Buy off-brand for cables. Monster, et al, are overrated.
597929
As many of the reviewers here have noted, it is overkill to spend $25+ on other companies (e.g., monster&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Monster-ULT-I1000FO-4-Ultra-1000-Toslink-Fiber-Optic-Audio-Cable-4-feet/dp/B00006RVNQ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Monster ULT I1000FO-4 Ultra 1000 Toslink Fiber Optic Audio Cable (4 feet)</a>&nbsp;when you can get an off-brand name product which is just as good and functions just as well as the other brand names.

These are currently being used with my Playstation 3 and my 55" LCD (LED backlit) Toshiba that I got for a song on Amazon, as well as my Sony receiver. It works fantastic and the quality cannot be distinguished between the Monster and the off-brand product.

Right now these are $2.25 on Amazon - compared to a minimum of $26 on Monster and other brand-name products. These have gold covered caps and come with a jacket to protect the caps when not in usage.

They come in a variety of sizes - I purchased 6 feet but you can easily get 10 feet, 15 foot, 25 foot, and more. Having the variety is great for options - depending on where you've placed your TV you may need a longer size. Buy your system, figure out location, then measure the wiring and purchase your optic cable and you're good to go!
710465
I'll be short and to-the-point. In case you aren't sure, an instrument cable DOES matter. If you're looking for a reliable and sturdy cable for your bass guitar - whether for home use or on the road - then Monster Bass is the one. My last cable was a Monster cable (standard, not bass), and it lasted for five years of frequent use.

Pros:
- Looks and FEELS like a high-quality cable... thick and sturdy
- Great length at 21 ft. (If you don't need 21 feet, then go with the 12-foot one. But I like to move around when I play and stretch my bass across the room.)
- Sleek look
- This might sound ancillary, but the packaging is great! You don't have to take a saw to the package. There are tiny clips around the package to open it easily and get your cable out in a hurry!
- Angled, so the cable stays a bit more out of the way while playing, and because it's angled it's not always bending, thus leading to a longer-lasting cable.

Con:
- A bit pricier than your average cable, but then again this cable is sturdy. And you get what you pay for, right?

If you're in the market for a solid, functional, long-lasting, and nice-looking bass guitar cable for home use or performances that will give your bass the best possible tone quality, then go with Monster Bass. You'll be happy you spent the few extra dollars!

EDIT: 12/13/11

I went to play my bass today, but my cable did not work. I tried another cable, and that one worked fine, so I know it's the cable and not my amp or bass. I've had it for only five months, and I use it only for playing at home - not gigs - so there's no reason anything should have happened to it. It could be a freak incident for this cable, but for $40 that it no longer works is inexcusable. Thus I rescind my 5-star vote and give this cable 2 stars.
4549467
There's a lot of Amazon.com hype about this cable. I understand. It's cheap. You're not EVH. You don't need Mogami speaker cables. And this is the biggest gauge, and the shortest run, that you can use, from a pretty reputable old company. I bought it to reduce all possibility that that arch enemy of musical awesome more-louder-better -- RESISTANCE -- would get in the way of my phunk rawkin' head bobbin' good times.

But here's some truth. Within a couple weeks of use, the pin BENT and became loose and wobbly. I mean, a couple weeks of use in my home. I gently bumped it against the wall a few times when moving my amp and cab. OH no! Maybe dropped it on the fluffy soft carpeted floor. These quarter-inchers are junk. No neutrik jacks here. An old CBI cable of mine did have neutrik jacks. I guess they're cheaping out now. Great!

So, I got out the soldering iron. I loaded up a ring of solder around the pin on both ends. Now it's held in place properly. But while I had the sucker apart, I noticed that the soldering job was complete and total weaksauce. The wires were barely attached to the jack! So I beefed that up substantially. I mean, lots of solder went into making solid joints here. It was a pathetic sight.

Not to mention that the flimsy screw-on wire shield/jack body does NOTHING to reduce stress on the solder joints. It's loose. It flops around. And if you pull on the wire at all, expect broken solder joints. So, I jury-rigged a solution with a tight wrapping of gorilla tape from wire to jack.

