Regarding the Ridiculousness of In-Store HDMI Cable Prices

I realize that this comes as news to basically no one, but felt it was worth railing about anyway. I am the proud owner of a sweet-ass new HDTV, and so I decided it was finally time to drop the VGA cables from the back of my computer monitor and hook my game consoles up [[link]] to a real television. Which, of course, meant it was time to buy some HDMI cables.(new Image()).src = 'https://capi.connatix.com/tr/si?token=995c4c7d-194f-4077-b0a0-7ad466eb737c&cid=872d12ce-453b-4870-845f-955919887e1b'; cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "995c4c7d-194f-4077-b0a0-7ad466eb737c" }).render("79703296e5134c75a2db6e1b64762017"); }); I knew I’d have to order them online, since a lifetime of cable purchases has hipped me to the bracing reality of price-gouging for in-store cable purchases. All the same, I wasn’t prepared for what I’d find when I stopped by Radio Shack just to see if things had gotten a bit more acceptable. The cheapest 6-foot cable at Radio Shack was $27.99. “Okay,” I thought, “That seems a little high.” So, I checked my phone to see how much it would cost to order one online. I was [[link]] even ready to pay a little extra – I probably would have paid $10 on top of the online price just for instant gratification. I found that Amazon is selling a 6-foot HDMI cable for $1.71. A dollar and seventy-one cents! Dude. I was joking about this earlier today [[link]] on twitter, and someone sent me a link to an AudioQuest cable on “sale” at Best Buy. The price? $695.99. It allllmost seems like a joke, except that I have a feeling that if I offered to pay Best Buy $695.99 for that cable, they would take me up on my offer. So, I wanted to reiterate what hopefully you all already know: Do not buy A/V cables from stores, ever. To do it is to flush your money away. It is the A/V equipment owners’ equivalent of putting your debit card into an out-of-network ATM. But if you’re dead set on buying one from a store, you might as well go all-out and get that AudioQuest cable at Best Buy. You can sell your TV to help pay for it. Image: Shutterstock /James Steidl You can contact Kirk Hamilton, the author of this post, at [email protected]. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.