Man, this is just sad. Over a year after the internet was set ablaze with rage after seeing
Monster's HDMI cable scam, we've just been notified that the tactic is
still being used in at least one Fry's Electronics store. For those unaware, the rig works as such: two TVs are set beside each other along with a sign that says "See the Monster HDMI Difference." Trouble is, the "Monster set" (on the right) is connected to its source via an HDMI cable, while the "non-Monster set" (on the left) is connected via composite cable. As in, the lamest looking signal next to using an RF modulator. So, is anyone with any amount of power paying attention to this? We get the feeling "false advertising" is a real understatement of the situation.
[Thanks, Jeff]
posted Mar 23rd 2009 11:31AM
Nasty! These guys need to get got, someone please sue.
Hey, in best buy they are pushing "DTV antennas " that they say that are necessary to get a good picture on all the local stations. The lame thing is that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A DTV ANTENNA. There is no difference from a DTV antenna (mind you not a reciever box I am talking about here) and an analog one. Best buy is simply price gauging with the rest of them too....
@sacapuntus
Are you trying to say Best Buy is not the ethical pillar of retail shopping? The same retailer that wouldn't sell a kid just a PS3 or Xbox 360 because they only had them for sale bundled with a controller and a bunch of other crap at launch.
MONSTER marketing == APPLE marketing......
@Phenoum
You == ignorant douche
The sign is up-front about what is being compared. It's clear that's it's simply composite v. HDMI so I wouldn't really call this a 'scam'.
Actually Sacapuntus, there is.
A DTV antenna is considerably bigger than an ATV antenna and has more pick-ups.
There actually is a difference between an antenna designed for DTV and one designed for analog.
I am in no way defending the deceptive upselling that is happening, but to fail to recognize there is a difference in antennas design for DTV is shortsighted and might leave you thinking you can't get a digital channel when, in fact, a real "rabbit ears" style antenna is a completely abysmal performer for DTV.
First, with the nearly 100% vacation of VHF-low frequencies, DTV antennas can pretty much be tuned for UHF-only reception. Since they do not need to perform on these lower frequencies they can employ more optimal designs that achieve higher gain on DTV frequencies. Conversely, a great deal of the analog antennas that may be in use now are optimized for receiving high power VHF-low stations and will not work well when the stations relocate.
Secondly, DTV antennas can be less directional and use larger amplifiers than their analog counterparts simply because the transmission is, well, digital. So long as they can deliver a sufficient signal strenght and adequate SNR, reception will work. Analog antennas are often tuned to deliver a better SNR at the expense of signal strength which is only really a good thing with analog mediums where any noise at all becomes a visual artifact.
So should you invest in a (new) antenna optimized for DTV? Quite probably, but do your homework first. There are some really good designs you can build for a couple of bucks (gray-hoverman) that will outperform most anything off the shelf (particularly with an amplifier). Even if you current analog antenna gets all the digital stations you want, consider that it might not perform well in a storm or other emergency when you decide you want to rely on it.
LOL! Monster, the AIG of cabling Companies!!
I agree with bhenrymx. Looks like they are just saying that HDMI is better than composite or non-HDMI. It's not a scam. People buy Monster for whatever reason they have. Move on, nothing to see here.
Anyone looking for a great DTV antenna try TERRESTRIAL DIGITAL Multi-Directional HDTV Antennas. I have mine indoors and it feeds 3 tuners with all green signals.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882790014
They are comparing the two types of cables. HDMI vs Composite. Most people think they don't need new cables for their HD sets because they think they can use the freebies that came with the TV. It is a perfectly legitimate display and it was even labeled as such. It is something they should be doing and I applaud them for it. Even better if the salesmen actually know how to use the display properly when they sell their TVs and cables. Should it have Monster HDMI cables? No because they are a scam, but at least Frys does carry non branded HDMI cables for $10-20 unlike Best Buy whose cables start at $40. Frys doesn't put them in with the premium cables so you need to know to ask for the non-branded cables. Anytime I see a sucker in Frys buying the expensive cables I send him/her over to the other section with an explanation of digital cables. 50% of the time they buy the non-branded. The other 50% of them are stubborn.
Was just in Fry's the other day. I spent quite a while poking around at the gadgets and discovered that the long, cheap HDMI cables aren't in the A/V section, but in the section for computer monitor cables. The guys in the A / V section, when asked where the cheap HDMI cables were, pointed me to monster cables that were 5x the price.
@ John Laur
Thank you! Truly insightful comments are so rare on this site (and I take my share of the blame for that). I am that much more of an informed consumer thanks to people like you.
