Home audio & video forum: Monster HDMI Cables Not Worth the Money

wow. Monster products do not cause issues. Yes they might be more than some other brands but some poeple feel they are worth it. And not just salesmen either.

Digital is 1 and 0's yes. But have you ever heard of bit depth loss? When the signal starts it has, say, 1 milion 1 & 0's. By the time it gets to its destination, the siganl only has 750,000 1& 0's. These 'lost' bits mean lost detail in the picture, or lst color info, or lost something. They meant something. Better cables will help to get "more" info to the end point. Yes there is sme diminishing returns. But they do make a difference overall.


SPEAKER CABLE IS NOT CALLED LAMP CORD FOR A REASON!!!! If you people would come into my store so I could show you in person just how much of a difference speaker cables can make you would be amazd!!!!!!!!!!!! I was the first time I heard a no games 3 cable test. We had the cable that comes in a HTIB, a major brand(Can you guess which? lol) and Audioquest's CV-8 line (a couple hundred bucks for a 8 ft. pair with pure silver spades and banana plugs). The demo was Cl;apton unplugged. You went from hearing nothing before the song to hearing some croud, to actualy hearing Clapton talk to someone before the son started. No joke, we physically could not hear the sounds we heard later. And just so you know one of my guys was switching cables there was no gimmick or trick involved!!!

Sorry, just ticking me off. I do not lie it when people make uninformed comments.

Mon$tor cable had contract with Comcast. If one of the service techs found the problem was caused by a faulty Mon$tor product they would just quietly replace the product with a Comcast product and then Mon$tor would reimburse Comcast for the product and the service call.
So I guess that you could say that Mon$tor was paying Comcast to cover up the problems with Mon$tor products. John

As I have said in many posts.I do not make commission at my job. I do sell the house brand interconnects alot, because for most consumers no it isny worth it. But for actual speaker cable it does make a difference. I am not persuading, or persuading them. They hear the difference and decide that 20 bucks is worth it. Like I said ntercxonnects are les important than actual speaker wire. That is all I am saying. You will hear a difference. That is not the same as it is worth it for everyone. Sorry for any confusion there. I just have a hard time beleiving that evem with a Home Theater in a Box, $20 on a 50 ft. spool of 'decent' speaker cble isnt worth it? lol.

I have not seen that many problems with Monster products per se. I am surprised you have. As far as the power centers go, there seems to be some issues with the way that sattelite boxes like to 'back up voltage' or something like that. That is what my Direct TV rep told me(for what tha is worth! lol). Nothing wrong with the product, they work fine with cable boxes. Just something inherently incompatable with a satelite box. Panamax makes two versions, one for cable and one for sattelite specifically to eliminate this problem. I thought that was kind of interesting myself.

I have been reading the posts claiming that high performance HDMI cables, such as Monster Cable, are not worth the additional expense. I would have to say that the information that is being spread on these series of posts are full of inaccurate and misleading information. It is simply not true and unjustified. Let me try to share some facts on HDMI.

Just as not all levels of high definition signals are the same, not all levels of HDMI cables are the same as well. Technology continues to change and improve. Every year we see higher resolutions, sharpness, color depth, and high-quality audio signals of which put high demands on the connection between the source and the destination, thus the HDMI cable. And there are large differences between different options available on the market.

There are cables on the market today that say HDMI on them but they simply do not meet HDMI specifications. There is the cable itself to consider, the dielectric, the shielding, the connector, and then how is it all assembled. Not all are created equal. I have personally seen the large differences in build quality between a high end cable and a inexpensive cable as well as the test results on said cables and it was staggering. For example, the high end cable had a connector that was completely encased with shielding, solid and neat connections in the connector, and then the connector attached to the cable with a solid metal band that was actually part of the connector shielding. The inexpensive cable was on the other hand just shielded on one side of the connector, messy connections in the connector simply covered with silicone, and then the connector attached to the cable with masking table. Yes I said masking tape. Better build quality results in better performance.

Next, attentuation. Poor cable/connector construction and poor materials results in higher impedance. Higher impedance results in lower quality signal, Lower quality signal results in poor or no picture and or sound, Poor or no picture and or sound results in frustration. It is a sequence of events. You must also consider the length of the cable. Have you ever seen an 'eye pattern'. An eye pattern is the test that is applied to HDMI cables for attentuation factors. The reason why it is called an eye pattern is because a reference test pattern looks like an eye when you view it on the test scope. You can clearly see that over a distance, and I am referring to distances as short as just a few feet, you see drastic collapsing of the test patterns showing how the signal is simply lost due to attentuation. High performance cables can maintain signal quality over long distances. Sorry for using a brand name of a HDMI cable but Monster Cable for example has HDMI cables available that successfully test all the way up to 75 feet at 1080p. This is impossible on the less expensive cables. Additionally Monster Cable has solutions to allow for even longer distances includes 100's of feet. Again not possible with less expensive cables.

