"We're lowering prices, due to the recession, but we're also increasing performance," says founder and "Head Monster" Noel Lee.
An 8' HDMI cable that used to cost $125 will now retail for $99. (For comparison's sake, an 8' HDMI cable at Monoprice.com goes for about $4.)
Monster would certainly like you to believe that their cables are worth the extra money, but it seemed like most experts interviewed by USAToday weren't buying it.
"Cables are enjoying percentages consumers would scream about if they knew the markup on them," says Richard Doherty, an independent analyst at Envisioneering Group.
...
"Monster used higher-quality products in the analog era to give you better sound, but as things went digital, it either works or it doesn't," he says. "Now there's an awful lot of $15 cables out there which would give you the exact same performance as Monster Cable."
Monster Cable lowers prices during recession [USAToday] (Thanks, Everyone!)
]]>Dracula: "Blah, I vant to sue your ass!"
Frankenstein: "Ligitation GOOD, sensible pricing BAD!"
Wolfman: (humps Coke lawyer's leg)
@RecordStoreToughGuy: Cheap substandard power cable, maybe.
Picture quality wise, with digital once you're getting enough of the signal through so that 100% of the digital bits can be read, cable quality doesn't really matter. As SergioDingo mentioned, if you're going to be messing with cables a lot, better quality connectors make sense, and to me, if the cables have the possibility of being pinched, a tad more shielding of the rubber/plastic variety might be good.
Analog is a tad more iffy, but again, once you get above rock bottom cheap cable, the advantages to better stuff become limited, and monster blows more hot air than quality.
]]>@Kimaroo: Well, besides the fact that everything's going wireless in the next 20 years, Monster is going to have to change its business line really quickly if it wants to survive.
Let's be honest, a lot of these cheap cables have bad solders between the connector and the wires and other problems. I have thrown out about a third of all of the cheap cables I've ever bought because at some point (usually after a move) they stopped functioning properly.
Still doesn't stop me from buying a cheap replacement rather than a high-price Monster that's guaranteed to work properly.
]]>@chuck0008: Even that's surmountable by using the proper termination equipment, but when that termination equipment costs twice as much as stuff that's only rated for copper, combined with the need to increase the gauge for a given amperage capacity, you don't save any money inside the house from using AL.
My breaker panel is rated for Al, my outlets aren't.
]]>The coat hangers were used to replace speaker cable in the test. It takes a decent amount of voltage (and current to back it up, of course) to actually get a traditional speaker to make sound.
If you are picking up induced interference strong enough to drive an 8 ohm load in the, say, 1V and up range, you have other things to worry about (Like, say, melting things!).
Now, for your line-level signals, you got it. Interference city! :o)
]]>Sigh.
The Canadian Electrical Code still (and will forever) permit aluminum installations. It is perfectly safe. Of course, the vast amount of poor electricians out there won't disappear, so that means you won't easily get insurance on a building with aluminum wire.
And, of *course* you must use appropriately rated wire for the job. That should go without saying. The AWG size of the wire is not a definition of its current carrying capacity, the conductance is. Since aluminum has a higher resistance/lower conductance, you obviously will require a lower AWG than copper. Since the cost of it is much lower (well, it would be except for the fact there's very little demand for high AWG aluminum). Of course, for popular sizes (3 AWG and lower) aluminum is cheaper despite using more material.
Aluminum is not dangerous at all, except when installed by awful electricians. A good electrician knows not to inspect for nicks and knows to only use aluminum rated materials when working with it.
The issue with aluminum is, plain and simple, bad electricians. Copper is very forgiving to poor technique: Nicks, excessive (or not enough) exposed wire, incorrect torque, improper/exposed joints, improper or underrated materials, improperly sized wire, and unsecured wire don't often tend to cause problems when you use copper, but do cause issues when you use aluminum. These are not inevitable problems, these are dangerous mistakes your electrician is making. If your electrician "gets away" with these things because he's using copper, he's a bad electrician. Sadly, he keeps his job and keeps f**king up homes because nobody figures it out. With aluminum, he wouldn't last in the industry very long.
I don't count galvanic issues, since copper has the exact same problems. If you use steel screws to hold together copper, just see how long it will last...
I have a copy of the codebook if anyone disagrees as to whether or not aluminum is legal.
In summary: Aluminum, as a material to carry power, is not dangerous. Bad electricians, however, are.
Now, don't think I'm trying to tell you (or that I would myself) to wire up houses with aluminum wire. I just lament the situation we've put ourselves in (China controlling copper costs) over our inability to do the job right.
