Do Monster Cables Actually Serve a Purpose?

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
From our front-page news:
Whenever I hear the word "Monster Cable", I clench my fists, because I know what kind of rip-offs their products are. It can be debated, but it's been proven before over and over that a standard cable is almost always just as effective, as long as you are dealing with cable in feet and not meters (most people don't need meters).

Well, could I be wrong? CrunchGear took a jaunt to CEDIA over the weekend and noticed Monster was walking around with a mobile station, showing people how much better their cables are over the competition. They compared all the cables with one heck of a video noise analyzer, and lo and behold, they did prove that their cables are better.

But while their cables did indeed prove their worth in being able to transfer much more data than the competition, the fact remains that this kind of bandwidth is generally just not needed for the vast population. There is a cutoff, but most people aren't going to see video noise. However, I will admit it's nice to see that Monster does indeed have a product designed for the enthusiasts, but it still seems to only apply with long cables (longer than 10 feet).

monster_cable_cedia_090808.jpg

The way the engineer explained it to me is that viewers will not notice the difference in short runs because of the loss can be compensated by the HDTVs processors. Apparently, with longer cables, the extra noise is more noticeable and therefore the need for higher-quality long digital cables arise.


Source: CrunchGear
 

Merlin

The Tech Wizard
Monster cable covers a wide variety of different uses.
Such as their componant cable for HD TV. In some cases they were causing video problems and also the thin coax cable that they love to use for internet, well, it just doesn't cut the grade.
Not enough shielding.
But the owner wants to claim they are monster cable, the best you can get, I just replace the cable to show the difference and let the facts sow the difference.

Conclusion: Not always better in what I see.

Merlin
 

Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
Well, that's the name of the game.

Doesn't matter if it's a bed, piece of furniture, TV, or cable. The salesperson's job is to always upsell the customer to higher-margin items so the store can receive extra profit on every sale.

Businesses like Best Buy would fail in a heartbeat if all they could sell were low-margin economy/value priced items.
 
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