You Get What You Pay For - Sure?
 

Can we put that trite phrase to bed?

The HDMI cable ripoff and why retail is really dying | ZDNet

Sherwood

wow, just wow. $1k for a cable. Wonder if they ever sold one.

There are many items like that. Amazon is become my place to shop. I need a car charger for my cell phone. The no name brands from Best Buy were $45 and up. I got it from Amazon for $6 deivered to my door.

He says "retail is dying" but he means "brick and mortar retail is dying." While I know that brick and mortar is here to stay and online sales can only do certain things - my main point of contention is with a "journalist" who can't properly name his own article.

I've been working for a very smart and tech-savvy guy who buys nearly everything on Amazon. Several boxes show up on his doorstep every day.

He was just telling me that Best Buy will be dead within 6 months at the rate it's going.

I just bought another new laptop from Best Buy
It was the same price as Amazon, but I could walk in and pick it up

There's a big difference between a person who writes for an established news organization and one who writes for a blog (e.g. ZD Net) - mainly spelling :-). However, in this case, I must concur with the writer's conclusions. Here are Best Buy's "best buys":

$1000 - $1249 : hdmi cable - BestBuy

Nice tongue-in-cheek reviews too (5 stars)!!

Sherwood

what he did not tell us is that a HDMI signal is good for about 35-40 feet and at 40' the signal might clip in and out or just not be there. this is a digital signal and a loss of a packet kills the signal. longer cables are a fiber cable that incorperates conversion/ decode to optical/digital and a laser all in the conector, not cheap. we have several 100'+ runs at work, several dollars a piece and that is a good price
HDMI Fiber Optical Cable, HDCP Compliant - 100 Meter | Avenview Corp

Yes yes Best Buy and some Big Boxes aren't necessarily here to stay BUT retail brick and mortar isn't going anywhere. Its cool to write about but brick and mortar stores thats can reinvent and keep up will be around just like they have been for years.

Sometimes cheaper is just cheap.

My brother hates the cheap "gas station" car phone chargers.

Customers come in all the time with blown fuses/circuits caused by them.

Timely article I saw the other day.

Ken Shirriff's blog: Tiny, cheap, and dangerous: Inside a (fake) iPhone charger

Gotta love Fry's though, picked up a 25 ft HDMI cable for my media room, $19.99. Works fine.

I'm a fan of Fry's for when you just need to go and look at stuff. Sometimes I don't know exactly what I need, and I like to stand and study things in front of me before buying. Other times I see things that I need that I hadn't thought of until I see them, etc. You can't walk into Fry's unless you got money to burn. It is impossible to get out of there without breaking down and buying something.

Speaker wire is one of those things- I'm always skeptical of the photos online when I go to buy speaker wire... I don't trust what they ave listed as the gage, insulation type, etc.

But at Fry's I can stand there and hold it in my hands before buying.



Other things, like digital cables (HDMI, SPDIF fiber, etc) I buy off Amazon.

Purchasing digital cables online is okay, but regular speaker wire must require hands-on, tactile feedback? Hmmm. Okay.

It's the sparkle.

Milt,
I wasn't referring to live electrical wires. Let's not get too excited. :)

S

digital cables are digital. Their quality means nothing as long as the signal is sent.

Speaker wire is anything but. It transmits and analog signal, sometimes over a long length. Gauge, insulation quality, and strand count have an impact on sound quality. When you spend $1000 on speakers and an amp, you don't want to get stuck with $4 worth of crap copper. I'm not talking those dumb, inert-gas-filled $20,000 speaker wire sets... I'm just talking about nice, well insulated, high strand count, high quality copper wire with an as-advertised gauge.

"P.S. Don’t believe all the hype from some of the in-store salespeople. Most HDMI cables will work just fine. You don’t need to buy HDMI cables strung from the gold in Rapunzel’s hair."

LOL!

and it works great for fixing the undersized starter wiring on ducati's. :)

Frys is still like the old Radio Shack/Comp USA.

When you need fiddly bits they always seem to have it.

Remember when Radio Shack was full of drawers and assorted components hanging in plastic bags? These days there is one lonely wall of "parts".

I'm not a fan of Frys staff. It's like they were all trained at Blockbuster.

That hits home. I recently spent $50 on a 15 ft HDMI cable, and that was the cheapest price after looking at three different stores. Normally I would order online, but I had promised the kids that they could watch a movie on their new DVD player. The DVD player was only $100.......

Radio Shack of old had some useful stuff and employees. The last few times I went in there looking for something specific the employees only knew how to do an internet search.

I went into a local Radio Shack looking for a Thermistor to replace the one on my electric space heater. I could have asked for fetzler bearings and gotten the same look from the employees. They did not have them in the store but only on-line and I could order it for some crazy price. I walked out and I had to tell them twice I still don't need any batteries. After a quick Google search I found a place to order two of them so now I have a spare. It took a week for them to arrive but I got the exact replacement part as what was in the heater.

then there is this device----

Dedicated Audio - Shunyata King Cobra CX Power Cord

And this magic cable provides error free electrical phase corrected nano pressure differential modulation coordinated and sync'd up to Madonnas menstrual cycle.............


Love the price of these magic AC cords, that plug into a wall that has standard 12/2 romex behind it.

Golden Ear audiofiles are also the ones who stay awake at night wondering whether Nuclear power AC voltage may sound different than Hydroeletric power generators. :rolleyes:

I certainly hope all you audiofiles also elevated your speaker wires and support them off the floor for clarity and frequency response?



http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1335885562.jpg




You also MUST but the $250 cable and wire pre-conditioner, I guess you're supposed to use the conditioner after the shampoo, for silky smooth brighter highlights of you hair? :rolleyes:






http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1335885594.jpg

oh and all the electric motors that are creating "noise" on the neutral/ ground bus-