What is it With Cables?
I went over to that big box store that’s all blue with the yellow price-tag-shaped sign today, with the idea of buying a DVD Recorder. What I really want is something that will record either a true DV digital signal, or at least component. However, that’ll cost me a grand or more, and that’s just not going to happen. So, my alternate spec is to be able to up-convert a standard DVD, and at least have a DV input and S-Video in, and then for outputs, I want to have HDMI. Pretty easy spec, actually. So, I’ve settled on the Samsung DVD-R155. The big box store that’s all blue with the yellow price-tag-shaped sign has it for about $150, and we’ve got a $25 gift card.
So, I was just about set to buy the thing, and then I started to look into the cable situation. In the box comes one set of cheesy composite video and stereo audio cables. That’s it!
And that’s where I got really torqued. The big box store that’s all blue with the yellow price-tag-shaped sign wants $50 for an f-ing 3-foot long HDMI cable — basically the same cable I can order from Parts Express for about $16 (plus shipping).
So, I got annoyed and walked out — without the DVD recorder. I probably should have gone ahead and picked it up, and just wired it up with existing cables for now. But the cable pricing just annoyed the hell out of me.
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Did I or did I not warn you of this on Monday night?
BTW - the Arundel Mills store had the Sony 5-disk carousel with 720p/1080i upconversion in stock for just over a Benjamin. Pretty good unit, so far.
Yeah, I know. It’s just nucking futs. You shouldn’t need to spend half the price of a piece of equipment just hook the damned thing up.
Monster, Acoustic Research and Belkin figger if you’re gonna drop a grand or more on a TV, a $50 cable’s a drop in the bucket, right? Of course, the margin on those things is somewhere near 3000%
Wire’s wire. It’s not like it’s a mobile rig where the connectors need to be bulletproof for hundreds of connect/disconnect cycles - go for the $16 cables straight away.
Maybe if I were buying a several thousand dollar system from scratch, I might go ahead and get the more expensive wire — if for no other reason than to have everything I needed from the get-go when I got all the boxes home. Next time I place an order with Parts Express, I will get the $16 cable.
That aside, there are differences in wire. None that are going to affect what I see on my TV. But, if I were doing long-run digital feeds to multiple hi-def displays for a high-end installation, I’d buy a “better” cable.
The differences in cables are in the number of strands in the bundle — and I’m not just talking the wire gauge (AWG). For instance, 22AWG is a common size for wires in better A/V cables. Each wire in the cable is made up of several individual strands that run together through each jacket. Several jacketed wires will make up the various signal lines in the cable. A higher-quality cable will have more, smaller strands to make up each wire.
A 22AWG wire may, for instance, come in 9-, 12- or 17-strands. The 17-strand wire will typically have better electrical characteristics than the 9-strand wire.
So, there is difference in wire, and wire with a higher strand count is definitely more expensive. But, for most home theatre use, you simply can’t tell the difference.