Monster Cable producing "speed-rated" HDMI cables
by Matt Burns 
posted Aug 29th 2007 at 12:36PM
All right Monster Cable, what are ya doing? Speed rating your HDMI cables? We have to be honest, we're a little skeptical about the differences in HDMI speed. Technically, there might be a difference when compared with some special Monster-developed gizmo, but we highly doubt there would be a difference under real world tests. (BTW, we'd love to try it out for ourselves) Besides the obvious revenue answer, if there were a difference in HDMI cables, why wouldn't you just produce the best? Why flood the market with multiple "speed" options and confuse/irritate us consumers when you could just make one uber-high quality HDMI cable? The cables start at $50 for the Standard 1 meter, and go all the way up to $100 for the Ultra-High Speed, with two different speed options in between, along with multiple lengths. Come on Monster Cable, the days of analog interference are gone so hop on the HDMI boat and stop over charging for a digital cable.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Filed under: Cables
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
mcrexx @ Aug 29th 2007 12:57PM
LMAO! Monster Cable is hilarious! Anything to rip customers off on their highly over priced cables.
Christopher S. Johnson @ Aug 29th 2007 1:13PM
Shame on Monster Cable
The General @ Aug 29th 2007 1:13PM
www.firefold.com is where I get my cable.
6' cables = $4.71
SimbaDogg @ Aug 29th 2007 1:29PM
couldn't have said it better myself, "the days of analog interference is [sic] gone". the only thing that they should still have multiples grades on are speaker wire and power centers
zargon @ Aug 29th 2007 1:34PM
As much as I dislike Monster and try to avoid buying their rip off cables, the one thing I got to give credit to them is for bringing cable quality awareness to the masses.
HDMI cables right now are a rip off from just about every company selling them in stores.
Monster is a lot like Bose, marketing over product quality.
I will stick to brands like AudioQuest, Blue Jean or the ones I build myself based on Blue Jean cables. Well that and good old Home Depot wire for my speakers.
@The General
That site looks like it has some descent stuff as far as I can tell. Monoprice.com is another place that is similar that has what I would consider good quality HDMI cables for very reasonable prices. Looks like both sites are worth looking at.
sr1329 @ Aug 29th 2007 5:57PM
I don't know. Bose and Monster have really done nothing good for this world.
It is this "cable quality awareness" that makes it so that the cheapest cable for anything at Best Buy is $20. For HDMI: $40. For the same cable that would have cost $10 before Monster came on the scene.
For most people, with the equipment they have, any Radio Shack level cable would do the trick. If on the other hand, you are putting together a $20,000 Audiophile quality system, you will already know what kind of cable quality you need (and what it can cost).
Today where everything is digital, cable quality matters very little (okay let's not get into audiophile territory where in audio applications a digital co-axial has to be at exactly 75ohms to prevent timing errors in the signal that show up as jitter that the person with the $6,000 CD transport connected to the $12,000 DAC will hear), and any Monoprice level cable will do the job.
For my video setup I'm using Monoprice all the way. For my audio setup - don't ask.
Guthrie @ Aug 29th 2007 1:35PM
Don't forget monoprice.com
The Aggie CEO™ @ Aug 29th 2007 1:42PM
they stay ripping people off..........
Ima see what there stock has been like the past 6-months because people gotta be buying stuff for them to pull a move like this
MasterCKO @ Aug 29th 2007 2:01PM
I wonder if their business model still works at all. I would think no, but I'm not one of the uber rich, so I don't know if they still buy Monster Cables just cuz.
Maybe it's not working, so they make these graded things just to trick people into thinking, "oh look, this has a higher grade, I should definitely buy it."
*shrug*
Mick @ Aug 29th 2007 2:15PM
Monster cables are for idiots with too much money to be bothered to investigate any further.
Where would Worst Buy and their Kool Aid drinking stooge employees be without them.
No way to make a living, ripping folks off who don't know any better.
Bob Sintas @ Aug 29th 2007 2:18PM
Title should say: "Monster Cable producing "OVER-rated" HDMI cables"
Jason Dillon @ Aug 29th 2007 3:30PM
I am as bummed as usual at Monster Cable, for having cables on the market at prices like this. The average consumer who has a flat screen television now has HDMI, an frankly I can tell you for sure that they generaly should not be pulverized by the price of Monster cables which are heavely marketed to commoners by the likes of Best Buy and such. Places like Monoprice.com and Firfold.com make great cables at seemingly unbelievavble prices, but in fact they are simply seeling cables for what they should costs instead or ripping their customers off like Monster cable, Circuit City, Bet Buy etc. I do no think that Monster Cable and the like will survive much longer is they continue as they have been, as even there "cheaper" cables are way over prices 6' cable from anyone $50 get the F*^% up outta here, its a travesty, and they deserve whatever happens to them in the future.
lorax1284 @ Aug 29th 2007 3:28PM
"No way to make a living, ripping folks off who don't know any better."
but most of the consumer electronics sales people don't know any better either.
All we can do is keep getting the word out: spread it far and wide that no one need spend over $15 on a digital signal cable of standard consumer-home-theatre length (6'-10').
Paul Fernandez @ Aug 29th 2007 3:26PM
Maybe it's me, but...
I've been using Monster HDMI cables for a while now, and the picture on my LCDs seems to "pop" more than other brands I've tried (Blue Jean and Dayton included). I've been fortunate enough to get mine from eBay at drastically reduced prices, however, some even in their original packaging. While I have little interest in these new "speed-rated" ones, I've done enough side-by-side comparisons at home to know what I like.
