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I need a DVI cable for a LCD monitor. My local Best Buy sells what I need for $96.99. Circuit City sells what I need for $119.99.
How the hell do they determine those prices? There is no way that a 6' cable designed to carry a bunch of ones and zeros is worth a hundred bucks. I'll stick with my free VGA cable, thank you very much.
Enter
MonoPrice
Quote:DVI Male Digital/DVI Male Digital Dual Link 28AWG Cable - 6FT (Gold Plated/Black) - $5.46
How can MonoPrice sell and (presumably) make a profit from selling the exact same cable that Best Buy does at 5% of the cost? Keep in mind that this is a DVI cable that carries a digital signal. There is no way that anyone can argue that an expensive DVI cable carries a better digital signal versus a cheap one. It either works or it doesn't. This ain't analog.
So what's up with outrageously overpriced cables?
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Quote:I need a DVI cable for a LCD monitor. My local Best Buy sells what I need for $96.99. Circuit City sells what I need for $119.99.
How the hell do they determine those prices? There is no way that a 6' cable designed to carry a bunch of ones and zeros is worth a hundred bucks. I'll stick with my free VGA cable, thank you very much.
Enter MonoPrice
How can MonoPrice sell and (presumably) make a profit from selling the exact same cable that Best Buy does at 5% of the cost? Keep in mind that this is a DVI cable that carries a digital signal. There is no way that anyone can argue that an expensive DVI cable carries a better digital signal versus a cheap one. It either works or it doesn't. This ain't analog.
So what's up with outrageously overpriced cables?
I have the same question. The 'better signal' argument makes a lot of sense to me when we're in the realm of analog signals. But a digital signal is at its most basic a set of ones and zeros. So as long as the signal gets there in a easily decipherable manner, I don't see why some cables are 5$ or 100$.
Please if anyone could educate me on my misunderstanding of digital signals, I'm all ears. Because right now my logic fails to explain how the 100$ cable is > than the 5$, except in terms of its price.
Cheers,
Munk
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Quote:So what's up with outrageously overpriced cables?
Better marketing preying on an uninformed public. Slap on a coat of gold plating, and you've just become barnem and bailey selling the latest and greatest, upcharging to any fools that pay.
Best Buy's got more advertising, recognition and sellers pushing their junk, while the common store isn't paying for all that.
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Quote:So what's up with outrageously overpriced cables?
People buy it. I just recently needed a bunch of Cat 6 cable to run around my new apartment. Best Buy had a 50' that cost $41.99. I got 2 100' and 5 25' for ~$66
with shipping from Newegg.
Trade yourself in for the perfect one. No one needs to know that you feel you've been ruined!
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In general, you're right, most digital cables are way overpriced.
However, there actually is such a thing as a "better" digital cable. Depending on what application you're looking at, the various protocols running over those cables have to perform some level of error checking to make sure that the data that gets to the end of the cable is the same as what was sent. A really low quality cable will have lots more bit errors than a decent quality cable. If you're sending data that needs to be exact (like most traffic over a network) the cheap cable results in lots of retries. Some protocols have no error checking at all. For instance, the checking on a TOSlink (optical connection from CD player to receiver, for example) has little or no error correction. So, a cheap cable can result in lower signal to noise in your music (how much this matters is an entirely different discussion).
So, charging more for a good cable can make a difference. But $100 for a 6-foot DVI is just stupid if it were 20 feet it might make sense (the longer the cable, the harder it is to maintain signal integrity all the way to the end).
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My significant other spent a few hellish months working for CompUSA. Other associates working in other such retailers all tell the same story.
Cables are marked up. And up. And up. They are the single biggest profit to cost item on the floor. Its deliberate, people needing cables tend to be wanting them _right now_, and are unwilling to wait for an online retailer to ship them, even when the price difference is 100$ vs 5$.
Thankfully, I can make my own CAT-5 cables, so I don't have to pay the grossly inflated store prices. But I saw the same thing when I was looking for a DVI-D to DVI-D cable for my LCD monitor. I got lucky, the tech guys at work had some spare.
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Quote:...
So what's up with outrageously overpriced cables?
When I was president of a company making USB equipment, we paid less than two dollars for good quality five meter USB cables.
"I may be old, but I'm not dead."
