Cables - a rant.

[andrewducker]

The other day, an lj friend* was ranting about the price of HDMI cables at Richer Sounds. Pretty justified, as they charge £15 for a cable you can get at Amazon for a fiver.

Today I was in Currys (and PC World) as a break from clothes shopping with meaningrequired, and thought I'd check out their prices for cables.

They started at £40, and went up to £100.

Now, checking their website, it seems like they have cheaper ones, at pretty reasonable prices. But if you're buying a new TV and Blu-Ray player (or whatever) then you're going to want cables to go with them, and chances are that if you're ignorant you're going to get suckered into paying over the odds and buying one of these. Or if the sales people really get to you, splashing out on something like this.

Frankly, I'd like to find a way of making this kind of thing illegal**. If you can't demonstrate an actual difference in the picture being transmitted by the cable over one costing less than half its price then you shouldn't be allowed to bloody well sell it.

*I've just remembered who it was, but it was flocked, so I'm not naming them. They can feel free to claim responsibility in the comments if they like.

**Ok, I'm exaggerating somewhat. If people want to spend their money on stupid things then it's up to them. I'd settle for crucifying*** any sales person who tries to tell you that you get a better signal through them than you do through the bog standard ones that you can buy for a fiver.

***Publically. In front of the store. With rusty nails.

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I got a perfectly good HDMI cable off an amazon marketplace seller, brand new, for £1.97.

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

The price of those cables is outrageous.

Here we have "Fry's Electronics," where they always try and sell you the wrong thing, and then give you the runaround when you try and return said thing.

We love to hate them.

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

I'd like to speak from a position of experience since I used to write software which helped BICC design cables but frankly any experience I have will be 15 years out of date:

> If you can't demonstrate an actual difference in the picture being transmitted by the cable

I'm not sure this is reasonable. There might be lots of things that you put into a generic cable to make it perform better which will not result in picture quality. I am thinking of electromagnetic shielding, water proofing, fireproofness, cores more resiliant to bending, and so on. Of course most of these don't matter for a simple home digital cable.


> if you're ignorant you're going to get suckered into paying over the odds

And that is the problem. I have said for years not to buy any cables from the high street. Get them online unless you need them right now. Many people are paying for the convenience of having it there and then, and also for the convenience of not having to learn about it. They *are* getting something for their money - it just isn't a very good something.


So what is the solution? More awareness through "Which?" and tv consumer programs might be a good start.

[princealbert.livejournal.com]

Poundland!

PS3 seems to be fine with a Poundland HDMI cable, inc watching BluRays with their protection and games

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

On one hand, the markup is drastically unfair. On the other hand, that's where computer companies tend to make all their money. When I was working in a computer store I was shocked to find how much cables and printer cartridges were marked up. But I was also shocked to find that pretty much all the hardware wasn't marked up at all; some of it was even being sold for less than it'd cost to produce. They mark up the peripherals not because that's where all the profit is but because that's where pretty much the *only* profit is.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I think there was some skeptic noise about cable woo at some point.

There was also some recent experiments on decision making when buying which suggest that the way to milk most money out of people was to break up the purchase of larger complex items (i.e. a TV, DVD, games console and cables) in to many smaller transactions.

I would go on to suggest the sales technique is not an accident but deliberate policy based on empirical research.