Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

[Anyone remembers the old "I am not going to spend a lot for this muffler" commercial?] [NOTE: I bought TWO Premium Gold Series cables and I actually took home one Monster cable at one time so maybe I know what I am talking about :)] 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. The Gold Series item supports the HDMI 1.3 standard. Any HDMI 1.3 cable can carry up to 10.2 Gbit/s. Hmmm... I suppose the Monster is much better, right? Well... it "guarantees a certified cable bandwidth of 10.2" Okay, but the Monster also supports "x.v.Color, and Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD". 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 95% less in the Premium Gold. 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. Even a cable that costs 95% less is HDMI 1.3 compliant. 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 Premium Gold wires and still pay almost 90% 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 any certified HDMI 1.3 cable is 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 2560×1600p75 Maximum resolution over single link at 30-bit/px 2560×1600p60 Maximum resolution over single link at 36-bit/px 1920x1200p75 Maximum resolution over single link at 48-bit/px 1920×1200p60 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)