“You had a good run…”
A couple of years ago, I was at the Consumer Electronics Show. We were featuring our 50 foot component video cable, which at that time we were offering at a retail price of $49.95. Needless to say, that was generating a fair amount of interest. So along comes this brute who, upon hearing our price, proceeds to berate me, accusing us of “ruining the market!” He stated that he was able to sell long component video cables for $300.00.
For once in my life, I didn’t know what to say. I had no words for him, at least on the outside. What I wanted to say was, “Look, fella, you had a good run. But it’s time to wake up. Those days are gone!”
Well, those days aren’t completely gone, as there’s still plenty of businesses out there who will happily try to sell you an average product at ridiculous, even — dare i say it — monstrous prices. Just walk into any major electronics retail store and see for yourself. I’ve heard all kinds of reasons why logic and common sense have flown out the window and otherwise intelligent people have found themselves $300 poorer; the most common line of reasoning goes something like, “Well, I just spent $2000.00 on this TV, so of course the cables to go with it need to be ridiculously overpriced!”
Of course, the cables do work, and some people will even cling to the belief that their TV’s picture is even improved by this $300 ripoff. What can you do? People will see what they expect to see.
Folks, cables aren’t magical. If you plant a $300 cable in the ground, it will not, I repeat, not grow into a beanstalk that reaches to the sky. While there’s no substitute for a good quality cable, common sense should also tell you that a few pounds of copper in a plastic jacket doesn’t cost $300 to make. Hold on to your senses, and hold on to your money.
Agreed, the retail prices on some of the cables out there are ridiculous. I’ve yet to see any evidence from third party tests that retail cables costing hundreds of dollars perform any better than cables costing 1/10th of the price.
But they’re so pretty….
If I had a dollar for every person that told me the spent over $200 for mediocre cables… People need to do their homework.
I don’t dispute that some of the high end [whose vendors shall remain anonymous
]cables BENCH MARK better performance, but is the difference REALLY discernible to the average human ear/eye? It peeves me that I can opt for a $5.00 HDMI cable, or a $50.00 HDMI cable, yet to my eyes, they both perform equally well.
What ANNOYS me EVEN MORE SO is the fact that A/V cabling is generally unavailable in lengths under 24″. HDMI, by it’s very nature should eliminate cable clutter, since both video and audio connections are in one cable, but this advantage is negated since lengths under 6′ are impossible to find [at least in my experience]
IDEA: Someone invent/market a universal crimping tool which would accommodate RCA connectors, F Connectors, RG45 ends, etc. That way, a home theater system/home server system etc could be custom wired with only as much cabling as required, with no unsightly rats nest of cables to contend with.
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