You've gotta be kidding me that Monster uses stranded wire for the ethernet cable. That's a bunch of crap. You are absolutely right that solid copper will produce much better performance than stranded, but there is one big thing that stranded has over solid. Travel cables. Cables that can be kinked, bent, stepped on, etc., and still have the same signal quality. You kink a nice regular old bulk in-ceiling cable, and it's half done for.
Optical cables are optical cables. I mean, we're talking light here. When I got my HD cable installed for $15 the goy brought me a 15 foot toslink cable, I have another really nice 1.5m and there is no possible way you can tell the difference.
I used to have a 42" plasma, and now have a 57" projection, and the regular old A/V pack works just fine. However with the new design, here's the downfall. My xbox is at least 8-10 feet of cable away from my giant TV. The new av pack would require an extension, thus defeating the purpose of the all-in-one a/v pack. The older one works better for me because I bought a set of 10ft cables that look EXACTLY like monster cables, except that they were like $120,000 cheaper. Oh, and the slits in the ground connector on each cable isn't cool and curved to look nice... it's just a straight cut. Everything I do on my xbox looks absolutely fucking great on my TV.
Don't buy CRAP cables when it comes to cable, but don't buy monster either. Make sure the connectors are gold plated (which even the cheap ones are now days), and make sure the cable is FAT like coaxial cable for TV. Better grounding + larger gauge wire = higher quality signal.
I hooked my xbox up to the regular video port the other day, and holy shit. I couldn't believe how shitty it looked. text all jagged edged...
