Buying an HDMI cable? Don’t spend more than $10
Q. Given what you have written in the past about expensive HDMI cables, I had to email you about this weekend’s experience at a big-box retailer. I was cringing over $495 (yes, almost $500) wiring packages and overheard a salesman successfully push a $95 package on a customer by saying, “You bought an excellent TV; you don’t want the cable holding you back.” It was all I could do not to pull the customer aside and share your advice with her.
How is it that people still fall for this? Is there any way a cable can make things look and sound better or is it really just the scam it seems to be?
T.B., Minneapolis
A. I have not written about the expensive cable scam in a good while and, as you can see, it is ripping off people every day. The short answer is yes — it is a scam, and a shameless one at that.
Retailers are certainly entitled to a profit, but selling something for $100 or more by claiming special properties for it is just wrong. I will user a simple analogy to make it clear exactly what is going on and why these claims don’t matter.
Imagine you are in an ordinary department store and you see a single dinner fork selling for $95.
The fork has an impressive name and beautiful packaging and appears to be well finished and made of good quality materials. It is just a fork, though. What could possibly make this simple utensil worth $95?
You read the advertising copy on the package. It says, “When eaten with this fork, sweets will have a more sublime flavor.” Another line reads, “More tender, juicier meats” followed by “better digestion” and “lifetime guarantee.”
Since you use a fork every day and have common sense you know better than to think that a fork can change the taste of what you eat with it, unless it is dirty, rusty, etc. So it is with HDMI cables.
Manufacturers can tout “reproduces all colors” or “highest definition video” but it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans as any functional cable does exactly the same thing.
HDMI cables transmit a purely digital signal of 1s and 0s. Digital either works, or it doesn’t work. If there is something wrong with the cable you will immediately notice problems.
If you have a good-quality cable with a solid connection and adequate shielding the results are 100 percent perfect, whether you spend $5 on the cable or $500.
In my own living room I have a $13,000 TV connected to a $5,000 video processor with an $8 HDMI cable from Monoprice. I would certainly pony up $95 for a cable if I thought it would make a difference.
Knowing that it absolutely, positively won’t, I saved the money. I feel sorry for the lady who spent $95! She could have used the money toward an even better TV.
You can find good-quality HDMI cables for $10 or less at monoprice.com, amazon.com and mycablemart.com, to name a few.
If you buy them at a local retailer, you can expect to pay a bit more for the convenience and their overhead, and that’s fair. Almost $100 for a short cable is out of line, though.
Don Lindich writes about consumer electronics. Submit questions to www.soundadviceblog.com.
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