Customer Reviews

Monster MC 1000HD-2M Ultra-High Speed HDTV HDMI Cable (2 meters)

5 star:		(66)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(119)

 

 

Very recently, I purchased a television at Best Buy. They don't sell the $5 and $10 HDMI cables you find at Fry's or on Amazon, so I went ahead and bought this cable.

I thought I wouldn't mind, after all I spent thousands on the TV, but it kept nagging me. So I bought a $2 HDMI cable from Amazon (search for HDMI and you'll see a few brands). My TV has twin HDMI inputs, so I hooked up this cable and the Monster cable, put on Casino Royale, and flipped between the cables to see what the difference was.

There was absolutely no difference. None at all. I figured the picture would be slightly sharper or the colors cleaner, but you could put a gun to my head and I wouldn't be able to tell you which was which.

And I googled HDMI and learned that if your video and audio signals work at all, then the signal is being carried correctly. There is no middle ground with HDMI. Better cables do not incrementally improve picture quality! Why? Because the HDMI is digital, and it's very difficult to distort a 1 into a 0. In fact, it's technically impossible without total signal distortion or failure. Failure in signal is caused by processors or cables that are too long. Or more likely, misconfigured systems. With digital signals, the cables have a much easier job. Imagine if you had to read a book from 100 yards away? That's analog. Imagine reading morse code from a flashlight at 100yards away (and you know morse cose)? That's digital.

So by buying this cable, you are insuring yourself that if your cable length is at the extreme, or if your house gets hit by an EMP, that this monster cable will shield that digital signal quite a bit better than the cheap cable. Why not pay $2 and see if that kind of insurance is necessary? After all, if the $2 cable works, it's not going to get better.

It's repulsive that Best Buy only sells extremely expensive cables. I'm glad Amazon gives me the choice. Don't be naive! Give the cheap cable a try! One word of caution: if you require HDMI 1.3a, get a compatible cable. For $15 bucks, you're still saving a lot of money. You can check your manuals to see if your audio quality is so high that you need the 1.3a cables. Either way, there's no reason to get this horribly overpriced cable.

The money you save can go into systems that transcode digital signals better. That's where the real improvement in picture and audio is to be found!

If it was an analog device, cable helps the quality of picture/sound you get. Not so much on digital world, like your brand new LCD/Plasma TV! Here's a quick comparison that hopefully will help put things in perspective between analog and digital signals.

Let's use radio. You get analog signal when you listen to radio in your 1995 model car. You get digital signal when you listen to radio steam on internet. Now, when the signal is bad, what happen?

In your car, you will hear cracking noises, interference, sound gets softer, etc. It is safe to say that you get lesser audio quality, don't you agree?

On internet, the audio pauses, buffering, or skipping here and there. Notice one important difference between your car's radio and internet radio? You won't hear those cracking noises, softer sound, or any lesser quality audio!! This is the nature of digital signal - 1 and 0, "all or nothing." If you get an audio from digital signal, the audio quality will not be any lesser than the source!

*Signal* degradation does exist in digital world. For example, let's talk HD TV. If signal degrades and cause bit sequence (1&0 sequence) to be unreadable by the TV, the pixel will just flicker on or off. Most of the time you won't even notice it. But if the cable is bad enough, you won't see TV pixels flicker - most TV will not handshake (connect) with the device if inteference is that high... which means you will get nothing. Hence the term "all or nothing."

Signal degradation comes to play if you have *HIIIGGHHH* interference (i.e. living right next to Nuclear Plant) or if your cable length is long (~30 feet). Anything less than 30 feet, if the cable works, you'll see the same exact audio/video quality with 10 bucks cable as 200 bucks Monster cable. More than 30 feet, if your cable doesn't work, get another brand who makes better quality cable for good price (translate: still not Monster).


And don't buy into Monster's "bandwidth" bandwagon advertisement. A 1.3 standard HDMI cable is capable of handling 10.2 Gbps. You have 120Hz LCD TV? Guess what, 1.3 standard cables have enough bandwidth to handle that already! After going through 10 minutes of watching Monster's video on their website, I can conclude one thing: Monster tells you a lot of facts, that much I admit... but they use *selected* facts to make you buy their products. They do not tell you the whole story. They do not tell you what you REALLY NEED TO KNOW, like 1.3 standard, what type of "other cables" they were using to do the Eye Pattern test. For all I know, the other cables they used to test could as well be a 1.0 standard cable that supports up to only 4.9 Gbps.

