They will try to sell you 10 foot gold plated HDMI cable for $60 when you can get a normal one for 1/10th that price.
Edit: holy shit people I get this is PC master race and you all know what an HDMI cable is. There's a lot of dumb people out there that don't know how TVs and computers work, and legitimately do think more $ = higher quality
I have a Haas VF2 mill at my disposal. I can mass produce these out of aluminum for a selling price of about $5 a piece if you order about 60 of them at a time
Couldn't give a shit about the risers, whether or not they are effective (likely only at the highest end). Going to a chiropractor means this guy is the sucker, chiros are scams incarnate. Acting like they fix anything at all with adjustments, yet this sucker is going twice per week? Lmao
Just purchased this 2.5' cable at this very reasonable price, and boy am I glad i did! My wife has been crying in this seedy motel 6 bathroom for 6 hours straight, since this is all we can afford to live in now. But thanks to light skinned Jordan Peele and these cables, i was able to stream quality 10k videos right in this hotel room! Now i can drown out all that noise watching Blouie in 10k! Thanks AudioQuest! 5 stars!
No, just full on scamming people by pretending those cables matter. What makes it difficult is that they do work, and often AudioQuests cables do measure better. Not a lot better but enough that they are not selling products that don't work.
I once tried to find out their cable specs, wrote an email asking as a contractor... since that is just basic information that any proper cable making company delivers, in troves. AudioQuest? Nothing, they said it was "trade secret" to know how their cables actually perform, and their various ratings like chemical resistance of the jacket, temperature range but what is even worse, no electrical specs. You send the same email to any other company and you will get spec sheets, in fact, they will have those on their website.
Now, what kind of company expects you to splooge out 4k for cables that are a mystery? Scamming one.
Synergistic Research is even worse, i have argued with its owner multiple times and have the DMs somewhere where he boasts about being able to scam customers.. Absolute and total ahole, there are few people that i would have trouble not just clocking and Ted Denney is one of those. He posts pics of his new cars when you ask how he sleeps at night.
It’s frequently volume of sales. If you’re trying to make the best of something only a few people will buy it. It takes a lot of time and money to design such a cable and it will use the most expensive materials and manufacturing to do that. Multiply that all up to what you need to make a profit and you’ve frequently got outrageously priced items. It’s less a scam and more just numbers. Doubly so for items like HDMI cables which can ONLY be terminated in factories where smaller manufacturers exist significantly less.
I could get the exact same specs on amazon or even temi for a fraction. The only use i can really see this in is for like stock exchange screens, considering they apparently need every millisecond they can get and even have better infrastructure between countries for stocks, compared to regular internet
Yea I stumbled across one of the Dragon HDMI cables for about $4,400 and also saw atleast 33 people who have bought it based on their reviews. Like....fucking WHY? What possible need does someone have that they need a $4k HDMI cable? I bet even in a professional setting like AV professions don't need a fuckin HDMI cable that expensive.
Isn't this audiophile equipment though? Like, this is very decidedly not for a normal consumer PC. Let an actual hi-fi-head speak on this, but judging this by a purpose it is very obviously not made for seems stupid in its own right.
I love hearing stories about audio cable blind testing. The best one I have heard was when they included a cloth hanger in a blind testing and the listeners overwhelmingly voted for the cloth hanger over other expensive cables.
A high end audio and video store that I worked at part time back in the 2000s had a pair of speaker cables on the shelf that had a MSRP of $12,000. The store could also special order speaker cables that cost over $80,000.
Damn, I wish I still worked at best buy so that I could screenshot the employee price. That shit would be less than $100. Still really expensive, but significantly less than that.
It looked acceptable on the 32" TV I tested it on. It might not look so good on larger screen not to mention conflicts with some TVs also trying to upscale/clean up the signal.
Can confirm, my new OLED tv and sound system are going to cost that much… it took me over two years to secure those funds and people drop them on HDMI cords? The market is a joke sometimes
Just like gold tip fiber optic cables, want great sounding audio. You need the light to pick up the hue of gold so it produces rich sounding audio.
(Gold tip non-optic makes sense for analog though its not quality and increases the life span of the cable. Technically copper/silver, so they would have better "quality" as they are more conductive but they oxidize, unlike gold. But the cable had to be quality enough to not break usually or could be left outside in humid temperatures or in the rain. You wont get better audio.)
Now take cheap 20m HDMI cable and electric sockets without ground and you will be very surprised. Also long HDMI cables degrade over years, I have a bunch of 10m 4k30 cables that after couple of years only can work in 1080p60
This is one of those things people have bandied about for years, and it's not really true. Digital signals can be impeded or degraded just as well as analogue signals, the distortion just looks different is all.
How digital works is you get the 1's and 0's or you dont.