Not everyone detests Monster (or Bose for thst matter), and buying from them doesn't necessarily mean an uninformed or excessive purchase. Just my two cents; please don't start flaming me.
alex @ Aug 29th 2007 5:24PM
Given that HDMI sends a digital signal, you'll either be getting a signal or not getting one at all. Any extra "pop" you're seeing would generally be called a "placebo effect".
Just a FYI.
Tom @ Aug 29th 2007 3:55PM
I'd rather them tell max run length than speed.
I'm much more impressed with the BlueJeans Cable Series 1 bonded HDMI cables:
125ft run with 1080p60
http://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/dvi/index.htm
Bose and Monster don't make crap per se, they just charge too much for what they do offer. There are much better products on the market at comparable prices.
Think of it like buying a Corolla which is not a bad car, but now buy a Corolla at 7series prices. Similar situation with both Bose and Monster.
h0mi @ Aug 29th 2007 5:57PM
Because $150 for an HDMI cable isn't enough markup.
mark @ Aug 29th 2007 6:39PM
You know, I could swear that the speed of electricity through copper is a constant. I guess it's some sort of parallel deal, more copper atoms across the wire.
File under "go back to high school physics".
Sigurdur G. @ Aug 29th 2007 7:39PM
@mark: Indeed, go back and learn physics :) ever heard about resistance in wires? only superconductive metal wire has a constant signal strength over a wire.
Why do you think CAT5/6 ethernet cables are specially made but not just "any x many strands of copper laid straight in a plastic tube" ?
There are a few things that go into the design of good cables, both quality of copper and layout/twists to ensure good signal strength over the wire and insulation from environment and other nearby cables.
For short lengths (really anything under 2-3 meters) you can use the cheapest HDMI cable. But for anything longer and if you are piping 1080p signal and x.1 channel LPCM audio through it, you will start to see corruption and "packet loss"/jitter in bad cables.
That said, I agree with people here in that Monster generally makes sub-par cables that are very expensive.
JeffDM @ Aug 29th 2007 8:57PM
Bah. A bad cable at any length is bad. Not being a big name brand usually doesn't matter much now with digital signaling.
I have a 50ft HDMI cable from monoprice that costs about as much as Monster's 6ft cable, and I have yet to see any problems using it with 1080p video. That's supposedly unusual, but not many people need that much length. In a regular home video setup, just about any cable is fine.
davenport @ Aug 29th 2007 9:39PM
All HDMI cables are not created equally. I am an installer and I've had to remove many cheap cables because of the audio or video breaking up. I recommend using Key Digital cables, I've never had a problem. The speed rating is ridiculous. They should be rated for 1080p HDMI 1.3 rated and that's about it.
Sean O @ Aug 30th 2007 12:10PM
You just made the case for not buying expensive cable.
If an HDMI cable is bad or defective, it will show clear and obvious breakup and/or sparkles.
There is NO difference between a working cheap cable and a working expensive cable. The image quality is 100% identical.
Region Free HD @ Aug 29th 2007 10:24PM
Greed rated?
Ryan @ Aug 30th 2007 12:38AM
Monster Cable has found a lucrative niche in depriving nouveau riche technophobes of their money.
GhostDoggy @ Aug 30th 2007 6:04AM
I've paid a whopping $7 for mt 5-meter (about 17 feet) HDMI cables and have not seen a problem. Monster is for those with G on their foreheads and more money in their wallet than brains in their head. With a 100% markup at the retail end, one is better either finding someone with a low-voltage license to access a wholesaler (I've done this), a friend at a retail store, or simply getting over the must-but-retail Monster mentality.
Britboyj27 @ Aug 30th 2007 10:55AM
Probably nothing to convince anyone, but the new 1000 Series Monster HDMI has a "Cable for Life" guarantee, which means that that cable is EVER obsolete, Monster will send you a new one, free. Period.
Which is nice considering I buy all my cables at close-to-cost.
I tend not to sell Monster unless a customer specifically asks for it, mainly because as much as everyone on the 'net complains about how much margin is on Monster's cables, there is way, way more margin on stuff like Acoustic Research, Blue Jeans or Philips cables. (About double, in terms of percentage)
greg @ Aug 30th 2007 1:53PM
so if all hdmi cables are the same, and i completely understand the logic that digital either gets there or it doesnt, what do the hdmi 1.3 cables have to offer? and are the ferrite cores on the cable necessary?
Daniel @ Aug 30th 2007 11:43PM
Just a thought for everyone to chew on, do you think HDMI can be used for more then just video? Have you ever thought of how efficient the cable is in terms of data transfer rate. Another thing in terms of measuring the speed of the cable is this. Do you think every video signal can pass through a cable? Do you think 480i,480p,720i,720p,1080i,1080p,1440i,1440p etc at there given refresh rate and color bit rating are all the same size in terms of data? video and audio is data no matter which way you cut it. Maybe Monster knows something you don't know and we should just keep an open mind. Monster has been around for a very long time, they've always been expensive, but maybe thats because their cables aren't cheap assembly line manufactured cables that loose packets of data that consumers don't realize they have lost. My 2 cents
Ben Moore @ Aug 31st 2007 1:24PM
You are spending a heckuva lot more than 2 cents if you are supporting Monster cables!!
My monoprice $5/6ft and $7/15ft HDMI cables work perfectly, and don't leave me feeling like a sucker.