]]>Screw you, Monster Cable.
]]>Added to that, the controller complexity increases exponentially, and a 46" TV has a considerably higher chance of being a dud off the manufacture line, and an increase of 40% in cost doesn't sound unreasonable at all.
]]>@Keavy_Rain:
Me and Noel Lee have never seen eye to eye, I'm okay with that. He does drive a nice car he let me sit in though.
Its amazing how much the price goes up for a small difference in size.
]]>This corrosion can eventually lead to high resistance connections and all kinds of nasty events including fire.
All I'm saying is do your homework before messing with aluminum wire for permanent electrical use around the home.
]]>Monte, did you ever try the iriver FM transmitter? That worked like a charm for me...
The monster was significantly better than a third s-video cable I had laying around, by leaps and bounds, thanks to the monster having shielding and the other cable apparently not having any.
]]>So now everyone can feel comfortable again laughing at the following (not as though they shouldn't have earlier): "Level the playing field and Monoprice is just as expensive as Monster Cable."
]]>Monster cables work better once you season them properly. Don't forget.
]]>Truly a wonderful sentence. Truly.
]]>Say what you will about Monster as a purveyor of overpriced snake oil, but Bose, though their products may be overpriced for what you get, has lots of solid research behind their work. To this day, Bose still does a lot of fundamental research on acoustics and other fields and puts much of their profits back into R&D.
]]>@Corporate-Shill: I haven't been in a big-box store for a while. Do the non-Monster-branded cables cost $100 too? They seem to have the same freight, markup, and labor costs for display.
]]>This is why Best Buy didn't teach their employees computer knowledge or how to sell computers, they taught us how to push service plans and accessory bundles. What the customer doesn't want a service plan? I guess we have no more of that computer model on hand to sell them. I left soon after this practice cropped up...
]]>But then there's the moral question:
Is someone who would drop $99 on a $4 cable responsible/smart/adult enough to actually own a house?
XOXO pS!
]]>I'm in a world of confusion, right now.
]]>Good example; my husband's grandmother's computer needed more memory because Best Buy sold her a desktop that had barely enough memory to run Vista. He went online to Newegg and bought the needed memory for $25 including shipping. The memory arrived in 3 days and his uncle put it in for her. Best Buy wanted, drum roll please..........$60 for that same stick of memory.
If you're an older special education teacher on a relatively limited income who are you going to buy from?
Seriously, what was all the business about "leveling the playing field"? Yes, in theory that is correct but in the real world its not. I and most other people don't mind waiting for an item if one can save $90 on it.
By the way, there are PLENTY of cables being sold at retail for much lower than Monster. I picked up a few at Wal-Mart for $10 apiece last summer when I bought my TV.
]]>Has anyone ever actually had a cable die on them? I know I sure haven't. The only way I can think of is if you were really yanking it or someone tripped over it, or maybe an electrical storm, but these would really be extenuating circumstances for most computer/home theater equipment and probably not something that happens to most consumers every day. Under normal use conditions a cable shouldn't die. I have monoprice USB cables and I toss them around quite a bit and leave them in dusty environments and they still work just fine.
]]>@PHRoG: They not only get their special place in hell but I've been saving up an evil laugh just for this Consumerist story.
HAHAHAHAHA...*COUGH* HAHAHAHA
@Morberis: Most importantly aluminum isn't up to code, because constant heating and cooling from being turned on and off causes stress fractures which leads to house fires. The more you know...
]]>8' HDMI cable at Monoprice.com goes for about $4.
Great. Now name ONE store carrying the product. Can't? I wonder why.
Monster Cable sells their cables for $4 as well.... before freight charges. Then there is the distributor markup. Then there is the retail store markup. The retail store markup is huge, mainly because stocking products for customer display is a monster waste of precious showroom resources...especially products that need a lot of physical space for a minimally priced product. Of course you must pay an employee to re-arrange the showroom display after the idiot customers. And then there is that pesky markup to make up for the fact that consumer electronics are a price leader and the only profit the retail store might make is from selling the heavily markedup cable or an extended warranty. At the end of the day, a $4 part from Monster Cable is a $100 MSRP part on the dealer's showroom floor.
Oh, and Monoprice's price might be $4. Then you get to add UPS costs plus wait 2-7 days to get the item.
Level the playing field and Monoprice is just as expensive as Monster Cable.