So when someone is taking these pictures in the store, do they ever say anything to anyone and ask what the deal is? Or do they just rush home to put the pics on the internets?
I can understand snapping a pic or two and THEN approaching someone about it... but I'd just like to hear the store's side of things. It just seems no one ever asks.
im sure theyll get notified via summons soon enough ;)
WTF could be explanation when doing a side-by-side comparison? Is Monster trying to tell us that HDMI is better than composite or implying that Monster is better than 'ordinary' HDMI cables.
I think it's pretty obvious the target consumer is someone who will assume they are both connected via HDMI. The average consumer likely doesn't even know what composite cables are, so of course it's purposely setup to push Monster cables. Seriously, I hope Monster gets sued to crap and goes out of business, because they are one of the more obscene examples of taking advantage of the general public's lack of technical knowledge, which in turns causes an overall lack of faith in technology by those without the facts. Nobody wants to feel duped, and I fail to see any legal loopholes here other than it only says "See the MONSTER difference" ie it doesn't necessarily say it's two HDMI, simply two companies' cables. This needs further investigation including a statement from an employee who says they are tests between two HDMI cables, to show misrepresentation definitively.
i work at frys in washington, im gonna take a look at this.
Best Buy HT guy here, and I need to make a couple of things clear. Monster is ridiculously higher priced, but given the price points that new tvs and products are being priced at, and indeed the competition out there, where exactly is the store going to make money? It's a business plain and simple and no one is there to give you the consumer the cheapest price possible. We'd be out of work in weeks because the store can't keep it's people paid. The number of times I would sell a tv only to have the customer insist on 'the best price i can give them' without buying anything else is staggering. I'm already giving the tv at about $100 above cost which would barely pay for the electricity for the store in a day let alone my salary and you are begrudging a big box store for trying to make some money back from losing propositions? Besides, customers seem to like the idea of a cable with a life time warranty. You bust it, break it, cut it or what have you and Monster will replace it for free as long as you want to own that cable. All cables are over priced when you get right down to it. Technically videogames and dvds are over priced. It costs 10 cents to press the disc and burn it. So why would you pay top dollar for a game that 'costs' ten cents to make? I' m not saying that Monster is a good deal or even that Monster is worth it in general, but there are a lot of factors behind price points that many of you people skip right over and start bitching about price plain and simple.
@ironhide
Just because your store sells TVs slightly above cost doesn't give it the right to deceptively market severly overpriced cables.
What's really comical it how easily one can point out an employee who's been brainwashed by store training material. You're just trained to tell customers that they like warrantied cables. Let's see. $10 for a cable or $100 for similar with a warranty. yep, that's right. A $90 WARRANTY on a $10 cable. Brilliant.
Your comparison to DVDs and games shows your ignorance. There's a huge investment (triple-digit millions for some movies) in creating the CONTENT for a DVD or game. Replication cost is minimal. Cables have no such pricy overhead while still having a very low cost of creation.
Ironhide your level of idiocy and arrogance is exactly why BB HT is regarded as a joke. Shouldn't you be outside on the back of a cart somewhere trying to sell the power of snake oil to cover the cost of hay for your horse?
"Wahh I'm not making any money, so I'm justified into tricking the consumer into buying something they don't need."
Why buy video games that are overpriced? Maybe because they don't sell Gears of War 2 made by Monoprice which is exactly the same.
Ironhide, if you are suggesting the BB floor prices are $100 over the cost that Best Buy paid for them, then Best Buy must have the worst wholesale reps on the goddamn planet when almost every online store and Walmart can offer the same stuff for 40% less. And, of course people are going to insist for the best price you can give them and walk out without buying anything else - no one wants to pay more than they have to and the other stuff is hideously overpriced. A "cheap" 6' HDMI cable is $50 and yet I can get 5x10' cables for that price.
Then again, I am prepared to accept that best buy overpays for stuff - I remember going in to see if they had any HDMI splitters and being told that they didn't sell them because of the high cost; I was showed the one they used to power two LCD sets and told it cost $300; I purchased a splitter online later that day for $50, and ended up getting two for my trouble when the shipping got screwed up.
@ Ironhide
So granted that you didn't know ANYTHING about tvs and you went into a store like Best Buys or fry's to buy one and someone sold you on a HDMI cable that cost $65-100 and you go home to find out that your tv comes with one! How would you feel? In hope to keep business running, you are relying on the ignorance of the shopper and shifty ways to keep the store aloof. I can't say anything bad about you because you are just the sales rep, but that's some shit. And if people really knew about this, Best Buy will surely be going the route of Circuit City. I would hate to see that many people lose their jobs tho.
