COmplete cluelessness , gotta love it. If you even had a clue what a employee can buy a monstor cable for at best buy. The markup is a joke, with the 80% discount they cost the same as the monoprice cables, the rest is just markup fool.

You guys just don't get it. The comment "Monster=nobrainer" meant that someone buying Monster cables must have no brain. Ding!

This is the first intelligent thing you have posted - and you are correct. At this point, I have no idea what your argument is, and I feel I am not alone.

Thanks for the laughs. This is the best thread I've read all week. On one side you have a large group of people who have ordered from Monoprice and are extremely happy with their purchase (myself included). On the other side you have one person with no firsthand knowledge of Monoprice's products claiming that they can't be build as well as more expensive cables.

I admire exm for at least ordering a cable to see one in action. But I doubt his position will change much.

You still haven't seen the Monoprice cable. I assure you, they are higher quality than the less expensive Monsters. I have played with both. The ferrite cores alone double my satisfaction compared to the Monsters without them. And they don't overcharge for adding the cores, considering they cost virtually nothing they SHOULDN'T overcharge. Beautiful.

I think that exm is saying better made cables will have better video/audio capability.

However, exm is completely missing the point that Monster actually makes some of the poorest HDMI cables available on the planet. This is in contrast to their other cables, which are often quite decent. (note: I'm simply discussing build quality in this post, not A/V quality or price/value)

Thanks at least for trying to make this is normal discussion, without trying to ridicule me like some other posters.

Let me summarize my position:
"I do not think monoprice makes bad cables, especially consider what you pay for them. However, I do think that there is always a quality trade-off with those really inexpensive cables ('You get what you pay for'), which probably won't be noticeable in every day A/V systems, but may be noticeable in high(er)-end systems. However, I am giving monoprice cables a shot to make a final judgement"

One more thing I have to say about people that are here just to make fun of me instead of having an adult discussion: why don't you, like me, also test a more expensive HDMI cable and see if it actually improves things? It much easier to be a sycophant, than trying to argue a different position.

How many of you are using monoprice cables with Bose speakers?

I work on commission (or SPIFF if you're corporate) at Radio Shack, and every time I sell an HDMI cable I feel like I need a shower, especially the Monster ones. But selling the Monster cables does net a nice amount.

Well, I won't buy their component cables since they are a step below what I make in the cable area, and well below my $3/each connectors. Even the better ones.

But the HDMI stuff, and VGA and other computer cables, is really quite strange. The prices are at least half of what I would expect for a direct/warehouse seller like this. It's very impressive, the value.

(btw, my speakers have handmade 10AWG)

Probably not many. Bose are the speaker version of Monster's cables.

Bose being another example of you DON'T always get what you pay for.

Personally, I used to use a 15-20% rule on cabling cost. I am planning to get a front projector that will be ceiling mounted and about a 30 foot run from the receiver to the projector. The receiver is $1700 and the projector is $5000, so of course a $1000 cable is nuts! Back in the analog days I was concerned about running lengths and signal degradation, but in the digital world, give or take, cable runs aren't the same.

That being said, and to try to steer this discussion back on track, where can I get the best 1.3 compliant HDMI cable at 30 feet or better? I've got one wish listed at Amazon right now, but my purchase of the projector won't be until April, so I've got time to see what you folks come up with!

BTW, yes I do have a $150 6-foot Monster HDMI cable that is currently running from my PS3 to my current HDTV, but I bought it back in 2005. Since then I have picked up 6-foot HDMI cables from Amazon for $2 which seem to do the trick.

I would guess that most here have used the more expensive cables before trying Monoprice. I started out using Monster, then bought custom cables from the place I bought my equipment from. Also tried out many other brand name cables. It wasn't until a couple years ago that I began to use Monoprice. If I could tell a difference between the expensive cables and Monoprice, I would go with the expensive cables. I have about 30k worth of equipment - and I use only Monoprice for the cables.

But the question is, did you find any difference at all with any of the cables?

What do you think are some benefits of a HDMI cable that uses all high quality components over one that uses only satisfactory ones? What are some of the quality trade-offs that you are talking about? Are you talking about picture quality, audio quality, appearance of the cable or durability of the cable (or all of the above)? Just tell us what you think the benefits are so that we can refute with scientific based explanations.

Bose? That's probably not the best example to use, seeing as how anyone who gives a damn about home theater wouldn't even consider buying Bose equipment.

HDMI is passing ones and zeros. A Monoprice cable isn't going to pass 0.5 just because it's half the price.

The ones and zeros are based on voltage, though. A poor cable could pass those ones as zeros.

Luckily, however, the Monoprice cables are of good quality.

Ok, now you are just trolling aren't you?

All I will say is I disagree. A Bose argument might steer this thread to an additional 7 pages of off topic discussion.

My point exactly

Agreed: that's pretty much the point I'm trying to make.

This is the point that I'm not sure about (or: reason that this thread is still alive). Hopefully the cable will be in this week.

Well, the interesting thing is that we're talking about a cable of $5 that may or may not be as good as a, let's say, $50 cable. With Bose we're talking about numbers that are at least a factor 20 different. So you might argue that a monoprice cable is just as good as a monster cable. But talking about Bose is a whole different price category.

My $0.02 about Bose: great marketing, less than mediocre product, wayyyyy overpriced. Sounds a lot like Monster Cable? Maybe. At least the Monster Cables are excellent quality. And overpriced, yes. That's why I'm defending the likes of BJC, which are in essence no different than monoprice; just you know what components they are using in their cables (all spelled out on their website). That is worth the extra $20 to me alone.

monoprice hdmi cable = $6ish
monster hdmi cable with bb employee discount(5% markup)=$6ish
monster hdmi cable without bb employee discount= $100+

Monoprice must be a lower quality product? NO! They're just not raping their customers on crazy markup prices.

Their is no universal correlation between price and quality. Higher price does not mean higher quality. Of course there is a point where if you buy some cheapo crap then it may be crap but what do you expect at that point?

Monoprice ftw.

Why is it worth an extra $20? Shouldn't the criteria be that the product does the job as intended? The only reason I can think of to care what the components are is to try to predict if the product will fail ahead of time.

However simply knowing the components is insufficient - what if the component manufacturer had a bad run? What about the quality of the assembly work? How about handling of the product before and after assembly?

If you are going to say that the reputation of BJC or Belden or whoever is worth the money then that same argument can be made about monoprice because they have an excellent reputation and its all earned - no advertising dollars spent like many of the others.

I would like to know what the (quality) components the cable is made of. You don't know with monoprice while BJC lists everything on their website. Does that make a difference? I'll find out!