Customers Gleefully Mock Best Buy's $1,095.99 HDMI 369
First time accepted submitter Forthan Red writes "It may be a pricing bot run amok, or a ridiculously over-inflated sense of worth, but Best Buy has been offering an HDMI cable for a whopping $1,095.99 (currently sold out!). While Best Buy seems to be oblivious to the absurdity of this price for a digital cable, those posting customer reviews are not. Enjoy the mockery!" One of my favorites is: "saved a ton of money on a new TV on black Friday and decided to use the extra cash to get the best cable available. At a whopping 3.3 feet in length, this cable is no joke. When all my friends come over to watch football, they always say 'WOW what kind of HDMI cable do you have?' I proudly tell them about my audioquest diamond and its advanced features such as its Dark Gray/Black finish. It is a great conversation piece! Not to mention it fits into my dvd player and tv perfectly."
Misplaced decimal? (Score:2, Insightful)
Is this perhaps a $10.95 HDMI cable?
Re:Misplaced decimal? (Score:5, Funny)
Didn't you read the reviews? One guy was watched a horror movie and it was so realistic, it traumatized him and he had to seek counseling. He couldn't even leave his couch. This is no ordinary $11 cable.
Re:Misplaced decimal? (Score:4, Funny)
Was it a Monster(tm) cable?
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Based on the rather "premium"-sounding description, and that b&m stores typically have an insane markup on their cables, no. I could perhaps believe it being a $109.50 cable, and even the stated price is believable if you take hardcore audiophools into account.
Re:Misplaced decimal? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Misplaced decimal? (Score:5, Informative)
That, and amazon [amazon.com] also sells them for a equally idiotic price.
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Check the "what customers bought after viewing this item" entry.
I dunno if it's really a selling point if people get to see that they can have twice as much cable for about three tenth of a percent of the price.
The real question is... (Score:2)
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It's sold out, don't you even read the summary? :)
AudioQuest has been at this for a long time (Score:5, Informative)
They aren't the most overprice audiophile garbage cable company, believe it or not, but they are up there. The funniest to me have always been their power cables. They go all the way up to $7000 for a 6-foot IEC-C13 cable (normal computer cable). As though somehow the hundreds or thousands of miles of copper and aluminium cable (the long haul runs are aluminium, cheaper and stronger) are not the problem but the last 6 feet to your device is.
Monster Cable just overcharges you for regular shit. AudioQuest and others like them invent whole new kinds of bullshit and push the prices in to the stratosphere.
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Indulge me while I try to get into the headspace of the audiophool who'd buy such a cable.
I'd assume that such a creature would have a dirty great line conditioner plugged into his mains (thus removing the "problem" from the high-voltage lines), and then he'd plug the $7k power cable into the conditioner, and then the device into his overpriced cable, and let his mental condition do the rest.
No, often not (Score:3)
One of the things many audiophiles are up on is that "less is more". Basically that the less you have in your signal chain, the better the results. Now never mind power isn't in the signal chain, they apply the same logic there. You don't want all sorts of "bad" circuitry on your power and all that shit.
You actually find some audiophile devices are worse sounding for it. As an example you'll find DACs that are finicky as hell with regards to input because they don't do a good job locking to the signal and t
Re:No, often not (Score:5, Insightful)
Audiophiles have been in a quandary ever since the CD came out. In the analog world, the more you spent, the better the gear sounded*. Nobody needed "golden ears" to hear the difference between a $50 turntable, a $100 turntable, and a $500 turntable.
Not so with digital audio. Maybe someone can tell the difference between a $.25 DAC and a $100 DAC, but I can't.
You guys all know (at least I hope you do) that a $2 digital cable works just as well as a $2000 digital cable; noise only affects an analog signal. Costly RCA cables and speaker cables may be worth it if you have more dollars than sense, but you're better off spending that cash on expensive booze or better, giving it to charity.
*With the exception of fools who bought into quadraphonics: a $700 stereo sounded far better than a $1000 quad setup, since you needed two of everything for quad.
