Are Name Brand Home Theater Cables Worth The Money?

Cables are the worst rip-off in the entire electronics industry. I recently looked into starting my own line of cables to sell in retail; the numbers were staggering. A standard-quality HDMI cable, the sort that connects your HDTV to a DVD player or other video output, sells for anywhere between $40 and $100 in stores like Best Buy and Circuit City. They cost about $3 to $6 to make—no joke.

So where to go for cables? Monoprice.com, the American online retail arm of a large Chinese cable manufacturer. A standard 28-gauge, six-foot HDMI cable—standard issue home theater interconnect—sells for $6.37 at Monoprice (less if you buy more than one). The low-end cable option at Best Buy—same wire thickness—costs $63.99. Even if you factored in overnight shipping from Monoprice (which is usually very reasonable) you’d come out way ahead.

But aren’t those brand name cables better, you ask? In a word: No. Longer cable lengths can benefit from a thicker gauge cable, the same sort that is also available at Monoprice. (And I’m talking real long here, like 25 feet or more.)

Front Door [Monoprice]