The ones sold to me at Best Buy were about $80 a piece. Similar ones found at Sam's Club were $20 a piece. Is this too good to be true?

No. You'll get ripped off at Sam's Club too.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2

monoprice.

/thread

Second on the monoprice, around $5 - $10..
DG

Errr...sticky time....Monoprice

you guys are haters. i bought some hdmi monster cables the other day along with my brand new, kick ass bose home theater

The only time brand matters is when you're wasting your money on Monster.

Funny you should say that - I'll be posting a question about their PowerCenters soon!

Big Lots has $18 HDMI cables now- seem to be their own brand like some of the other electronic accessories they sell there.

It really makes no difference with HDMI. Get monoprice cables. As someone who has ordered from there before a couple times of times now, their cables are very reliable. Can't go wrong.

Ok, this is not always true. Some brands can make junk, even in HDMI cables. Monster has actually been closer to the junk label than quality on HDMI. Monoprice has been consistent and actually gives specs for comparison shopping.

Even if the cables were equally priced....I'd shop elsewhere because of Monster's litigious tendancies towards completely unrelated companies that happen to use "monster" in their name.

Price is in NO WAY indicative of quality....and all things being equal HDMI cables are all supposed to conform to a basic spec....and that means they all should work just fine for you. Get cheap cables and try them out. You can always spend more money later if you have to.

Brand doesn't matter, but doesn't bit rate? Some cables can only handle .81 gbps, which is fine for DVD, and some can only handle 2.23 gbps, which is fine for 720p/1080i. Some can handle 4.95-6.68 gbps, which is good for 1080p. Then there's 10.2 gbps, which will hopefully be enough for future HDTVs. FYI: Sony makes a 10.2 gbps cable that's MUCH less than what Monster charges for theirs.

There is a difference in bit rates, but all of them handle 1080p just fine. This may be oversimplifying things, but the bandwidth affects Deep Color and audio codecs.

HDMI Version 1.3 (10.2 gbps) is the current consumer version and is all anyone should worry about. (Version 1.4 is for digital movie theaters.) Monoprice's $4 V1.3 cables are as much as anyone needs.

I got some Phillips brand 6' hdmi cables at Fry's for $9 - so even "brand" names don't have to be expensive.

Actually, this is pretty much all you need to be spending on an HDMI cable.

Even those paying $9 are overpaying.

You can find these at Amazon for 24 cents (with $3 shipping)! Cables work great, with over 1500 5 star reviews.

EDIT: Posted the above before seeing that Slops link was to 21 cent cables. Beat my link by three cents.

Actually, your link shows $.20 now. Looks like they're undercutting.

I don't like buying wires without knowing what they really are. That's why Monoprice is so impressive, they list full specs. Well, fuller specs.

Now down to $0.18 or buy this cable bundled for $0.40
This item: 6 Foot Gold Plated HDMI to HDMI High Definition Digital Audio and Video Mulitmedia Interface Cable
Fiber Optical Toslink Digital Audio Optic Interface 6 Foot Cable
HDMI (2 meter) 6 foot cable HQ 1080P 1.3b

I bought 4 HDMI .20 cables from Amazon. They work fine for my Receiver to TV and fine from cable box to Receiver. But the 2 are not working well from the PS3 to the receiver. I am taking so spacey's advice and getting the Cables from Monoprice. at least at mono price they state it is category 2 certified. I do not recall the amazon ones even stating that.

I have gotten all of my HDMI cables from monoprice except one and that one was a 40' cable from outdoorspeakerdepot. The only reason I did that was because I got an additional percentage off when I hit a certain dollar amount on an order from them for speakers. The monoprice cables have worked flawlessly for me as has the one from outdoorspeakerdepot. The outdoorspeakerdepot cable is well made and was about the same price as one from monoprice.