Re:No, often not (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe someone can tell the difference between a $.25 DAC and a $100 DAC, but I can't.
You're generally speaking correct, but more correct if you're exclude the absolute bottom of the barrel. Cut off at $2.50 and you're good. $0.25 is like trying to use a 70s era lm741 as your preamp, with a lm386 as speaker driver.
It still boggles the mind that in 2011 there are "home hobbiest" types using LM386 chips as an audio amp, they're nice and cheap like your 25 cents but they whoosh out white noise into headphones like a trip to a seashore. There's better lower noise stuff so you don't have to hear a constant "ssssh" in your headphones, but thats more like $2.50 not $100. Also the lm386 is a great oscillator as the power voltage sags, like when batteries are getting weak, when the bass response starts sounding whacky you know you should have selected a chip designed after 1980.
Also your $.25 DAC is gonna be like half a really dirt cheap dual DAC and you're going to be lucky to get 40 dB cross channel separation and noise performance is going to be audibly foul, which I suppose is better than most normal humans can hear, although its pretty pitiful as a spec. Again, $2.50 instead of $.25 and you're back into territory where you probably don't have the gear to measure it, much less hear it.
Another classic "cheapie" characteristic is 3rd ord IMD products. You can hear those in heavy bass and I'm no audiophool type. Again, the $2.50 DAC and a $2.50 amp chip designed this century would eliminate the heard and measurable effect.
The market seems to be "$0.25 junk at walmart" or the audiophool class. Not much in between. Although I must say my ipod nano final audio amp is pretty decent with low noise, but some would say i-device = audiophool, well ... whatever.
The standard /. car analogy is modern cars are more reliable than old cars, if you exclude the absolute bottom of the barrel like a yugo or a trabant or whatever China Motors is starting to ship.
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Nah, just poke around those sites and audiophile forums. There are lots of hilarious stuff, like "CD finalizer toolkit" [ultraaudio.com], which was a device you put your CDs in and it worked it over with special light to make pits more pronounced, which really brought out the nuances in sound.
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I have to believe this is either market segmentation done right, or money laundering done wrong. Or perhaps the other way around.
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Does this cable come with lube... (Score:5, Funny)
well sir that is our top of line cable but for$100 (Score:3)
you can get a monster cable or for $250 we give you a Geek Squad Black Tie Protection and it comes with a free $50 monster cable.
It's an heirloom, not e-waste (Score:5, Funny)
Analog (Score:2)
Anyone stupid enough to pay this much for... (Score:2, Insightful)
Absurdity Squared (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, the electronic version of the infamous Mountain Three Wolf Moon t-shirt [amzn.com]. Not the price, but the reviews.
It's nice to see people working together like that.
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It pales in comparison (Score:5, Funny)
It pales in comparison to the reviews for this product:
Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable [amazon.com]
Not a typo??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Buncha pussies (Score:3)
I mock the $39.99 HDMI cables. The $3.99 set from Fry's works absolutely fine. Cox cable compresses the strwam so badly anyways that the DVR records massive artifacts and decode errors regularly.
This is an old, old debate - digital cables. Maybe if you have terrible cable that so distorts the waveform you are getting more like sine wave than square wave (and there is no reason to assume that HDMI signalling is actually square wave, though it can be, no harm done) you are still able to rely on accurate clocking and decoding the data. The most likely errors would be caused by issues that come and go at close multiples of the clock. So what sort of cable issue would you expect to have that occurs at GHz rates? I thought so. Not bending it, and actually not external interference. Shielding aside, I would expect HDMI to use differential signalling, and I admit I've never bothered to look at the spec. It just makes sense. This renders external interference much less (no, not 0) of a problem.
HDMI is expensive for two reasons - licensing and marketing. Just count me out of wanting a 6 foot $30 HDMI cable.
