Vijf manieren hoe hightech makers je keihard naaien

RDJ134 15 februari 2011 om 19:17 uur

Zonder dat veel consumenten het door hebben worden ze keihard door diverse elektronica en Hi-Tech makers keihard genaaid. Daarom heeft de website Cracked.com deze top vijf gemaakt, daar bij komen oa Garantie, Printer Inkt en HDMI kabels aan bod. Voor al met de laatst genoemde is het behoorlijk raak, want een kabel van tien Euro is net zo goed als die van $700 Dollar. Yep, je leest het goed $700 Dollar, voor die prijs heb je een big ass full HD TV.

#4.Premium Cables

The douchebaggery involved in the new high-definition formats is so expansive that we could write an entire book on it. What we're focusing on, however, is the cables themselves. Pop quiz: What is the difference between this Monster brand HDMI cable and this Ampac brand HDMI cable?

If you answered anything except "not a damn thing," you'd be wrong. There is no reason whatsoever for the Monster cable to cost $13 a foot while the Ampac cable costs $1.67 a foot.


Wait, What?

"Now, hold on, Cracked," you're probably saying, "surely there has to be some reason that Monster brand cables cost almost 800 percent more than the $10 Walmart cables, right?"

That depends on who you ask. According to Monster, its cables cost more because they "require advanced design and construction and strict quality control standards." But the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.'s consumer affairs show Marketplace got a production engineer to test them out, and there was no difference at all. But, OK, that's Canada -- maybe that was metric picture quality or something. Well, no, Cnet has also given its endorsement for buying the cheap HDMI cables.

HDMI is a purely digital signal, so there is no degradation. The picture either works perfectly or it doesn't work at all. If you're getting any signal, you're getting 100 percent of the signal. If the guy at Best Buy tells you otherwise, he is lying right to your face and trying to rob you.


It Gets Worse ...

So, $90 is quite a bit to spend on an HDMI cable, especially when you can get them for $4, but it's still just a fraction of what the customer probably spent on his setup. So they're just skimming a little off the top, right? Enter AudioQuest, a company that makes HDMI cables that literally cost more than many TVs. Six feet of cable for $700. More than a hundred bucks a foot.

That's not a pricing glitch or a typo, either. AudioQuest has a price sheet on its website, and it's 40 pages of overpriced copper. Nowhere on the website does the company even address the fact that for what you pay for its cables, you could buy a 32-inch TV.

It does, on the other hand, have a link to a USB cable press release on its Facebook page with the comment, "Our new Indulgence USB cables may change your mind about 'just ones and zeros.' " This ignores the fact that USB transfers digital data, not analog audio or video, and quite literally is "just ones and zeros."

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