Build quality was mentioned in some of the posts which one made mention of one cable being more 'pliable' than another cable after he/she frequently changed the cable multiple times (plugging and unplugging the cable many times over). I will be the first to admit that the HDMI cable solution is NOT the best type of cable that could be used but for today, it is the best type of cable for the highest quality signals. But the HDMI cable was not even made originally for the home entertainment industry. It was made for connecting PC equipment in very short distances, but was adopted for use in the CE space to allow for the passage of the higher resolutions. Solid construction on the cable is a good thing for the best reliably of the signal, more pliable cable is not always a good thing. Again I have personally seen the differences.

Then final point, and a very important point, bandwidth. There are HDMI cables on the market that can pass 480p, 720p, or perhaps even 1080i which have been standards in high definition signals up through 2006. But in late 2006, the game changed with Playstation 3, HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray. These sources are 1080p and the demands of the system components, including the connections, increased dramatically. The bandwidth requirements have gone from 0.81 GHz for 480p, to 2.23 GHz for 720p and 1080i signals, to now 4.46 GHz and 6.68 GHz for 1080p sources. And they are going up even further. In the near future you will see bandwidth requirements of 10.2 GHz and even 12.2 GHz for even higher resolution solutions. Therefore emphasis again comes back to the quality of the cable to pass these signals both today and even tomorrow. I know for a fact that Monster Cable HDMI cables meet and exceed this specification. Again many things go into the equation to ensure this can be done, of which many have been discussed above.

Then what about timing errors, known as jitter? What about tonal transitions between colors? That is the digital banding you can see between colors on some systems. What about gray-scale meansurements and contrast ratio? As you can see there are many things to take into consideration.

In closing, as I know I have gone on for a while, high performance cables are definently worth the money many times over. You always get what you pay for. If you look at Monster Cable again being it was mentioned so frequently throughout these posts, you will see mid-priced cables up to expensive cables for the same reasons. Not all cables are created equal. There are drastic differences between them. For some the visual differnces will be small, and for others they will be large differences. But the bottom line, higher performance cables are most definently worth the money,

"to now 4.46 GHz and 6.68 GHz for 1080p"

I'm not sure where you got this info.
Analog video is 3.5 mhz band width.
But for digital video mega bits per second is normally used.
DVD 480p is about 11mbs max, MiniDV is 25mbs, 720p/30 45mbs, 1080i 52mbs, 1080p/30 75mbs. Note mega NOT giga!
A digital cable has to be good enough to get all the bits transfered with out loosing any of them, thats all. John

The signal on the HDMI connector (TDMS channel) in an uncompressed digital signal. This includes a small number of additional error detection and correction bits, but nowhere the level of error correction which CDs or DVDs use.

The signal goes in parallel over three data channels, basically one for each color, although that oversimplifies. You then have roughly 1 Gbps (little b for bits, not big B for bytes) on each data wire pair.

Then the "bandwidth" of the cable is specified in terms of the clock frequency (the clock signal is on a fourth wire pair) which is only 1/10 the frequency of the signal bit transitions.

The result, roughly on the order of 100 MHz (not 100Mbps) is an approximation of the bandwidth that an analog transmission channel would have to have to deliver a comparable amount of data as the 1-and-0-only digital link. As such, it provides a convenient connection to peoples impressions of picture quality to the old analog days. (In which a standard broadcast signal, with no compression, required a bandwidth of roughly 3 MHz and did not (unlike digital or component analog) include spatial resolution (detail) in the color information to match the spatial resolution in the brightness information.

So, if you are very careful in what words you use in your descriptions, both of you are "right".

Hope this helps to clarify things a bit.

My response to the above poster and his response have both been edited from this thread. Shows what the power of money does and Monster has money.

I said that Monster must have put someone on "damage control". Then I listed several incidents of FACT about Monster products and actual experience. He admitted working for them and said "well everyones experience may be different."

It is very sad when money alters the truth.

THESE HIGH PRICED CABLES THAT WILL RUIN YOUR SYSTEM, AS WELL AS YOUR BANK-ACCOUNT.

Suckers all.

riv.

I love the fact that it touts 24k gold plating for best connection!!!
Ummmm....unless my connector, solder,and circuitry is made of gold(not plated) it will do absolutely no good for connection. THE ONLY benefit is that gold does not tarnish which can lead to poor signal. MONSTER CABLES ARE AWESOME FOR PEOPLE WHO LOVE THROWING PERFECTLY GOOD MONEY IN HE TRASH! AVOID THEM!!!

So by now we all agree Monster cables are a rip off. Three years ago I purchased Monster ScreenClean and it came with a nice 16"x16" cloth. It works great on LCD, Plasma and LCD screen.

So last week I needed a new bottle and bought one. This time the cloth was 12"x12". These guys can't help themselves. LMAO

"Of course it hurts, your getting screwed by a monster"