And having said that, I have a lot of Monster cable. Speaker cables, where for my setup having heavy gauge cables is good, stereo signal cables where actual gold and not just flash has served me well for almost 15 years, flat coax for under the carpet, and the thinnest coax I can find in RG59, easy to fish and easy to retrieve. I don't much care for the oxygen-free copper thing, but when one of my signal cables starts failing I'll cut it open and see. I've seen the inside of some mic cables where the copper is noticably corroded, and the Belden guys claimed it was due to poor quality copper and contamination in manufacturing, which takes a decade or more to advance to the point of a problem.
So tell me, are you similarly outraged by 3D HD?
$23 million dollar book on Amazon (Score:3, Interesting)
Audiophile (Score:2)
We're talking about people who think you need the fastest computer available to play ripped CD audio out of your computer, because slower computers create "jitter" in the audio output, degrading the signal quality.
That's right, your lowly mid-range computer, capable of pushing gigabits of data per second across it's internal bus, isn't capable of reliably feeding your audio buffer with a of megabit of audio data per second. 'Cause, you know, your computer is busy doing so much other stuff, like updating the
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I read it in an article in Stereophile. From their "computer audio expert" guy. It's also a popular belief in the forums.
Every store should have a version of this (Score:3)
After all, anyone who buys one clearly has more money than sense, and therefore, should be separated from their money. It has been foretold "a fool and his money are soon parted", who are we to interfere with such a prophecy?
crap quality anyway (Score:2)
My media center computers have an HDMI output as well as DVI and DE15 (VGA). My TV has HDMI and VGA inputs. I have to say, the DE15 looks a lot better than the HDMI. So I use the VGA port exclusively now, it may be over two decades old but it still has the sharpest image quality.
Can anyone explain to me why VGA looks better than HDMI? I've tried this with several computers and a few different TVs. It would seem to me HDMI is inferior, why are they pushing an inferior standard?
Because you are screwing something up (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no way when things are set up properly that HDMI looks worse. The reason is that it is all digital. LCDs are, of course, digital devices. So is the computer. When you go to VGA the signal gets converted to analogue, and then the LCD has to convert it back to digital to make it usable. There is room for error there.
If I was to guess I'd say there are three potential problems you have:
1) Overscan. This is a throwback to the tube days and it is stupid that it is still implemented, but there you go. You want no overscan on your TV or graphics card, they both can be set to do it. You want 1:1 pixel mapping on both sides.
2) Colour levels. Again going back to the old NTSC tube days and their conversion to digital the levels for TVs aren't 0-255, they are 16-235. You can look up the technical reasons if you like, too long to type it all out. You don't want that for a computer source though. So you need to tell the TV to accept the full range input, and the computer to generate it.
3) Chroma subsampling. TVs have a lot of internal processing these days and it is usually not done at full rez, to save on effort. DVD, Blu-ray, and ATSC are 4:2:0 which means for each 4x4, 16 pixel block there are 16 luma samples but only 4 chroma samples. So TVs often process in 4:2:2 (8 chroma samples) which still does plenty well. You don't want that for a computer, it's output is 4:4:4 (no chroma subsampling) and computers rely on accurate control of it. So you need to disable all your TV's processing, often called "game mode" and also if your TV has a specific HDMI port marked for computer or DVI, use that.
Properly done, nothing looks better than digital when using a digital monitor. There is a perfect 1:1 transfer of information from the card to the monitor. Any analogue phase can only degrade things, not make it better. However HDMI and TVs were designed for the video world which on account of the legacy of NTSC has some seriously stupid and fucked up standards. Thus if you set shit wrong, it'll look bad.
So if you are wondering why VGA might look better it is because those things I mention are already set right. The computer doesn't do overscan on VGA (it is a computer connector, overscan is not done there), the TV knows colour levels are full range, and processing is disabled. On your HDMI inputs, you need to set it up.
one of the problems with this cable is (Score:2)
Gold-plated cables (Score:3)
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, how dare you philistines mock the $1,095 HDMI cable? The zeros and ones are so much sharper and clearer than the zeros and ones transmitted over cheap cable.
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:5, Funny)
I hear if you coat the wire in blue sharpie it makes it work even better!