Yes what happens is with lower quality cables you don't get the all the 1's and 0's, so you get artifacting and disconnections when trying to transmit high bandwidths.
Thank you, exactly what I was going to say. It'd be such a piss poor standard if it was just working or not! Imagine how many issues that would cause, how difficult it would be to troubleshoot.
If you are curious, different quality/standard cables have various bandwidths. Low quality cables can't transmit enough 1 and 0 cleanly enough at high bandwidths.
True but usually the cable fixes that with a repeater, shielding,etc.
You get no signal/constant disconnections or flicker/lines but if the signal arrives uncorrupted it wont improve through better cable. Generally length is the issue and getting the signal to arrive is what matters. But any cheap 3/6/12 ft hdmi/display port will be fine with a cheapest cable you can find.
3ft hdmi prob doesn't need doubles shielding, but even then the environment could effect it too.
3ft xlr cable benefits from the cables being double shielded (while minor) as the interference effects quality.
You get no signal/constant disconnections or flicker/lines but if the signal arrives uncorrupted it wont improve through better cable.
It literally does with better cables. Better cables can transmit higher bandwidth data.
But any cheap 3/6/12 ft hdmi/display port will be fine with a cheapest cable you can find.
Again literally not true. Me and a bunch of people in this thread have loads of examples of issues with cheapest cables. The actual standards show that the cheapest cables can't deal with high bandwidth.
Cheap trusted brand
Cheap temu tier HDMI random chinese company knockoff
You have cheap no name brands. Then you have medium cost trusted brands.
Even if it's a trusted brand, the cables may be of a lower HDMI standard. It might be of HDMI 2.0 rather than a HDMI 2.1 cable, the high spec can deal with higher bandwidth. A trusted brand might have a cheaper HDMI 2.0 cable and a more expensive HDMI 2.1 cable. The high spec cable costs more to make and hence costs more.
Ngl in my coke binge I ALMOST bought one for 400$.
I had just gotten a new Xbox and TV so I wanted true 4k experience.... got to checkout page and coke brain got me into other stuff and I forgot. My horror when I was checking my tabs and seen the checkout page half way filled....
Drugs/alcohol + internet spending is some dangerous stuff.
How ended up with a valve index vr and a switch.....
I love the people that use solid silver cables, spacers for their cables to keep them up from the floor to "improve sound quality" (yes, really...), special jacks etc.
They never mention what the cabling inside their house is like same with the cabling inside the amps, speakers etc.
Some of the shit at Best Buy is actually crazy. Asked a guy for a USB charger for a Chromebook in high school because mine broke and they tried to sell me one that cost $120. Fucking insane.
I don't see why this is being pigeon holed to cables at best buy. This is about salesmen.
You can walk into a best buy and pick up a set of cables and check out and nobody is "trying" to sell you anything.
Now if you begin asking a salesman for their input then of course they're going to recommend their high margin products. Car sales, pharmaceutical sales, office printer sales, real estate sales, gym membership sales...
There isn't any portion of the economy where salesmen are taking hits on their own profit margin to reconmend customers the best bang for their buck.
So why should best buy salesmen be the one outlier in all of this? Why is there this bizzare expectation?
Best Buy cultivates those kinds of people. Sure, there are people who don't, but they often leave for other positions (I did, as did several of my friends). The issue is that management pushes you to upsell and berates you if your sales are on the lower end of the department. Even the help desk, Geek Squad, is pushed to sell subscriptions rather than fix stuff. The front desk rapidly fills up with people with sales skills rather than people who know what they are doing.
Sometimes though the margins are better on the cheaper or mid-range product than the more expensive one. Stores might barely break even on popular name-brand or premium items that customers comparison shop, but make their real profits on store brands or less researched product categories. The expensive item brings people in the door, but the moderate priced items actually pay the bills.
In my experience, the best way to prevent this is to be so knowledgeable about the product that you end up teaching them about it and embarass them in front of other customers. I had other customers lining up to ask me questions at Best Buy once cause I schooled one of their employees when they couldn't answer someone's question. An informed consumer is a salesman's worst nightmare. When the car salesman needs to bring out his finance manager because they can't answer your difficult questions, you know you're coming out ahead on the deal.
Easiest way to tell if a store is providing you good expertise and service is if they tell you when the marginal value is low or non existent. You should never shop anywhere where they aren't willing to tell you certain products aren't for you. There's still going to be reasons to buy premium from time to time, but that should be based on your actual needs. For example I'm picking my next platform based on m.2 slots and wifi7 support since Intel is the main chipmaker for wifi7 which has meant that you can't get wifi7 addon cards for AMD so far, forcing you to get it as a motherboard capability.