One last thing I want to mention. Monster always claim that they're building their cables ahead for the future, so that you will not have to change your HDMI cable when new technology with higher bandwidth requirement comes out. But let's be realistic here, you have 2 choices:

a. Buy a Monster cable for 200 bucks so you can use it for 3 years.

or

b. Buy a working-perfectly cable [...]. Year and a half later, you spend another 10 bucks on new standard (1.4?) HDMI cable for the new device.

200 bucks versus 20 bucks in 3 years? Pick your choice. I picked mine.

It is just like what other true experts said; you can get longer, same-quality cable for 90% cheaper.

Hope this helps.

I went to MIT where I took classes in electrical engineering, so I'm writing from a knowledgeable background here.

An expensive HDMI cable - or an expensive cable for any digital signal, when a working inexpensive version is available - is a waste of money. This is one of the great things about digital - it either works or does not work. This is not like analog audio/video cables, where the quality of the cable influences the output. An HDMI cable can only do one of two things: work or fail.

Since Amazon sells a number of cables that will work and are far less expensive, save your money and spend it on discs or games for whatever you're hooking up.

How is this company still in business? These cables are overpriced by 20000%! With digital signals, it's all or nothing. You cannot get lower quality video/audio if the cable isn't good enough like you do with analog signals. With digital signals, if the quality isn't good you just won't get a signal. Do not buy this product. Any $10 certified cable will work.

Following my review here is the HDMI spec currently which supports the full color depth..notice the bandwidth. Therefore... any cable that you buy that says HDMI 1.3 Category 2 can do *gasp* 10.2 Gbit/s (340MHz) bandwidth. Amazon here has plenty for less than 1 tenth of this and a quick search at my favorite place to buy cables would let me buy $30 for the price of one of these.

Also, money does not equal quality when it comes to cables. I got some high quality Monster cables in a set a number of years ago (big time clearance and it was all the store carried and I wanted it that day). The first time I went to move three of the RCA ends on 2 different style cable stayed inside my amp when I pulled them straight back. I have used probably 100 different RCA, digital coax, and component video cables and Monster brand are the only ones I've ever had break.

So again, if you like paying $100 for something the company makes for $5, I'd rather you just send me the $95 if you really don't need it that bad. I have 6 HDMI cables hooked up right now... so at a savings of $95 per cable that is $570...which payed for my PS3 and an extra game. When it comes to digital... it just plain does not matter.



HDMI 1.3

Released June 22, 2006.[12][13][76]

* Increases single-link bandwidth to 340 MHz (10.2 Gbit/s)
* Optionally supports Deep Color with 30-bit, 36-bit, and 48-bit xvYCC, sRGB, or YCbCr compared to 24-bit sRGB or YCbCr in previous HDMI versions.
* Incorporates automatic audio syncing (Audio video sync) capability.
* Optionally supports output of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio streams for external decoding by AV receivers.[77] TrueHD and DTS-HD are lossless audio codec formats used on Blu-ray Discs and HD DVDs. If the disc player can decode these streams into uncompressed audio, then HDMI 1.3 is not necessary, as all versions of HDMI can transport uncompressed audio.
* Cable Categories 1 and 2 defined. Category 1 cable is tested up to 74.25 MHz while Category 2 cable is tested up to 340 MHz.
* Availability of a new Type C mini-connector for portable devices.[39][78]

Some salesperson insisted that I bought one of these "for the quality". "It's worth every penny" he said. "Try it and you will see" he said. So, I did, after making sure that the store was going to allow me to return it for a cash refund, no questions asked.

I took this super-expensive wire home, I replaced the existing free HDMI wire that came with the satellite receiver and was connecting it to the TV with the Monster and... I saw no difference. Then, I unplugged the five-dollar HDMI wire that connected my Blu-ray player to the TV and plugged the Monster in its place and... I saw no difference. I returned this item to the store and decided to keep using my super-cheap or free HDMI cables because there is absolutely no difference between a five-dollar wire or a cheap-looking free wire that comes with some device that you buy and this expensive cable.