Really! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Really! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:5, Informative)
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The relevant signal is the ones and zeros not the square wave.
Giving a $1000 to a worthy charity says "I'M RICH", giving it to such an obvious con-artist says "I'M AN IDIOT".
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You, sir, have obviously never tasted the fine watery goodness that is Bling H2O [blingh2o.com]. Be sure to try the "The Ten Thou" [blingh2o.com], for only $2,600.
For some people, no price is too high, for a HDMI cable, or a bottle of water... They're easily identified by waving their Centurion Card [americanexpress.com] around, and ordering "the best" and "the most expensive" of everything, but for some reason always forgetting to leave a tip.
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:5, Funny)
So, you are saying you really believe that this is an $1100 cable and that people actually buy these? This cable manages to transcend the laws of physics somehow, and while other digital cables either transmit the 100% digital signal, or don't, this one manages to transmit more than 100% of the 0s and 1s and delivers more data than was fed into it? Or do you really not understand how digital data works?
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:5, Informative)
Denon makes the AKDL1 link cable a Cable [amazon.com] that's listed for $10,000; a RJ45/8P8C patch cable, and there are reviewers who swear it's faster, really...
So I guess no... a $1000 cable isn't really any better; to get the real goods you need $10,000 for a cable.
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Try reading the reviews for this one as well, just as mocking. And while they may list it for $10,000 on Amazon (at one place only, no ratings, just launched with Amazon so likely a test product), the actual review for the cable http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9967991-1.html [cnet.com] and they also mocked it as nothing more than an overpriced ethernet cable. And show it priced at $500. The Amazon price is not authentic, just as the Best Buy price likely isn't, although they would likely be happy to take your m
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:5, Funny)
My favorite review:
This connection isn't sound. If my calculations are correct, it should be sometime around 2007 for whomever is reading this. DO NOT USE THESE CABLES. Something... happens with them. Something came through, something from somewhere else. We were overrun in days, not many of us are left. WE LIVE UNDERGROUND! ONLY YOU CAN STOP IT NOW. SAVE US. DO NOT USE THESE CABLES.
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:5, Funny)
i don't know if anyone will ever get this message, but if you do you have to come save us. oh god. you must come save us! we're slowly going insane each day. each day. each day. many of us are already gone. just siting and starting endlessly. or just screaming. the screaming never stops now. i don't know what happened to the world. it's not there. or it's gone. or we're just. i don't know. cut off. drifting. yesterday is gone and tomorrow never comes no one knows how many years its been anymore it just never ends. please come save us we're in samoa and it's december 30 [cnn.com] and yesterday is gone and tomorrow never comes and it never ends. it never ends. it never ends.
for the love of god make it end
december 30 december 30 december 30
december 30 december 30 december 30
december 30 december 30 december 30
no one ever dies and it never ends
-
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:5, Funny)
A review from that $10,000 cable:
I knew my day was going to improve when the truck pulled up at my home with this cable deep within. No ordinary truck, this one was Holy White, and the gold Delivery logo sparkled like a thousand suns reflected through shards of the purest ice formed with unadulterated water collected at the beginning of the universe. The driver, clad in a robe colored the softest of white, floated towards me on the cool fog of a hundred fire extinguishers. He smiled benevolently, like a father looking down upon his only child, and handed me a package wrapped in gold beaten thin to the point where you could see through it. I didn't have to sign, because the driver could see within my heart, and knew that I was pure. Upon opening the package, an angelic choir started to sing, and reached a crescendo as I laid this cable on my stereo system. Instantly, my antiquated equipment transformed into components made from the clearest diamond-semiconductor. The cable knew where to go, and hooked itself into the correct ports without help from me - all the while, the choir sang praises to the almighty digital god. With trepidation, I pushed "play," and was instantly enveloped in a sound that echoed the creation of all matter, a sound that vibrated every cell in my body to perfection. I was instantly taken to the next plane, where I saw the all-father. I knew with my entire soul, that all was good in the world.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
I don't often find joke reviews funny, but I really did laugh at this one.