]]>Put two identical lcd TV's next to each other with identical tuners, hook one up with a 15 foot 3.00 dollar cable from a Sony Playstation Three and the other with a 100.00 dollar 6 foot cable from Monster... Guess what... Identical pictue quality
]]>@Zclyh3:
I agree after reading their antics on this web site I vowed to never buy their products. I refuse to support a company that pries on the start ups.
But nothing beats the Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable! Just read! LOL
]]>@Megan Squier: Great post, but wondering why a car salesman would have MBAs?
]]>In fact, they loved it more than their service plan.
]]>The boat is a boat, but there could be anything inside the mystery box! It could even be a boat!
]]>Not Monster but still related: Last weekend I saw that the Sony HDMI and S-Video cables at my local Target were on clearance, from $100+ to less than $20, and thought to myself, "Well at least Target has figured out that no one is buying this junk..."
]]>Actually, the ONLY Monster product I've owned at any price that was worth anything was that FM Transmitter. I've had several kinds over the last 5 years and the Monster is the only one that sounds halfway decent in my work van.
That being said, as a musician, their pro audio cables SUCK. I don't care that they have a lifetime warranty; continued failure does me no good on stage.
]]>See what a good deal that would be?
]]>You must have missed the post yesterday about the $700 handbag. The funnies part about that story, which I don't think anyone mentioned, was the smaller version was $400. Is there really $300 difference between two bags that are identical except for size?
]]>@gStein:
douchenozzles(n) ex. See gStein
def. 1: Plural form for applicator tips for female hygene rinse.
def. 2: Corporations and/or people with little to no compassion for their fellow human beings. Usually lack any pride in their profession.
def. 3: People who spell correct insults on blogs.
@revmatty:
I made it up, but I'm sure there's some google results
Hope USAToday has good lawyers.
]]>Lets say all picture quality is relatively the same when comparing the cheaper cable to the Monster cable. The cheaper cable would have to last 1/21 as long as the Monster cable for Monster to be better. Even if the cheaper cable only lasts half as long as the Monster its still a much better deal.
My dad taught me what would best be described as retail psychology. He didn't have much of an education (he has a GED he earned while in the Army and that's it) but I've seen him rake over car salesmen with MBA's like you wouldn't believe. If more consumers could use their heads and muster up a little common sense Monster wouldn't exist.
]]>@Dooley: they did and coke ended up just making a concessiont o linkt monster cable's site at the bottom of their monster drink website.
]]>I've never heard that term before, and I'm sure as hell not going to google it.
]]>They only way they continue to exist is due to places like Circuit City and Best Buy. Without those sales kids convincing people they need a $100 Monster Cable for their new TV to function Monster basically has no sales channel.
I hope the recession and demise of big box electronics stores kills Monster Cable off.
]]>Even during the analog years, Consumer Reports ALWAYS told readers that there was NO reason to spend the $$$ on Monster Cables.
The only Monster product I ever bought was a car FM transmitter for an mp3 player -- its performance was dreadful, with horrendous noise and interference, and Monster's customer support was no better, as my email asking for help on reducing the interference went unanswered.
I guess Monster must have relied on CC salesbots to talk hapless customers into buying their stupidly overpriced cables as an add-on.
Maybe one of these days consumers will stop buying other ridiculously marked up junk like Starbucks coffee and all those body washes and fragrances at the bath chains (I can't remember their names, though one is a block away from me; one bath chain is green, the other is red...)
]]>@Keavy_Rain:
That's cause as the article started it's either there or not.
So really there's no signal issues.
]]>Coca Cola would chew them up and spit them out.
]]>@shepd:
NO.
Sorry we use copper because if you use aluminum you need to go up 2 wire sizes which costs twice as much destroying almost the entire cost advantage of aluminum. Copper has other advantages too which make it far superior in home use, especially when the cost savings are measured in the lower hundreds CDN.
]]>I don't remember ever hearing that!
]]>What, they wave their magic wand over the cables twice now, instead of just once? It's like watching a shell game where the con artist is openly holding the ball for all to see, while prodding the player to pick a shell.
]]>Why haven't they sued Coca Cola yet, for their "Monster" energy drink?
]]>I've read several times over that with digital cables, they either work or they don't. There's no gray area like there is with analog (composite) cables.
I'd check your dollar stores for USB cables. I picked up a few that have the little disc in the middle that retracts the cable.