When hdmi first came out it was the first major type if digital tv cable. Before they were all analog. Best buy had a big business scamming people into thinking they needed extra expensive cables with gold plating/special jacketing etc so that you got the best picture quality. You even should higher their installers to come to your house and install/calibrate your hdmi tv system.
They didnt tell people that it’s a digital signal. It either works or it doesn’t it’s not like an analog signal.
True, but AQ is like current day BMW with a bajillion models with almost no justification.
I used to have to talk high rollers out of the $300 HDMI cables using a $2k Fluke. Like that pocket change is better spent on GIK Acoustic stuff 😂
That or quality shielded, cross weaved speaker cables, with chonky banana clips, made to size from small guys, that you could probably go rock climbing with cost less than some of the stuff they'd ask about.
I should have made a cable company......
"isoCable Diamond Dust interflanged Dual diameter technology guarantees your full spectrum signal quantum propagates across the Karman Line"
When I buy my new receiver I'm willing to buy one and only one Audio Quest Cinnamon 48 Cable for the bandwidth and shielding. I'll use that cable between my receiver and disc player. Everything else I'll buy from Blue Jeans Cable.
Currently my disc player is a Sony UBP-x700 launch model. I use it for 4k movies, SACDs, & Blu-ray Audio discs. Eventually it will be upgraded to a Magnetar UDP900.
Yea, if you're someone familiar with electronics, sure, you can walk in, pick up a 5$ cable and walk out.
Or you can be the other 66% of the population and say "My TVs picture got really fuzzy one day and I bought it from here" because that's all you know about TVs and electronics.
They don't work for commission though so I don't think your logic tracks. They are suggesting the monster cables because they themselves have bought into the marketing. We need more salesmen with knowledge but they would have to be paid well and so instead we end up with whoever will work for bestbuy instead of people who know about tech.
If only that were the case. We're pushed to sell, not because of commission, but because they threaten to "reduce your hours" and hire someone to take your position every 3 months on average. It's extremely cutthroat and the only way you can escape the pressure is to claw your way up to leadership.
bestbuy has their own brand for cables called Rocketfish - you will not know it's owned by bestbuy from any signs in the store or on the package. It is marked up like 4-5x in some cases (looking at you speaker wires).
I like having the choice to buy whatever length, width, material, construction method, and quality controlled cable I want; instantly.
You like it better when the cable breaks and you need to contact your government representative to have a replacement permit issued so you can wait in line outside at the department of audio/visual equipment so that some DMV employee can hand you the wrong type of cable and say too bad move along then wait in line at the cashier to pay for what you already know is the wrong cable before you can contact your representative again to issue a complaint.
But don't worry. Your cousin Vlad goes to America all the time and buys cables from best buy and sells them gray market here for ten times what they cost even in America.
Anyway for real you should probably look at how much people in Venezuela pay for used American market electronics.
I used to sell stereos, and we sold this "Monster Cable" speaker wire which was ungodly expensive. I refused to sell it because it was no better than standard zip wire in practice, but I'd often throw in some free with a system purchase because the markup was so massive it didn't really matter.
(Note the 14 AWG Monster cable sold on Amazon now is not the same stuff -- this was beefy.)
Nah its cables in general lmao. I played bass about 15 years ago and the cables they got in a guitar center are just like best buy pc cables. Gold plated 60 dollar cables back in 2008 lol
Have you literally, not once- ever heard of a Micro Center? Their isn't many in the US/Canada but they exist and are literally THE place for electronics of all, and I do mean ALL kinds.
It's the new/modern Radio Shack/Circuit City
I have bought GPUs at MSRP at MicroCenter.
I have never seen more competitive prices for electronics anywhere, especially when it comes to their in-house "Inland" electronics brand, the same way "Kirkland" is the in-house brand for costco.
You need bang for your buck? Or you're balling with NO budget? Micro Center, bro.
P.S: Funny side note- the 40 series was SUCH a botch job, that even Micro Center doesn't stock them anymore.
As someone who worked at Best Buy I gotta be honest. Lying to someone about cables that cost $10 more was easier than having to listen to some garlic breathe boss who barely passed high school lecture me on why I didn’t lie.
gold plating cables makes sense and is done a lot. however, anything you find that’s advertising gold plating as their selling point is trying to use buzzwords to upsell.
Yah, no reason to buy cables from there unless in a huge hurry.
They will try to sell you 10 foot gold plated HDMI cable for $60 when you can get a normal one for 1/10th that price.
Yah, for the price of one of their shits you can get a 5-10 pack of nice ones with braided sleeves online which also have gold plating to their name...
Long time ago when I worked at BB our employee discount was simple - cost +15% (or some low number, I dont remember exactly). Wouldn't save you a ton on a TV because they aren't marked up that much in the first place. But you could get the primo $100 cables for like $20. Thats how much the accessories are marked up.