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So, you are saying you really believe that this is an $1100 cable and that people actually buy these? This cable manages to transcend the laws of physics somehow, and while other digital cables either transmit the 100% digital signal, or don't, this one manages to transmit more than 100% of the 0s and 1s and delivers more data than was fed into it?
The price $1100 seems about average for cables that transmit 1100100% of the digital signal (where radix=2)
Or do you really not understand how digital data works?
According to Shannon, cables that transmit more or less than the intended signal should be avoided.
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Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:4, Informative)
When it comes to transmitting analog information, there is a difference in many cables. Even speaker wire (which is analog) makes a difference, depending on quality of copper, gauges used, etc. Most people can't notice the difference, but between "cheap grade" and "good grade" they can. But a HDMI cable is digital. Either the signal is 100% getting there or it isn't. It can't get there "better", like it can with analog information. If a $2 cable transmits the digital signal with no loss, it will sound exactly the same as a $2000 cable, it is impossible to sound "better". Smart people may buy the $20 cable for durability and quality of construction, but can't improve the "sound" of the music like it does with analog. I keep explaining this, and not sure why I would have to so much on a tech website.
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When it comes to transmitting analog information, there is a difference in many cables. Even speaker wire (which is analog) makes a difference, depending on quality of copper, gauges used, etc.
This is the most incorrect drivel I've ever seen +4 Informative. "Quality of Copper"? People haven't been able to tell the difference between solid silver wire and coathangers in double blind testing.
Audio frequencies are very low in the grand scheme of things. There's no magical design that needs to go into this like say an antenna feeder cable. There's only two things that matter for the analogue side of a hifi. Can you pick up interference, and is the resistance low enough to not impact power transfer?
Fo
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The prices can seemingly look high, but remember that these products are used for tax writeoffs.
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Getting $1500 of income taken off your taxes is not remotely the same as the government giving you a $1500 refund, or you getting the product for free.
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He said that, and he was correct. You are not understanding what he is saying. There is a difference in a tax credit and a tax deduction, and he explained it well. Try reading it again or consult your CPA.
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Its on the store side. I was tangentially involved in retail management a long time ago, and you could write off stolen goods as a business loss against whatever profit you made. Things get really flakey WRT wholesale loss vs retail loss and exactly which corporation eats the loss. Having a basically "captive" wholesale supplier means you can pretty much set the wholesale price you'd like, although that is questionably legal.
The other interpretation is the stereotypical housing bubble boom activity was t
Except this isn't pro cable (Score:5, Informative)
And pro cable doesn't cost that much. The only example of pro quality HDMI cable I know of (remember HDMI is a consumer spec, pros use HD-SDI) is from Belden, sold by Bluejeans cable. It is honestly above and beyond normal cable in that you get more range out of lower gauge wire on account of the tighter tolerances it is built to. We've used it at work for runs that are out of spec since it is cheaper than getting active equalizers.
For all that it is still only $20 for a 3 foot run, and then about $3/foot after that. Not cheap, but still way less than this shit.
Remember with digital signaling there is NO room for any of the voodoo audiophiles like to claim. You can either measure the improvement on a scope or it isn't there. The signal must meet certain specs to work properly and those are easy to measure. So unless they can show better certification ranges, it is bullshit.
Also at 3 feet you don't need anything special. It is such a short distance even regular old cheap Monoprice 28AWG HDMI cable performs flawlessly at high resolutions. It is only with distance that you start to need better tolerances to get the signal through properly. Even then if it gets too far you just convert to fiber, cheaper than trying to build the world's most perfect copper cable.
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A regular single-wave oscilloscope is not as good at one thing - stringed instruments.
I pick up/hear odd nuances that an analog scope won't show/pick up, but my digital 'tuner' program will easily show (as it renders the multiple waveforms it detects coming from the signal and very accurately reproduces them all on a graph so I know if I'm actually hearing what I think I'm hearing or not.)