Now my cable looks totally janky. It's sticky. It has solder all over it. But at least now I know it won't let me down, at least, for a while. Think about it. If this cable goes, your amp's output transformer goes, maybe more. Get something better. With neutrik jacks.
3987744
I mean... obviously over priced... but I don't care, because they are CLEAR about what you're buying and that's IMPOSSIBLE to find these days! The most ludicrously over engineered simple HDMI cable out there. Nonsense added to no real benefit, but good CHRIST does it look sexy hanging out of my TV.
1906369
I have the Mediabridge 3.5 to RCA cable that I'm using from my iPT to my surround amp and it sounds great. I went to purchase another Mediabridge to hook up to my "good" amp that I reserve mostly for playing vinyl and is going into a pair of Klipsch KG4 speakers with a horn treble driver, but Amazon was out of the 6' length available through Prime, so I figured there couldn't be that much difference and it was the Monster brand after all and ordered this set as it was available through Prime. Anxious when it arrived to hook up my iPT to my better amp and the Klipsch speakers, I debuted a new album I've recently been listening to a lot, "Vinland Saga" by Leaves' Eyes, and expecting to be blown away by Liv Kristine's crystaline vocals during the overture through the Klipsch's horn drivers... but wait a minute, there's no highs, no breathiness, no air, no sparkle, no crispness, no overtones -- I went over to the amp to make sure everything was set just right and it was. I just didn't understand; I mean, these are "Monster" brand cables -- I should be getting the full frequency spectrum. I actually thought something was wrong with my amp, the connections, or the Klipsch's, but before I started digging around and getting into testing the connections I decide to quickly unplug the Mediabridge cables from my surround amp and hook it up to this amp going to the Klipsch's and then plugged in my iPT and put the overture back on -- I was absolutely dumbfounded... The upper highs, breathability, and crisp definition was back with plenty of sparkle from the horns. Therefore, I can only come to two conclusions:  1) I received a defective pair, or 2) this is one pair of cables Monster did a poor design on in the materials used (causing resistance in signal transmission) .  I'm packing them up tonight and they'll go back tomorrow -- I'll now purchase another set of the Mediabridge cables even if they aren't available through Prime and pay for shipping.
667728
Sounds like a lot of other people have had good luck with these cables and I thought I would give them a shot for 4 bucks (that's with shipping) but the set that I got are utter crap.

All the connections seem to fit just fine in all the places they should, none of the wires are bent or bulging or clipped, but they still intermittently drop the signal sometimes giving you just sound and no video, or just nothing at all.

I have other component cables for other devices that work flawlessly, so I would doubt its my TV, and the standard composite Wii cables don't ever cut out so I would doubt its the Wii.

First time I started the Wii up the signal died before I could even launch a game, took all the wires out, checked everything over for kinks or breaks, plugged everything back in and it worked for 5 minutes before going to a black screen again. Fidgeting with the wires without unplugging I was able to regain sound, but no picture.

That's all it takes, 15 minutes and I am 100% sure their destiny is the garbage heap.

Not even worth the effort to make a return, which is probably exactly what the seller is banking on, but oh well.

Think I'm just going to continue to use the standard composite cables as they've always worked and the picture quality improvement (from the 5 minutes the component cable was working) is too little to justify paying anything for it.

Hopefully other purchasers have better luck.
2736526
. . . and they have the same problem: cable too stiff and bulky, that the weight threatens to damage the component out ports on my HDD recorder. Or sometimes they are so stiff, not all three connectors seat properly and I lose signal. They are even cheaper if you get them from Monoprice.
1895985
I recently wrote a review for another AudioQuest audio cable and got lambasted, I assume by the seller of them. Again bringing in my dumb MSEE and PhD in the field of Electronics, as I was told by the response to my review, I can say quite assuredly that these claims are technically silly. At audio frequencies the audio cable can be considered quasi-static that is to say and excess charge will equilibrate with a time constant, probably in the nanoseconds, sorry too lazy to look the numbers up in the CRC.. so for practical purposes the audio cable is not there, unless it is really really bad, and I have had some of those.... The gentleman referring to the resistance and capacitance per foot was correct, check out the cable equations, oops you called those things dumb.. The BIGGEST distortion introducer in ANY audio system are the speakers.... I like my Altec Lansing 604D's...  if you want a better audio buy better speakers, $400 for a pair of RCS cables will bring you NOTHING better speakers will.. You want Au coating to prevent oxidation which increases the interconnection resistance. Typically audio amps have an input impedance of above 10k ohms most are above 100 k ohms so a bit of oxidation really will not be noticed. Additionally you want a dielectric that has a low turboelectric index, this prevents small electrical signals from being produced when the cable is physically moved...

The audio amps today are so good that they too introduce negligible noise into the driven signal... Keep your speakers cable above #12 and you will have grovey transient response and really no practical voltage drop unless your cable are hundreds of feet long..

However, if I would buy one of these expensive cables I would buy one of the handmade ones by the Tibetan monks, they are made under very cold conditions and once made the low level of Boltzman noise produced by the cold filtered manufacturing process would stay with the cables, especially after a few cold ones...

