros from your Blu Ray player to your TV, it won't look any worse than an expensive Monster HDMI cable.

If you buy a really crappy cable, the stream may get interrupted and you'll have dropouts, and you'll want to invest in a better cable. But, if a cheap, crappy cable is working perfectly for you, then there is no reason to use anything else.
Click to expand...

Little false there. Cheap cables do suffer more from interference and have more noise in them than high quality ones. This noise has to have error correcting done to it and for the most part 99.9% of people out there could not tell the difference.

I personally think the high prices ones are over priced. Sorry but I am not going to be a 100+% more for something for .01% better quality signal.
The only time it really become noticeable at all is when you start pushing the limits of cable length. At those longer ranges there is just more chances there are for noise to enter the picture. But at that point you are getting to 50' range and even then the difference is pretty negligible. Audio phobs would not even think about running the cables at those long lengths any how so again not an issue.
 
HDMI you shouldn't see a difference in the higher priced on compared to the lower priced one. The digital signal is the same 0011 on both.

Where you migh hear and or see a difference is in your analog cables.
 
Rodimus Prime said:
Little false there. Cheap cables do suffer more from interference and have more noise in them than high quality ones. This noise has to have error correcting done to it and for the most part 99.9% of people out there could not tell the difference.
Click to expand...

True, there is noise, but a digital signal can withstand some noise before error correction has to kick in. And even if there is a lot of error correcting going on, as long as your devices can keep up with the errors and you don't see or hear them, why bother with an expensive cable? Let error correction do its job and go the cheap route.
 
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