APTuner FTW.
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:5, Funny)
You're absolutely correct. I'm a professional audio/visual user like you describe, and we have some serious needs that just can't be met by consumer-grade cables and other equipment.
When I'm watching football with the guys, we need to have the best picture and sound quality possible. Just like we need to have the best nachos, the best salsa and the best brewskies, we need to have the best TV and the best HDMI cables, too.
When the players are bent over before the hike, we need to see ever ass contour. We need to see the tight spandex pulled over the hairy butt of a 350 lb African American offensive guard in perfect detail. We need to see exactly what body parts are massaged during a hard and powerful tackle when two strong men grope and fight each other for the ball. Speaking of the ball, we need to see each and every ball with crystal clear perfection. When the player slap each other on the bum after a touchdown, we need to see and hear the slap as if it were our own asses being hit.
Football is the most heterosexual sport there is. That's why me and the guys like to get together and watch it. No women allowed! Maybe if you watched a sport like football that wasn't so pansy you'd understand where we're coming from and why we need the best cables and the best audio visual devices.
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Don't deceive yourself.
HDMI's only purpose is to placate the DRM happy content producers into cooperating with the end users.
All that encryption and decryption baloney does NOTHING to directly enhance the experience, and is only there because without it certain companies *cough*sony*cough* won't play ball.
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HDMI != HDCP
You can have HDMI without DRM, and HDCP also works over DVI connections.
HDMI is there because it's a good standard for a digital connection and has smallish connectors.
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I agree. A professional studio should buy the $5 cable instead of the $1 cable.
Perhaps a laboratory should get the $10 cable and an EMP testing facility might pay $20 for additional shielding.
For safety reasons, I'd go for two or possibly even three of those $20 cables in a satelite or space craft.
But that still begs the question; who'd need the $1095 cable?
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I agree. A professional studio should buy the $5 cable instead of the $1 cable.
Perhaps a laboratory should get the $10 cable and an EMP testing facility might pay $20 for additional shielding.
For safety reasons, I'd go for two or possibly even three of those $20 cables in a satelite or space craft.
But that still begs the question; who'd need the $1095 cable?
Begs the question is just filler in this application. You're not doin' it right.
As far as tech goes, RF engineering being an area of my expertise, for the most exotic 1.85mm coaxial connectors hand assembled and individually hand tested on a network analyzer and giving your grubby hands a physical printout of that actual individual cables test results, you are looking at around $200 for the connectors and assembly/testing service shipped to your door in a couple days. Think like Pasternack and RFcoax and
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This is very true for many cables used in analog applications, for instance, when running a cable from an amplifier to a speaker, you want a nice thick, shielded cable to get the best sound quality with as little noise as possible.
False. Shielded cable is worse that useless for speak applications. Moreover, depending on the characteristics of the amp and speaker involved, it's actually beneficial to use speaker wire with an extremely small conductor.
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At short distances, a metal coat hanger will be indistinguishable from "audiophile" speaker cable in a blind listening test. You've got to laugh at the folks that spend thousands on interconnects, power cables and speaker cables. I liken it to people buying a Bentley instead of a Hyundai when the design requirement is to deliver groceries from point A to point B. However, human nature being what it is, these folks will always find a way to rationalize the expense with smoke, mirrors, and flowery words.
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:4, Funny)
A piece of hollow copper pipe works best due to the extra skin effect.
Plumb the pipes as close to your amplifier and speakers as possible then bridge the remaining couple of inches using 30A electric shower cable. I did this last year and the improvement in sound was remarkable. Even my wife noticed.
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Even my wife noticed.
Yeah, I'll bet your wife noticed. Your living room looks like the plumbing section in Home Depot.
What's not to like?
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Essentially, what you're saying is buying these cables is almost equivalent to a religious sacrifice, making the purchaser feel better about themselves for the rich experiences they will surely receive as a reward, and that mocking these people is equivalent to mocking the religious for their beliefs.
I see no downside to this.
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Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:4, Insightful)
Uhhh, not quite.
