Porkchop Technology Review's

Every time I go to FutureShop (the Canadian equivalent of BestBuy in USA) and buy some kind of video product, either it be a Blu-ray player to a VHS, I can kind of predict what the sales guy is going to say.  He will most likely say after buying the product, you need these Monster cables for superior sound or video, they usually cost around $100 for a wire that is no special then that $3 wire at the dollar store, and if I say no, and he gets that I know about monster, I’m not the average customer, he tries to push the RocketFish brand, which is there in house brand, another scam, a cable that is even more cheaper constructed than Monster, but has gold plated or copper shielding added to it, and is usually half the price of Monster,  I then decline, and then they of course try to sell me the Extended warranty scam.  As you can see the people at the store are not the most knowledgebale in that field, they are usually people who either think they know a lot, or pretend, you might find the honest guy there, but its hard, since all there training and pressure is to up sell these products even though there is no advantage of owning them.  I know this as well from a friend who use to work there, he told me how they trained them to absolutely sell those monster cables, and they had incentives, such as a lot of commission and probably an award at the end of the month who sold the most monster cables.  I’ll be talking about the newest/most popular cables people buy today when they usually go shopping for a TV and surround sound system.

HDMI Monster Cable

HDMI – High-Definition Multimedia Interface is the first cable to support uncompressed all digital audio and video, and most commonly cable used today in HD applications, such as Blu-ray players and consoles, and even satellite/cable boxes.  HDMI is also the most popular cable to use in transmitting 1080p signals, besides DVI.  I was lucky to pick a TV using HDMI at the time, I kind of felt HDMI would be replacing DVI and it has.  You can now buy if your TV has DVI only, a DVI to HDMI connection.  Besides the HDMI cable being primary for transferring 1080p signals it also picks up high quality audio, but I prefer to use the TOSLINK even though there is a debate on which one is better, HDMI can transmit more audio information that is for sure.  Also one of the best applications for an HDMI cable is the ability to only use one cable in the back of the TV for everything audio and video.  And this is very popular since all those flat panel TV’s, LCD’s and Plasmas are hanging on walls and you want the least amount of cables behind that TV.  So you can see why the HDMI cable is very popular and a great market for Monster the high quality cable, since most likely anyone who buys a new TV will buy a HDMI cable along with it.  It might not sound pricey at the time, especially when your TV costs say for example $2000, and throwing in a $100 cable for the best picture/sound will make you excited and also you will want to set it up right away when you get home.  Anything that transmits in digital does not degrade over time, analog is most susceptible to interference, analog cables need good shielding, but digital cables such as HDMI do not need it.  EMI which stands for ElectroMagnetic Interference, is interference signals that can distort the picture/audio coming from cell phones, radio’s and even the power lines in your walls.  EMI interference can affect a analog cable down to 4.6 volts, but  a digital cable would interpret it as 5volts thus no interference would be happening.  Most people will only run there HDMI cable 3 M from the source to the TV, which no interference can affect that, unless you were running it a longer distance interference may happen and shielding would be required.  As with anything the longer the cable the more degrading the quality will be, be it monster or whatever.

Optical Audio Cables (TOSLINK)
I did the mistake of buying a Monster optical audio cable (Toslink) with gold plated end’s which do not do anything, since what a Toslink cable does is transmit light, so basically any $5 Toslink cable will do, the cable again as I said earlier has to not be too long, and also the difference between HDMI cable and a Toslink cable is that it shouldn’t be bent, because that affects the transmission of the light.  So basically when you read the box or the salesmen tries to push you to buy a optical audio cable, that is gold plated connectors do not buy it, since that won’t make difference in your audio.

So basically this is my perspective on monster cables and cables in general that are way to overpriced they are not worth it, unless you are running analog signals or running cable for 50+ feet, for normal application’s regular, reasonable priced cable is fine, what does all the work, is the TV, movie player, PS3, XBOX 360, etc, not the cables.