HDMI is all-digital for both sound and picture. As such, it either works or it doesn't. There's really nothing in-between. If a claim is made that thd Monster is 'more reliable' or that it 'lasts longer', I can't see how such claim can be backed - does the fifty-dollar cable last 10 times longer than than the five-dollar cable? I've been using inexpensive HDMI cables for 1-2 years already and none of them has failed me yet. As for 'the looks', they are not important? I plug my cables in the back of things and, hopefully, I don't need to see them very often.

By the way, I don't challenge the claim of high quality for this cable. It looks well built. However, it is quality not needed and, in my view, not worth paying for. The way most of us use cables is: we plug them at the back of our electronic boxes and, if they work on day one they are likely to work in the exact same fashion on day 1000 because they are not going to be subjected to any physical or thermal stress and the materials used to build them are not degradable. While 'quality' was important for analog cables cable where a good quality cable make all the difference in the world, the digital wires either transmit the digits or they don't. If they do, they all work the same, the $1 HDMI cable gives you the exact same 'performance' the $100, gold-plated cable does.

The claims made that these expensive wires allow more Gigabytes of data to pass through may be true but they are irrelevant. The HDMI is a published standard and there is a minimum data throughput that must be supported. If it is, then the device is HDMI compliant. If some cable exceeds the specified throughput, it's nice but it's irrelevant because no electronic component that's HDMI compliant would attempt to push more bytes through the wire than the standard specifies because if they did, they'd violate the specs and would not sell very well. If your electronic component had an HDMI port that called for an HDMI cable that exceeded the HDMI published standards, then it would no longer be called an HDMI port but a proprietary, non-standard solution.

Monster's HDMI cables (as well as most Monster products) do exactly what they should do, and they do it exceptionally well. However, there is a caveat to the Monster HDMI cable: You pay ten times as much for their cable as you should be.

The problem is, this one-hundred thirty dollar cable will not do anything better than a ten dollar cable will. To put it another way, a cable one-tenth of the price of Monster's cable will perform exactly as well as the Monster cable. And yes, there are HDMI cables that can be had for one-tenth the price of this Monster cable. See monoprice dot com, and save your money.

Also, do not believe the store reps and companies who try to sell you these outrageously priced cables: they will not improve your listening or viewing experience one bit. Also, there are a lot of good reviews for this Monster cable. As well there should be, because the cable does perform well. But if an informed customer wrote a review about this Monster cable its cost, and wrote a review with the knowledge that the Monster cable performs only as well as a cable that it costs 10x more than, you would get a 1 star review for the Monster. Which is what you get here.

I don't like seeing people get ripped off by what I see as an attempt to take advantage of unaware customers. So I posted this review, and I hope you will not by these grossly overpriced Monster cables, unless of course you need to own something with the name "Monster" on it to impress people who think that Monster is better than other cables simply because they rip you off with their pricing!

Just go to monoprice and get a good quality hdmi cable for a fraction of the price. Monster had a slight edge back in the analog days...now in the digital day all they have is a lot of peeps money...

Let me clarify some thing when people say that they see a *difference* between this cable and a cheap one. Yes, absolutely, this one will have a better picture quality in high end sets over an old cheap cable. BUT!!!! That is because they not aware of different HDMI cable versions. Version 1.0 cable only supported bandwidth of 4.9 Gbit/s (or 1080p at 60hz) so if you have a newer set that runs at 120hz than this cable will not deliver signal to utilize the full potential of the TV set. BUT!!! (again) it does not justify buying this cable for $120... all you have to do is make sure that you are buying a version 1.3 (or above) certified cable. Version 1.3, 1.3a, 1.3b and 1.3b1 cables have a bandwidth of 10.2 Gbit/s or grater so it will handle 1080p at 120hz with no problem. You can purchase a 1.3a cable for about $5 from here or other sites, and you will get exact the same bandwidth as this expensive cable. Plus, PLEASE remember ... this is a digital cable, there is absolutely no difference in picture quality between a cheap 1.3a cable and an expensive 1.3a cable like this `MONSTER'. It either works or it doesn't, there is no middle ground!