Different kinds of food have different chemical composition which results in different combination of neurons firing etc etc etc.
Different kinds of cables - as long as they do transmit the data faithfully, which doesn't take $1000 cable - result in same signal arriving at the acoustic system receiver.
IOW, $90 bottle of wine and three-buck-Chuck objectively give different experience - what subjective is only whether it is a better experience or not, but $20 cable and $1000 cable give objectively same experience.
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:4, Informative)
Any reasonably thick lamp cord will do just fine as a speaker cable.
Go to your local home improvement store, locate the "12 volt outdoor garden lighting" area, assuming solar hasn't wiped these guys out, you can sometimes pick up off the shelf spools of really cheap heavy gauge stranded two conductor wire.
Theoretically, buying by the foot outta the electricians aisle should be cheaper, however, during one of the commodity boom/runups they were updating the price of the electricians aisle by-the-foot on a seemingly daily basis, but they never updated the price on the pre-printed spools of garden lighting wire. So I was paying maybe 10% over pre-boom per foot price for the garden wire, but I was cool with that because pay-by-the-foot had doubled or tripled and the pre-pack garden wire had not been marked up yet.
For something like the cost of an old fashioned DVD I wired up my whole 5.1 speaker system using garden wire. If I had used "best buy marked up cable prices" it probably would have cost $200 to buy all that wire.
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Sorry, but speaker cables are almost never shielded. The capacitance of a shielded cable degrades the signal unacceptably over long cable runs [mediacollege.com].
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:4, Informative)
With a wavelength of just under 10 miles for a 15kHz signal, the necessity of shielding is a matter of how long your speaker cable is.
Most people seem to have speaker wires that make great quarterwave dipole antennas annoyingly near the 15M / 10M / 6M ham radio bands or the 11M CB band. The problem is some classical, lets say, pre 00s audio output final power amps have something of a rectifying effect on the incoming RF. So you end up hearing clearly every trucker who drives by. Trivially fixed with a bit of shielded coaxial cable. Assuming your negative speaker lead either can be grounded, or already is grounded, a couple minutes with a swiss army knife and a length of old antenna / cable tv coaxial cable will either result in a trip to the ER if you have low DEX statistics, or a nice shielded speaker wire ready to install.
You can also spend some dough on RF ferrite chokes, but frankly its usually cheaper to use scrap cable, assuming you have some laying about.
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"Trivially fixed with a bit of shielded coaxial cable"
Tried that and I went from picking up Mexican radio to church radio.
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:5, Funny)
The problem lies within my guitar circuitry. Changing cable type only changes what I pick up.
Right now, I'm getting shortwave Russian radio.
You need to reverse the polarity!
Sheesh. Kids these days. Don't know anything....
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:5, Funny)
The problem lies within my guitar circuitry. Changing cable type only changes what I pick up.
Right now, I'm getting shortwave Russian radio.
That's nothing. I keep getting these strange 5 notes over and over and over again; purest sounds I have ever heard...
G
A
F
F (octave lower)
C
I wonder if this means something important?
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:5, Informative)
I think you're confusing simple shielded cable with coaxial cable. No, you don't need an impedance-matched transmission line at audio frequencies, but shielding CAN be relevant with some amps in some setups. The wavelength of audio frequencies is irrelevant here - speaker cables can be efficient antennae for RF signals, which can then mix with other RF signals and/or be demodulated in the diode junctions that comprise the bi-polar transistors used in the outputs of many amps. This can cause audible artifacts, including hearing radio stations through your speakers even when there's no tuner attached to your system, especially if you're close to the transmitting tower.
As for kilo-buck HDMI cables, that IS an ultimate stupidity. However, you should be careful regarding this whole 'ones and zeros' business. At the frequencies used for HDMI, (and given the rectangular nature of the signals, frequency response up to ten times the fundamental may be important), you're basically back in the analog realm, with rise times a significant fraction of the total waveform period. Impedance mismatches, slowed waveform edges, and extraneous interference can cause jitter and increase bit error rate, and although you're unlikely to see the difference in a typical home setup, these errors can add up over multiple generations of signal transfer.
