Monster cable - does it justify the price?

[chrisc]

Does the use of "higher" quality (costly!) Monster cable gives much better video display on television?

I currently use S-Video cable to connect between my DVD desktop to my 68cm TV. This is just an ordinary cable costing a few dollars only.

If l buy a "monster" cable (in access of $50), would it improves the quality very muc? $50 is a lot to me and l do not know anyone who can loan me one to test in at home!!

Thanks for any info

[Canoe164]

Ask the vendor for a loaner. If you haven't already.

[lgh529]

Absolutely not! Monster cable is a marketing gimic.

Need I say more?

[Bob W]

What they charge for Monster cables is criminal IMO. There are better cables out there online for one third the price. I recently bought two 20ft component video cables online that are far better quality than Monster from this site.
http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/comp-video.html#c

[lordsmurf]

Yes, as a person having worked with video for more than a decade, I have used the full range of products. Monster is worth every penny.

[energy80s]

All these expensive video and audio cables are a rip off. If you look through a professional broadcast equipment supplier catalogue, you'll be hard pressed to find any cable over £4 a metre in price. If this is the standard of cable needed to produce broadcast quality TV, then something at 50 quid isn't going to improve on it in your living room!!

[Craig Tucker]

Someone put a link on here, must have been about a year ago now, showing GOLD PLATED Optical Cables.

Just goes to show that a lot of it is hype and bullshit. Saying that you do not want the cheapest crappy cables available, but paying huge amounts of cash for cables is a marketing rip off IMHO.

[Craig Tucker]

I found the link for you

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=120545&highlight=optical+cable+gold

[Gazorgan]

Proper grounding will help more than anything. I really need to do a guide on that!

Monster cable may or may not be worth the $$$. There are 4 classes of cables:

1) Ultra cheap: These are the ones as thin as dental floss that come with a $39 DVD Player. Not worth anything, very bad, but they can work.

2) Standard cables. These are generally thicker than #1, and are typical what you would see in Radio Shack.

3) High Quality. These are always shielded, and usually double shielded. They often have gold plated connectors. These are usually required if you have a noisey (RF wise) enviroment, longer runs, or a lot of cables that could interfere with each other.

4) 'Monster' , 'Professional', 'Super', 'Special' cables. These are pretty much the same as #3, but have more marketing hype. Some of these will be very thick (on the assumption bigger is better). It's possible to get 75 ohm shielded cable of almost any thickness, so that's not indictive of quality (except for the dental floss in #1).

#1 is bad and #4 is overpriced. Whether Standard cables are good enough is up to you to test. I have sets of both, and if the signal looks bad I cahnge cables. Sometimes it helps , but not usually (my standard cables are pretty good, the bad ones have been cut up and pitched). Again, it depends on your enviroment.

[wannano6]

Monster cable is a rip buy a good quality cable of the same gauge wire and you won't see any difference a good place for cables I found is here:
www.cablewholesale.com

Oh yes and pay special attention to what was said in the post above about grounding!

[Canoe164]

What ever you do, don't run parallel with a flouresent light fixture.


I have always loved that one :P