@ Ironhide
it might take 10 cents to burn a game to a disc, but it sure wasn't free to develop, test, package, and advertise the game now was it?
Iron, really, I want to feel bad for Best Buy, I do...
How about this, take a page out of the restraunt manual and set up a tip jar. I'd rather pay for service level, not scam level...
@All the morons attacking the Best Buy employee.
Spoiled consumers like you who want everything just a tad above cost, and $1 cables because they "aren't worth any more than that" will ensure brick and mortar stores remain hilariously unprofitable. You want to see that TV in person before you buy it? Want to compare the Sammy 9 series vs the Kuro? Well, too bad, Best Buy couldn't afford to stay in business because everyone walks into their store, compares the TV's they want side by side, and then orders them on Amazon instead.
Whine all you want about overpriced this or shoddy marketing that, Best Buy is a business out to make a goddamn profit, if you even know what the hell that means, and everyone here wants to shame them for trying to do so the best they can?
Consumers like you are the reason things such as display technology is so slow to advance these days. Where will Samsung get the money needed for R&D? How about the money retooling manufacturing facilities for new technologies like OLED? They certainly won't get it from spoiled consumers like you who demand extremely cheap, extremely large panels a few dollars above what they cost to produce, shipped to them free, with a full set of cables in the box and a warranty and exchange policy that'll let you send it as many times as you want until you get "perfect" one.
Businesses need to make profit so they can bring new products to you. Keep demanding the absolute best for next to nothing, and you won't ever see OLED, SED, FED, or even affordable IPS and VA panels in your desktop LCDs for a long, long time.
And still, BB and CC(now dead) wonder why everyone is buying stuff online instead of at the big box store.
@ Ironhide:
Trying to justify selling ridiculously overpriced accessories by talking about the cutthroat policies of your own company on big ticket items is laughable. As an employee of a SMALL competitor to Best Buy, I thank you - it is precisely those deceptive practices that drive business to our doors, where the customer does NOT feel like they've been ripped off, and we don't ever want them to feel that way. Then there's the matter of those 'razor thin margins' - for those that are interested, I KNOW BB pays less than we do (economics of scale and all that), yet we can often match their prices and still make a decent profit. And yet, we don't have to, nor do we WANT TO sell $10 cables for $100 to people who explicitly trust us NOT to steer them wrong in order to make ends meet.
Guess that makes me a bad salesman, but damn if we don't get a lot of customers coming back to us again and again, and sending their friends our way, too.
Apparently some over-educated suit decided that repeat business is overrated, word-of-mouth advertising is useless, and if the customer doesn't know the difference, honesty is disposable.
Without seeing the ad, its tough to say if they are even trying to deceive anyone. Do they mean the difference between monster hdmi and component cables? Or do they mean the difference between monster hdmi and regular hdmi. Need the full ad to really make a judgement. They may just be trying to get people to update their cabling to match their TV and not necessarily trying to say one HDMI cable is better than another.
Are you F'n kidding me, of course Monster is trying to put across that their HDMI cable is the best damn cable ever made, better than any other HDMI cable. If god sent an HDMI cable down, they would still insist that there's is better to their dying breath.
the tv on the left is connected via Composite, not component.
Dude, how are the benefits at Monster, Inc? Do other employees really know the difference between component and composite?
@Justin - a fool and his money are soon parted.....
I agree with Justin Paulson. There is too much missing information from this story to indicate whether the store was trying to decieve the customers or simply demonstrating that Monster cables are better than the old type of connection (S-Video or composite).
In case no one here didn't know, a recent research revealed that over 50% of all HD TV owners in the US doesn't even have HD cable and the same goes for the connection cables. Quite surprising right? don't take my word.. read it here:
http://news.digitaltrends.com/news-article/9024/survey-finds-half-hdtv-owners-kinda-fuzzy
As for the quality of the cables, there are a couple of points to keep in mind before judging Monster for their quality:
1. If you own a lower end TV, let's sayup to $1000, and your TV is less than 5ft from the source, you probably don't need to spend on high-end cable because you will not see the difference. Also, if your only source for content is your cable service, you are probably not getting real 1080P HD signal (even though you think it is) simply because cable providers are compressing their signals to acommodate the limited bandwidth of the cable.
2. When it comes to higher end TV's, and other sources such as Blu-ray, you would want to utilize the maximum quality your TV offers and for this, you would want to purchase a certified HDMI cable that guarantees the maximum speed and quality. The problem with cheaper cables is that they may or may not work properly. There is more to HDMI than meet the eye. For example, HDCP which is used to handle the DRM, is limited by distance. If you purchase a cheap cable, this distance bay get shortened significantly.
