The Great HDMI Cable Swindle

IS ANYONE ELSE annoyed - no, really annoyed - at the con that is the price of HDMI cables? It's one of those things that seems purposely designed to get right under your skin and niggles, like some alien parasite burrowing deeper and deeper until, one day, you find yourself throttling some hapless shop assistant in Maplin Electronics, with absolutely no recollection of how you got there. Especially in your pyjamas. And, as you're manhandled roughly from the store shouting, "It's a con! It's a con!" you realise that maybe if you'd shopped around a little better online you wouldn't have gotten so worked up.

Let's get a few things out in the open, first. The price of HDMI cables is generally outrageous and has been designed by cabling and TV companies to fleece unsuspecting consumers. These consumers aren't stupid, they're just not all that aware and who believe that because high-definition is so ‘new and neat', that £25 to £50 to £100+ on a single cable makes a bizarre kind of sense. That's not all that unreasonable an assumption. And, I might point out, these average consumers outweigh us tech-heads by about 10,000-to-1. They are not so much shopping idiots as unwitting victims of some truly, under-handed and cynical price gouging on behalf of TV, cabling, accessory and gaming console companies.

If you think that's a little harsh, then why aren't TVs - HDTVs - bundled with HDMI cables? Some are, but most are not. Inside the box, you are more likely to get some S-video or composite cable rubbish. And remember, this is a TV you just empted your piggy bank for because those skinny TVs don't come cheap. Cheaper, yes, but certainly not cheap. The idea of selling a HD-capable TV without the necessary cables to receive HD signals is more than an oversight - it's a swindle. Like selling a bike marketed as the fastest in the world but asking people to pay extra for the chain. It's not just TV companies either.

Take Sony, for instance. The company creates a high-def gaming console with in-built Blu-ray player and then ships it at the astronomical price of £425 - five months late - with no HDMI cable. It brags and brags about how great high-def will be but failed to highlight to many consumers that when they got it home that the cable necessary to enjoy said video brilliance, was not in the box. No, they wanted £20-25 extra for that. Anyone with a PS2 or Xbox 360 will be well used to being shafted for ‘official' extras, like cables and memory cards. However, omitting the HDMI cable caught a fair number of people off-guard. Retailers had field day selling the PS3 console to overjoyed customers and then, at the checkout, asking them did they want a HDMI cable to go with that? Expressions of confusion were rife and many had to be told that the necessary cable for the high-def orgy was extra. Some of the more cynical retailers pushed really expensive HDMI cables, from brands like Monster and QED, at the check-out, knowing that the customer desire would override common sense.

The other problem with HDMI cable pricing is that it is largely unwarranted on a technical basis. The difference between cheap HDMI cables and expensive ones is negligible. There are undoubted differences between cheap and expensive analog cables. For instance, a decent set of component cables versus a bargain basement set results in a noticeably better and cleaner picture. But that's analog signals for you, which are far more susceptible to interference or ‘noise' than digital signals. Digital signals are made up of binary data which is not susceptible to the same kind of problems - unless the cable is damaged.

The simple fact is that few people could tell the difference between a £10 and £100 HDMI cable, except in their wallet. Not because they are blind as a dormouse but because the difference is harder to see. Near impossible, some would claim. Sure, better cable connectors are always good [silver/gold] and a better quality cable might help over longer distances [3-metres +] but for most folk, there's simply no reason to break the bank for a cable that should have come free in the first place.

If you're planning to buy some HDMI cables then shop around online because you'll surprised to know that there's at least one aspect of the high definition experience that shouldn't cost the earth. µ