If you buy any of your basic electronic cables from anyone other than Amazon, you are overpaying.
In fact, Amazon seems to be taking the “make cheap electronic accessories” market by storm…
[Update] As commenters have pointed out, MonoPrice is even cheaper than Amazon.com, with the latter’s only advantage being free shipping over $25. [/Update]
Ebay stores can be good too. I get my home automation stuff from one of those. You do have to be a little more careful than with Amazon, though.
I’ve had good success with http://www.monoprice.com. I also get some stuff via ebay (for my ham radios), but have mixed success there.
I go with monoprice as well. Everything I’ve bought there has worked perfectly.
Still get most of my cables from Newegg. Its surprising how many people buy those stupid 120 dollar gold connector HDMI cables when its a digital signal! It either gets there or it doesn’t.
I think it’s mostly the fact that most brick and mortar stores have started charging outrageous prices for cables. I think the idea is that they can get you on the cable because most people don’t really pay attention to add-ons when buying a new computer or big screen TV. They just go along with the sales guy when he tells them “oh, and you’ll need these or your new purchase won’t work.”
I was in a office supply store (I’d name it, but I don’t remember which one) a week or two back. They had some 6′ HDMI cables on “clearance” for $39! They were marked down from $45. No wonder they had problems selling them.
Oh, and never buy cables from Best Buy. I needed some basic speaker wire a while back and they wanted $20 for 14′ of cable. I laughed at the sales man, went to RadioShack, and picked up 50′ for $7.
@ Jake: Yeah, I definitely prefer the returnability and quality guarantee of Amazon over Ebay, but each to their own
.
@ Brick: Had not heard about them – thanks for the pointer.
@ Pyrotek85: Good to hear… will start looking into them in the future.
@ Roadkill: Yup, that is exactly my point – with modern equipment, the signal either goes through or it fails. Digital is either 1 or 0, and there is no such thing as signal degradation – at least not in a way that matters to the receiving unit unless that degradation kills the signal in its entirety. Sure, once upon a time with RCA and component cables and whatnot, that was an actual concern, but not so much any more.
@ Oddball: Yup, I pricematched those Toslink cables at WalMart, and they wanted three times the price for the instant gratification of buying it off the shelf.
Hell with that. So long as it works, I can wait.