]]>The problem is that monster cable isn't quality. I own a lot of cables, and I don't take particularly special care of them. They get coiled up and tossed in closets, plugged in then pulled on, etc. I don't think I've ever had a radio shack cable go bad on me. Monster cables, on the other hand seem to constantly have problems with being poorly crimped with fragile connectors that are prone to failure. When I've dissected monster cables, I've found bad solder joints.
Monster cable: Slipshod quality, audiophile pricing.
]]>@darkjedi26: "Reliable Cable" is such a bullshit term. If you plug a cable in once, and leave it there, as probalby 99% of consumers do, it will be reliable.
Reliability is an issue when cables are constantly disconnected and reconnected. In that case, it's the plugs and jacks that matter. Monster's cables do not impress me in that department.
]]>"No one ever went broke underestimating people's intelligence."
In fact, I think investing in people's ignorance is a pretty good guarantee of returns.
]]>@Ichiro51:
...unfortunately, more like "the vast majority of people believe marketing hype."
And screw the analog era - the wiring that Monster sold then still provided no perceptible benefit over, say, a K-Mart $2 extension cord with the ends clipped off.
Monster has always existed purely based on the business plan of fleecing gullible consumers. Same as Bose. Evil from the business plan up.
]]>My favourite fun fact: Obviously, when it comes to sound transmission over either distances, or to speakers, you need to ensure you use material that is low in resistance. Here's the resistance chart for popular metals:
silver - 14.71 nOhm/m
copper - 15.80 nOhm/m
gold - 20.11 nOhm/m
aluminum - 25.00 nOhm/m
So, if you actually cared you'd reduce gold usage, and increase silver usage. Your best "speaker wire" would be made of pure silver. As a reasonable substitute, copper comes pretty damn close, which is why it's used. And, for price, it's aluminum, which is what the electric company uses (And you would use it in your house, too, if your electrician weren't an idiot).
The only reason gold is used on these connectors is because it doesn't tarnish. And that means you can be a lazy ass and not clean the connectors before using them. Wooooooo!
Of course, if you just remember to clean the connectors (if they are tarnished) prior to using them, you don't need to spend the extra.
]]>It came in a clear plastic bag and they had a shopping cart full of them, right next to the shopping cart full of HD-DVD's for $5 a pop.
Just for laughs, I went to their Audio/Video cable section to price compare. Turns out an HDMI cable, same length, with fancy packaging would run me $50.
I decided to save $44 and go with the one in the plastic bag. Took it home, hooked up my PS3, and watched Wall-E on Blu-Ray. I'm no A/V expert, but the picture looked pretty damn good to me.
]]>all bark, no bite
]]>"You'd be wasting your money on the TV if you were to do that.""
Seriously? Is this guy for real? If their salesmen are actually that retarded he just convinced me to never walking into a Little Guys store.
]]>@shepd:
I still want to start a wire coat hanger company called "Monster Coathangers!"*
*this is not a speaker wire, the fact that this coat hanger can possibly sound better then actual speaker wire of a product of similar name is only coincidence
]]>The real downfall of Circuit City was the prices. I went in one time just looking around, I went over and saw the price of cables. $15 for a power cord for a computer! I have tons of those at work, I could be making some serious coin to all the idiots who bought the cables at those prices.
]]>@PSN: kingpsyz: My HD TV CAME with an HDMI cable, and it's not even really name brand (it was a gift). I didn't realize that wasn't normal until a few weeks ago.
]]>@Kimaroo:
What can I say, i have a knack for these kinds of things.
@quagmire0:
newegg helped me out too, I got my HDMI cable for my PS3 for $6
Die slowly.
These jokers get no sympathy from me.
Get equivalent quality from the jumble of miscellaneous wiring in the drawer under the TV in the basement.
Just plant the seed...:D
]]>@shepd: I believe he meant to say, "Monster used higher-quality products in the analog era that would theoretically give better sound"
Am I a believe in gold plated conductors, twisted audio cables, etc. for analog applications? Sure. We use them for much more advanced stuff in the electronics industry all the time because they have a definite performance edge (normally less signal attenuation and less noise pickup). Does a digital video cable with "oxygen-free copper" and gold plated ends make a difference? Pretty doubtful.
]]>Oh boo-hoo for Monster. They deserve everything crappy that comes their way.
]]>@PSN: kingpsyz: That might be it. Heheh.
]]>@Kimaroo:
Cause they're a collection of litigous ass gobbling douchnozzles with a penchant for shovel fucking?
I'm having trouble feeling sorry for them... I wonder why that is.
]]>Que? I mean, really, you can get better sound with coat hangers.
]]>