So no, there won't be any visible or audible difference between a 10 dollar HDMI cable and a thousand dollar one. Just be aware that you can't stick any old cable in there and expect good results.
Re: (Score:3)
We use some 50 foot HDMI cables at work. About 60-80% of the brands we try would not do 1080p over that length (reasonably well made but of chinese manufacture).
Only ones that have consistently worked are Belden ones from bluejeans cable.
Under 10' virtually everything works.
Re: (Score:3)
Because such cables probably don't pass the HDMI test specs. I think the longest certified (passive copper) cable is somewhere near 35-40'. Longer than that and timing issues as well as attenuation of the signal come into play so you may rather choose an optical transfer method (Gefen makes those transponders) but they are a bit more pricey.
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:5, Informative)
Humor. You don't have it.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Yep, I have humour.
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:5, Funny)
Yep, I have humour.
Citation needed.
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:5, Informative)
Humor. You don't have it.
OK I admit to posting a sarcastic response as well, but I think there is an inherent communications flaw based on the programming and design skills of the Slashcode team.
When Timbo replied to a post, "Can't tell if troll or not.", he was actually replying to a post that most people will not see because it is at negative 1. This post in particular:
There are many uses for cables that really are perfect quality, made with best parts and are harder and more professional than your usual home cables. Usually they are required in production environments, not for your home HDTV. Same is true for video as in this case, but also audio. The prices can seemingly look high, but remember that these products are used for professional work.
To the casual reader, it looks like Timbo is replying to this post:
Yes, how dare you philistines mock the $1,095 HDMI cable? The zeros and ones are so much sharper and clearer than the zeros and ones transmitted over cheap cable.
Hence the confusion. Timbo may not be as simple-of-mind as the slashdot coders would have you believe.
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:5, Funny)
To the casual reader, it looks like Timbo is replying to this post:
Yes, how dare you philistines mock the $1,095 HDMI cable? The zeros and ones are so much sharper and clearer than the zeros and ones transmitted over cheap cable.
This is why we quote excessively.
no, we don't
Re: (Score:2)
I guess Poe's law applies to more than just religion :)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
This is Slashdot. Technology is religion for most of us here.
Re: (Score:3)
I hear this so often, but it doesnt make it true. Digital signal can be impaired in a number of ways, so quality matters to a certain extent. It just doesnt matter a whole lot once baseline specs are met.
Re:They may be mocking the price but (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll bring up my analogy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'll bring up my analogy (Score:4, Funny)
So.... win?
Re: (Score:2)
You sir, have opened my eyes. I used to think "Monster Cables" was out of control with their ridiculous prices.
What I really want to know is WHO Is buying at that price?! And at that price what kind of support will they offer? On-site installation? "Hello, have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?"
Re: (Score:2)
British slang for "sucker", though it's also commonly used to refer to the average patron at a business.
close (Score:3)
Re:Amazon sells them cheaper! (Score:5, Funny)
Amazon is selling it for $1.24 cheaper! Whoo! http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003CT08E4
Chucking at further below that Amazon page where it says:
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
HDMI Cable 2M (6 Feet)
$3.05
Re:Amazon sells them cheaper! (Score:5, Funny)
Amazon is selling it for $1.24 cheaper! Whoo!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003CT08E4 [amazon.com]
It may look like a bargain, but check your setup first. I was about to order one, but unfortunately at 3.28 ft it was slightly too short for connecting my HD-DVD player, which is 3.29 ft away from my TV (I've found I get perceptible jitter if I place it any closer, probably due to an excess of events in the 124-126 GeV range). Luckily Amazon sells a longer cable that is already getting good reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/Diamond-Digital-Audio-Ethernet-Connection/dp/B003CT2A6I [amazon.com]
At $2,694.75 it's a little on the pricey side, but I'm viewing this as a long-term investment like the player itself.