Monster makes excellent cables that are all delivering what is promised on the package. Whether it's worth the price or not,I think this is a personal preference depended on your needs and budget. However, I don't think it's right to call Monster names or suggest that their cables are nothing but nice packaging. As a professional installer of HT systems, I've seen numerous HDMI cables that comes in nice packaging but failed to deliver. We never experienced any issues with Monster and I feel this peace of mind, worth the extra $$$.
As a professional installer of HT systems, you lose all credibility because 99% of the things you do will be in an effort to pad your pockets with more money
@info
Justin is right with saying that there's too much information missing, but you added a lot of falsehoods as a qualifier to what Justin said. Let me break it down for you:
1) HDCP is a digital DRM standard. Because it's just a bunch of zeroes and ones (as is the rest of the data passing via HDMI), it's just as distance limited as the rest of HDMI.
2) HDMI cables only really start to see a degraded signal at 50 *meters*. After 50 meters, that's when the extras in a monster cable tend to actually matter.
3) You got the thing about being certified for various speeds correct, but you can get that with any cheap cables "certified" for those speeds as well.
I can understand why you'd twist the facts; you're an HT installer. You need the revenue during an economic slump, so it makes sense to try to promote Monster cables. As an IT guru on a salary, on the other hand, I'm inclined to agree:
Save as much money as you can on the cable but make sure to get the cable that's right for what you're trying to do.
"I'm inclined to agree" --oi, I meant I'm inclined to *disagree.* My mind is cramped right now.
@info
Die.
Thanks.
Bryant,
In my post, I did not mention what is the limit of distance for HDCP, but rather indicated that a lower quality cable may affect that.
When a vendor tells you that the cable is certified, ask to see a copy of the certification. You will be surprised of the answers you get.
I find it amusing that you and cesium are so locked on the notion that we make huge profits on cables. So, just FYI, we don't markup our cables at all, because we don't want the cable price to be a factor to discourage our customers from getting better cables.
Again, as I mentioned before, if you own a lower end TV, you probably don't need a higher quality cable, simply because your TV would not be able to show you the difference.
I hope this clarifies your confusion.
P.S: I have over 15 years of experience of IT at large enterprises.
@info
I call BS...Cables are the most ridiculously marked up accessories in HT set-ups. I used to work at Best Buy (about 5 or 6 years ago, now I work Software Support). Cables had HUGE markups on em. I remember picking up a set of component cables for like 6 bucks (on sale for the low low price of 39.99). Those wonderful USB cables that cost 29.99? They cost maybe 2.99. Monster Cables a 99.99 set cost the store probably closer to 29.99 to 39.99.
Monster Cables do indeed provide a substantially higher quality cable, with better materials and better shielding...but in most cases it's utterly overkill for what you might need. Unless you're trying to run the cable through an area with extreme amounts of interference, a lot of wires and the possbility of "crosstalk" yea you might need Monster Cables. For any reasonably high-end setup, a "good" set of cables for like 10 or 15 bucks works fine.
@info:
"Again, as I mentioned before, if you own a lower end TV, you probably don't need a higher quality cable, simply because your TV would not be able to show you the difference."
Really.... what "difference" would that be? You either see the picture or you don't. In the digital world of noise correction, signal error does not equal visual/aural artifacts.
@info
So, are you saying that you don't mark up monster cables above MSRP or you don't mark them up much from cost, because they generally have at least a 100-200% markup on them.
If you sell them at MSRP, you DO make more money off of monster cables than others.
@info
Cables don't have a high markup? My wife works at BBY and the markups are ridiculous on cables. I just purchased a $150 25ft HDMI cable for $11. This is especially true on their private brands (dynex, rocketfish, insignia).
I'm fairly certain that HDMI does not degrade over long distances. It will either display or it won't.
Considering that "info" signed up just today and has only posted comments on this article, I'm willing to bet that he works for Monster and is trying to perform a little viral damage control. Ha!
@George:
Any electronic signal will degrade with distance. However for HDMI, it's generally a distance much longer than anything a consumer will run into.
@sax25
I know you really like that saying "a fool and his money are soon parted....." but that's a bit outdated since it's been shown that there's an awful lot of fools with all the freaking money, and they don't seem to be parting with it very easily.
Such a horrible company. With any luck the economy might put these idots out of business. At least we can all hope.
Youn need to stop wishing companies would go out of business. If they do, it would hurt the economy even more. It's wrong.
But at the same time, it's some of these companies that got us in here in the first place. Best we get rid of them while the economy still sucks so the greedy pigs don't come back and ruin it again.