So it appears fancy cables arent worth the price...

how about those fancy surge protection/UPS stuff that's stocked NEXT to the mon$ter cables?

what's the bare minimum amount of protection one should get???

Depends what you want.

For Surge protection, pay as much as you can afford.

For UPS, you need a VA rating of twice the Wattage you plug into the "battery" outlets. ie 250 Watts - 500 VA. The Wattage of the devices is usually on the back, or in the specs.

Costco has 12' Component Video and Audio cables for $35.99. They are Phillips PXT1000 Superior Digital Connection cables.

Hey guys, just got some Athena Speakers and VSX-815 receiver. I need an optical cable and all speaker wires. Can anyone recommend where I should go for these to get a good deal?

The Source has optical cables 6'-$20, 12'-$30. Both work great.

Source also has bulk 14 gauge speaker wire sometimes on sale.

Thanks Filper, I'll take a look.

Home Depot has 12 gauge 2 conductor stranded copper cable at 1.10 per meter (about 34 cents per foot). This is not only an excellent price, but the cables are in an FT4 (fire) rated green jacket - which is ideal for a system being installed in walls and plenums. You may not find it esthetically pleasing if you're laying cable on the floor.

Everyone keeps talking about how Monster is overpriced, but where is a good place to go for cables then? Im in Vancouver. AR seems overpriced too, so FutureShop and Best Buy or out of the picture. Where do I go? Would rather not buy online as I want these cables in the next couple days.

Just go to Zellers and buy Phillips cables. I got the tip from a poster in here. A fraction of the price and they work great. They look fine too but aren't painted in fancy colours.....lol. I don't care, I think cables are best when they aren't prominently displayed. Luckily, that's where they are, behind the TV!

RP Electronics in Burnaby on lougheed hwy across the street from canadian tire between gilmore and willingdon.has also been suggested here before. I got componenet cable for $15 for 3 feet and an optical cable for $10 for 3 feet. http://www.rpelectronics.com/

Thanks, I will check it out. I went to Wal-Mart and they had some HDMI cables for $50 CDN. Their return policy is great too. Will see zellers and superstore also.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/su...d=10231&style=

Best prices anywhere as we've seen. Walmart isn't bad, but $50 is a bit much still for HDMi. Optical cables I bought from there myself, very cheap.


Also..

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio....asp?CatId=79&

For those looking for short RCA interconnects to go between components, check out Princess Auto if you have one available.

I needed a bunch for connecting my receiver to various items in my equipment rack, including some digital as well as the multiple analog SACD inputs - and I wanted short cables to keep the wiring as tidy as possible.

They have 18" RCA jack stereo cables, with clear wire jackets, copper cables, and color coded (red/black) ends with gold plated conductors.

Price was marked as 1.98 per pair, when I got them they were marked down to .91 per pair. I picked up 10 sets of stereo interconnects for less than 10.00, including tax.

They look and sound perfect to me - but they'd have to be pretty terrible cables to cause problems over that short a length.

I too was somewhat caught up in the whole monster thing and believed it would be better. I'm sure the picture quality is fine but the price definitely is not. However, I ended up with a packaged deal at BB so all the prices ended up falling where I wanted to. I got all the components and cables I wanted and all on budget so I guess I can't complain too much. All I know is that now that I follow this forum (and I won't need to be making any massive purchases) that I'll get the component I want and then grab a reasonably priced cable to go with it.

This will sound stupid but.......I'm using good quality RCA audio, video L &R cables as my component cables from the dvd player to the tv.....its working fine I think, are these proper component cables?