I Audio Quest made by Monster Cable? they have similar claims...
2220392
[Anyone remembers the old "I am not going to spend a lot for this muffler" commercial?]

The 3 ft. is my favorite length to connect any electronics that happen to be very close to each other.

Just in case someone may feel guilty for not paying a lot more for a premium brand, it should be stated that at this length - 3 ft., you will get as good a service from a no-brand cable as you would from a super-expensive rip-off. An HDMI 1.3 cable should be able to carry, error free, all the signal your electronic equipment may put out.

The FUD campaign attempting to attract buyers toward the more expensive brands makes a series of claims. I will address them, as they may apply to this specific cable.

- Signal attenuation is less over a more expensive cable. - TRUE, BUT that's irrelevant on a 3 ft. length. The HDMI consortium stated that even the cables that were not 'certified' as 'Category 2' or 'High-Speed' will meet the requirements at lengths of 6 ft. or less.  At 3 ft., it would be a waste to consider an 'expensive' alternative. In addition, the newer devices have sufficient processing power and are sensitive enough to properly interpret even the more ambiguous 'digits' they receive.

- The expensive cables are better engineered and their contacts are less likely to break. - TRUE, BUT how many times is one going to plug an HDMI cable in and out of an HDMI socket over the cable's lifetime? 5 times? 10 times? The 'better engineered' claim has no practical importance. If your cable works on 'day one' the odds are that it will be left in the back of your box for many month or years before it is unplugged and plugged back in. If this cable is purchased for home use, the 'better engineered' claim should not be of a major concern.

- The more expensive cables are 'future proof'. - NOT TRUE. Claims are made that, if you buy the more expensive wires you won't have to buy new ones when 'new standards' emerge because the more expensive wire will support them. This is untrue on 2 different levels. First, your cheap cable was purchased to work with some very specific devices which need HDMI 1.3 and will never support the 'new standard'. The new standards will be supported by new electronic devices but, for as long as you keep the existing ones, you will still need this cable to connect them. Second, the emerging HDMI 1.4 specs call for physically different connectors so, no matter how large a bandwidth the existing expensive cables may support, it won't matter because you still won't able to plug them into an HDMI 1.4 port so... there go your $5 or... there go your $200, depending on your having purchased a 'cheap' or a 'top of the line' HDMI cable.

________________________________________

Here are the HDMI 1.3 specs supported by both this cable and its more expensive alternatives.

Maximum signal bandwidth (MHz) 340
Maximum TMDS bandwidth (Gbit/s) 10.2
Maximum video bandwidth (Gbit/s) 8.16
Maximum audio bandwidth (Mbit/s) 36.86
Maximum Color Depth (bit/px) 48

Maximum resolution over single link at 24-bit/px  25601600p75
Maximum resolution over single link at 30-bit/px  25601600p60
Maximum resolution over single link at 36-bit/px  1920x1200p75
Maximum resolution over single link at 48-bit/px  19201200p60

sRGB
YCbCr
8 channel LPCM/192 kHz/24-bit audio capability
Blu-ray Disc video and audio at full resolution
Consumer Electronic Control (CEC)
DVD-Audio support
Super Audio CD (DSD) support
Deep Color
xvYCC
Auto lip-sync
Dolby TrueHD bitstream capable
DTS-HD Master Audio bitstream capable
Updated list of CEC commands (only on HDMI 1.3a,b,c)
________________________________________

My personal experience: I've never paid 'a lot' for an HDMI cable because it makes no sense to pay more. I took home one of the 'expensive' ones once because the salesman promised to take it back if I wasn't amazed by the difference. It made zero difference and I returned it.
894688
THIS IS PROBABLY THE BEST BS MARKETING ON THE PLANET, similar to premium headphone cables.  DOES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
2950438
If you think you're getting better quality by buying this cable from Monster for more money, think again. After 9 months of moderate use, this cable started cutting out on one channel and now I have to fiddle with it a lot in order to get sound to come out of all the speakers in my car instead of just the speakers on the right side.  This is not the quality I was hoping for when i purchased from Monster.  Bummer..