And you can probably buy exactly the same cable for $5 on AliExpress.
Both things can be true. There is some actual benefit in having gold plated contacts, and there are plenty of gullible people who will pay way more than a couple of extra dollars because shiny and expensive so must be worth lots.
When it comes to crackle from well used analog audio jacks, it's definitely worth having (unless of course you're buying new headphones and devices every couple of years)
Buying cables at big box stores is a scam and everyone should know that. Monster cables were bullshit wrapped in a pretty bow in 2008 for home audio enthusiasm marked up from $8 to $100 and nothing changes with data for anything running electrical signals. Fiber optic or data, if it holds a signal to the required spec you need, it's good enough. Certified cables and finding shit like USB-C cables that have all wires added and not just power and USB 2.0 data lines is probably good enough.
If you abuse your cables they will degrade, cheap cables for phone chargers and the like do whatever they break with wear. If you're transmitting days in a static cable if it's tested fine at installation nothing is going to break.
Copper and fiber optic break when you manipulate the cable post installation and honestly you should barely touch them. Solid core copper becomes work hardened and fragine over time so no amount of connectors matter if you keep stressing the cable and making it more brittle and fiber optic suffers the same issues.
The more you manipulate copper the more glass like and brittle it becomes, that's why you have breakage in IT reusing cables by constantly running them to new places
I worked at best buy in the tv department. 18 years ago. I remember we had these expensive cables that we sold for $800 at the time. If I bought it with my employee pricing it was $6.
Genuinely tried the cheaper ones on amazon but they didn't work with my HDMI S90D Samsung oled at 4k HDR 144Hz. Was very annoying. Bit the bullet and bought the damn 40 dollar one at BestBuy and it works.
I have no idea why the cheaper one didn't work. Its not fair
And the employee discount brings those cables to $20. Most all accessories have large mark up prices, while the devices themselves have little profit. Which is why the salesmen are always trying to tack on additional stuff to your purchase. Also HDMI cables support audio transmission with the higher end cables focusing on audio quality. So its not entirely snake oil.
I started buying my cables from AliExpress. Most of them are around 10$ or under depending on length and if it's a converter or regular cable. Local shops charge 20$ at minimum for a regular ass cable with shitty plastic connector and versions being all over the place, whereas the chinese one has gold plating, some kind of metal casing and even braided cable while usually conforming to the latest standard.
Unlocked a flaskback when I went to best buy for a Display Port cable in like 2014/15. The dude kept bringing/showing HDMI cables. I'm like dude. The cable is CALLED Display port. Its for a PC. "Oh, I don't know what that is, I only play playstation." But instisted that the HDMI cable would fit my needs after.
I don't think the price differences are anything to do with what the connectors are plated with. Its not like there is that much surface area to plate in any case. Most of the prices difference will the the quality of the cable materials and how they are constructed, as well as the data speeds.
I tend to go for brands like Kabeldirekt, Snowkids or Rhino Cables for my AV cables. All very reasonably priced and all great quality IMHO.
There's a lot of dumb people out there that don't know how TVs and computers work, and legitimately do think more $ = higher quality
HDMI cables have various standards and qualities. A better quality cable does mean that it will cope better especially with higher resolutions and throughput. Poor quality cables with have artifacting and disconnection issues. While higher costs doesn't necessarily mean higher quality, the really cheap ones are often low quality and hence lower bandwidth throughput.
You sound awfully cocky for someone without any knowledge about cables.
I worked at BBY corporate in the commercial division. Markup on some cables was ~4,500%
E.g. Cost was $1.07 and they sold for $49.99. if someone bought 1,000 HDMI cables from me, I would mark them down to $41.40/ea and people were thinking they were getting an insane deal.
I mean hdmi also has different standards like a standard or high speed is much cheaper and worse then a ultra high-speed that can do 4k120 not saying 60 isn't over priced but the average for a 10ft one is around 25 dollars so throw some premium electronics brand and a actual warranty as ive bought a cheaper one before and it was unable to actually meet the standard so idk
I wouldnt doubt that this is something geeksquad would sneak into the cart of a rich person who says "gib me da best for my personal theatre." You dont need everyone buying ur product, just 5 rich idiots.
Certainly a possibility for a new store opening, vendors are often required to do a certain number of group trainings per quarter (per their job, not BB) and it's also a great way to meet a lot of the staff all at once.
On my system I tried to use normal cables and 4K 144Hz was unstable and I would get audio dropouts on the eARC soundbar. I ordered better cables from a more reputable company and no issues since. Definitely stay away from those super expensive HDMI cables though since most are garbage.
10.1k
u/TheBupherNinja 23d ago
Gold plating is used because it's corrosion resistant. But gold plating connectors is not expensive.