Ok, so as technology improves and we see consumers moving to HD TV, HD media, HD appliances, naturally this is going to be the standard as retailers significantly phase out the obsolete CRTV that almost seem from a different planet which is truly amazing. As plasma and LCD tv's have gone down substantially in price over the past two years they can be still expensive depending upon the brand and features you want. At any rate, since everyone is jumping on the band wagon and the sudden craze and inundation of HDTV flood the market there are going to be other ball players hungry for your money, Monster co. is definitely one of them. I am not going to give a impartial review considering I own two different Monster cables (HDMI to HDMI, HDMI to DVI) and two other no-name brands, (HDMI to HDMI, HDMI to DVI). Unfortunately, I still have the two monster cables because there purchase date is beyond the retail return date.

Upon entering the HD World, I had no idea what i was getting into, I purchased both of my HDTV's at local retailers, and of course each of the sale associates advised me that the Monster cables was crucial, and no other cable was comparable. OK, I take your word for it considering your not working on commission. I buy an HDMI Cable form Monster at a local bestbuy. I reconfirm it's quality with it's exorbitant price($90) with other employees and I got the same answer naturally, (Probably not the smartest maneuver) at any rate, the price turned my stomach a tad, considering they had no other alternatives or other name brands, (Just monster and rocketfish) both similar in price range. I have to admit the cable looks fine and worked fine with my LCD Samsung 32". It looked like a durable cable and functioned like a durable cable with it's soothing color scheme, 24K gold plates, and a very sexy "M" logo on the end. (you get the point). However, your not buying the cable for it's looks more like for quality which I am all about. Although the cables worked fine, I was still curious about the hefty price and I came across respected electrical engineering sites along with some
friends about HDMI Cables (to my chagrin I should of done the research before I bought the cables) and they told me I basically got duped big time, and I mean BIG TIME. Sure Monster cable will entice you with it's fancy physical looks and special braided wires, along with a 24K gold piece, faster signal than 2.2 gps and no external interference..blah blah The truth is people it literally boils to down a simple digital signal, there is no middle ground here. Either your tv is getting the signal or not, end of story which I have found myself hard to believe considering there are HDMI cables as cheap as $2-10! But business is business right, someone has to make money right? But you know what, every retailer you go to whether it be bestbuy, circuit city, or radioshack you can be sure there will a flood of monster cables along with incompetent sales associates enticing ignorant consumers like myself trusting there opinion. Trust me you will not find $2 HDMI Cables in retailer stores, well at least not at the big chain retailers. Now being how rare it is find to cheap HDMI cables in retailer stores, I purchased two online from amazon, no-name brands (Cables to-go) in the range of $10-12. I think the HDMI to DVI was alittle more expensive at 13.99 in comparison with Monster's ($90) I didn't want to go too cheap, because i truly thought these cheap prices reinforced the old adage, "To good to be true," well when I got the cables I immediately did a trial and error, to my surprise there was absolutely no difference in picture or sound. Someone could literally put a gun to my head, and i wouldn't be able to tell which one is which. These cables truly defied that old-adage and put me in shock. That $70 premium that your paying is really for the "M' logo, this concept hasn't changed and is manifested through a myriad of other categories, clothes, cars, electronics ect. Once you surpass a certain standard of quality, the rest is profit margins for the brand, but seriously, I have to laugh when you look at the Monster cables boxes and websites, that are really adamant on correcting "THE BIG MISCONCEPTION" that HDMI Cables are in fact different in terms of speed, connection, thats a load of garbage, As long as your Tv functions and that signal is somehow making it to your tv or console your good to go. Psychologically speaking, consumers who drop as much as 4,000 to 5,000 on Plasma or LCD tv's may think, well, i spent this much money, what's an extra $200 on some nice HDMI cables right? This is where retailers capitalize, and usually succeed, well at least with me they did, which I was throughly angry at, but hey you learn from your mistakes right? Trust me, these cheap cables deliver in pristine quality whether you have 32" or 50" 1080 bp, they do justice. Just don't make the same mistake I did which is not doing research....