- UPDATE -
Replaced this cable about 6 months ago.  The replacement still works but the plastic chrome pieces on this cable slide up and down the wire.  annoying.  The cable still works but the quality is just abismal..
4291674
I bought several of these cables due to the cheap price. They are horrible. They cause a loud buzzing noise on my xbox and when games load there are colors that shadow in a weird way. I can see that these cables have horrible shielding which may explain the buzzing. I am not a fan of monster, but they are the only company that has a good original xbox component cable today. So I got one for 20 bucks and it works perfect. Yes its 20 bucks its more expensive, but I bought 5 of these cables and they crapped out on me while the monster one gives my xbox the perfect quality. In this case you get what you pay for rings true and I had to toss these cables out, because they suck.
4185950
Based on all the info out there on the net, Monster should never be able to sell a single cable.  However, the name beind the cable does matter.  Knowing the reputation of Monster, I felt really good about buying these cables and I know that they'll be good for years and years to come.  Afterall, If you are spending $2000 for a nice set up, is the extra $30 for a trusted cable not worth it?  To me, it certainly was.
3681312
Their cables become sticky over an year span and you would just not like to use them. So, a premium product goes directly to trash. Many a complaint to the technical support go unheard. They have no solution for it. Frustrating support :(
3264634
I have been through so many of these, and if it wasn't for their one slightly redeeming factor (length) I would have moved on long ago. So many times I thought something was wrong with the phone or wall socket or charger... and 10/10 times it ended up being these cheap cords. I don't know why Japan/Taiwan/China thinks we need cheap cables... I'd pay twice or three times as much for something that wasn't made from the equivalent of soggy toilette paper.
3615208
This is probably the best deal you can get for a Category 2 HDMI v1.3 cable, given that it qualifies for Amazon's free shipping and, therefore competes on price with the $3 offers that charge for shipping. Just in case someone may feel guilty for not paying a lot more for, basically the same thing, let's look at our top of the line offer, Monster HDMI 1000HD Ultra-High Speed HDMI Cable (2 meters) and do a quick comparison.

This item supports the HDMI 1.3 standard which is almost as good as it gets. Any HDMI 1.3 cable can carry up to 10.2 Gbit/s. The Monster cable too "guarantees a certified cable bandwidth of 10.2" The Monster also supports "x.v. Color, and Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD" and it turns out that, all of the above, and more, are part of the HDMI 1.3 specs and they are fully supported by every cable that complies to the standard and can be had for about 90% less. The expensive brand presentation simply enumerates the HDMI 1.3 specs as if it being HDMI 1.3 compliant was a really big deal. It is not a big deal. This cable is equally compliant and it costs about 90% less.

My suggestion: if you think that the proponents of the expensive brand have a point when they claim that their product is a lot more durable, buy TWO Cables To Go wires and still pay almost 80% less than you would pay for one of the expensive ones.

My personal experience: I've never paid 'a lot' for an HDMI cable because it makes no sense to pay more. I took home one of the 'expensive' ones once because the salesman promised to take it back if I wasn't amazed by the difference. It made zero difference and I returned it.

_________________________________________________

The following are the HDMI 1.3 specs and all certified HDMI 1.3 cables (including Monster) are going to support them.

Maximum signal bandwidth (MHz) 340
Maximum TMDS bandwidth (Gbit/s) 10.2
Maximum video bandwidth (Gbit/s) 8.16
Maximum audio bandwidth (Mbit/s) 36.86
Maximum Color Depth (bit/px) 48

Maximum resolution over single link at 24-bit/px  25601600p75
Maximum resolution over single link at 30-bit/px  25601600p60
Maximum resolution over single link at 36-bit/px  1920x1200p75
Maximum resolution over single link at 48-bit/px  19201200p60

sRGB
YCbCr
8 channel LPCM/192 kHz/24-bit audio capability
Blu-ray Disc video and audio at full resolution
Consumer Electronic Control (CEC)
DVD-Audio support
Super Audio CD (DSD) support
Deep Color
xvYCC
Auto lip-sync
Dolby TrueHD bitstream capable
DTS-HD Master Audio bitstream capable
Updated list of CEC commands (only on HDMI 1.3a,b,c)
1160805
The Amazon Basics cables and these are delivering the same exact 1s and 0s of the digital HDMI standard and I really urge anyone considering buying these to do their research on what the HDMI standard actually is because these overpriced cables are a complete scam designed to separate fools from their money. There are only 2 steps when it comes to HDMI cables, the standard step and the high speed step. There is no such thing as an "ultra high speed" according to the very standard that HDMI is built upon. This is the first scam. Do you plan on constantly hooking up and unhooking these cables every day? Most people would say of course not. This is why you don't need gold-plated contacts or whatever they're trying to shill under the guise of "corrosion resistant" or any of the other nonsense marketing pitches that go into these cables. It's analogous to brand-name formulations and generics regulated by the FDA. The active ingredients are IDENTICAL. Slapping a sticker on one versus another just so you can upsell it is insane. Really, do your research. And don't talk to the clowns in blue shirts at best buy who are trying to pay their rent by selling you things. Do actual independent research. You'll be glad you did.