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[BigDaddySlappy]

Hey There,

I sell big screen TV's myself and we also carry Monster Products here.
I've done some testing and here is what I've come up with.

It really depends on what kind of tv your usuing.  

If your playin on a CRT tv than your not really gonna notice much of a difference.

However, if your playing on an LCD or DLP, I think you'll see a huge difference in clairity.
At least I've seen a difference on the larger tv's.

I do highly reccomend 2 Monster Products, The Monster Screen Clean is the best $20 you'll ever spend on cleaning your tv screen,  the spray doesnt run off the screen and my screen has never looked cleaner,

Also, the Monster Power Center Stage 2 Surge Protecor kicks ass.  It's $150 but worth every penny.
You connect all your video and audio stuff on seperate sides and it seperates all the interference between your componets and your house and actually cleans the picture up because there is less interference going to your tv.  Plus if you have alot of brown outs and stuff through your house (when A/C or microwave usually cause it to occur)  it helps to keep the power flow to your equipment constant.

As far as the cables go, they are worth it in my opinion, but i think only if your running a 42 inch dlp or lcd tv or larger set.

Hope this info helps out

[Ramlion-X]

i was gonna buy some monster cables for my xbox off of ebay , but i didnt want to pay 50plus for a monster wire assembly and it came with the digital output plug they are on ebay, there is one type that has a analog plug looks like a headset plug then u havta buy another wire that converts the audio signal into a fiberoptic signal, which is again a great waste of my time and money, i have a 37flat lcd with i def pack from xbox and i had a set of monster cables but it was missing the audio cable that i needed to make it digital audio, but the on screen image was a huge difference, the image was way sharper and crisper, so i fig what i will do is keep the xbox hi def pack and buy monster wire component cables to attach it to the hidef and my Tv,, did i make any sense in this post i just got off of work so forgive if it doesnt make sense

[DWells55]

I have a 57" HDTV, and honestly, the Monster Cables do not make any better a picture than the GE Home Theater Pro nylon shielded cables I use.  I bought the stock Xbox HDTV kit, and because it's just a box and seperate cables, I threw my those GE component cables on it.  There is absolutely no difference between that setup and Monster Cables.  It does looks somewhat better than the default component cables that come with MS HD Box.  I tested both at 720p and 480p with the cables, and trust me, it's not worth the money.

[hoobatech]

um ftp the files to your computer and press play?

i came across this post so i thought id flame it up.

monstercables suck, worst waste of cash ever. i didnt notice any difference on my 36in advent tv or on my friends hd 52inch plasma. bottom line they may be better for certain applications like lcd or something but on the tvs ive tried the only difference my friends and i noticed was that one cost twice as much as the other

[The Zep Man]

QUOTE(ma13 @ Dec 11 2005, 07:49 PM)

I have the Monster Xbox Cables hooked up to my tv while my friend has the regular MS HD Pack hooked up to his tv. It's very obvious that my picture is a lot more crisp then his is.  Almost no jaggies on Soul Calibur II or Ninja Gaiden, while his tv has a lot of jaggies about.  I am not sure how much this has to do with the tvs or the cables since we haven't tried to switch the cables and see how the pictures changes, but I am very happy with my Monster Cables based on this comparison.

Shortly said: your post doesn't add anything in the discussion of regular vs. Monster-cables.

Even if Monster-cables should add a bit of quality (haven't noticed it on a few big LCD/plasma-screens and a projector), it ain't worth the price. Off course, most of the people who say that Monster cables are better than regular cables also say that with digital audio, optical makes a difference over coax.

[Mr Ed]

QUOTE(Ramlion-X @ Dec 2 2005, 07:03 PM)

i was gonna buy some monster cables for my xbox off of ebay , but i didnt want to pay 50plus for a monster wire assembly and it came with the digital output plug they are on ebay, there is one type that has a analog plug looks like a headset plug then u havta buy another wire that converts the audio signal into a fiberoptic signal, which is again a great waste of my time and money, i have a 37flat lcd with i def pack from xbox and i had a set of monster cables but it was missing the audio cable that i needed to make it digital audio, but the on screen image was a huge difference, the image was way sharper and crisper, so i fig what i will do is keep the xbox hi def pack and buy monster wire component cables to attach it to the hidef and my Tv,, did i make any sense in this post i just got off of work so forgive if it doesnt make sense

Actually it isn't a Monster proprietory digital audio connector, it's a standard optical mini jack, so for example, all you have to do is buy optical cables that include the standard adapters like these: http://www.amazon.co...221529?n=172282

And you'll be set.  There are things you can complain about Monster products, but their decision to use a standard mini optical connector isn't really a concern or problem.  Yes, it's a little less common than the full size optical connector, but it's standard on mini-Disc players and Apple's Airport Express just to name a few things.

[twistedsymphony]

I have 2 sets for the Xbox 1... one S-Video set and one Component set...

I'm running a DLP Projector and I see NO DIFFERENCE in the picture at all when compared to the official MS cables (they're equivalent to the new style MS cables, the old style are a little worse).

As a matter of fact one set of the monster cables (I forget which one at this point) was defective when I got it and the audio would only output in mono and was distorted. the EB I bought the cables at didn't have any more in stock so I had to replace them through monster and it took them a month and a half to get back to me... That was months ago. I also have the official monster Xbox optical cable and the thing is seriously falling apart, the toslink ends are really loose against the cable and it's as if the "shielding" (if you can call it that) is shrinking.

I used to buy a ton of monster products, when they used to look like normal cables and carried lifetime warantys... They've since changed to looks over quality and I think it's apparent in their products.

Their power supplies/surge protectors are nice but for the price you can find comparable products for much less.

I'm the kind of person that doesn't mind spending enormous amounts of money to get better quality stuff, but the last few experiences I've had with monster have not been good and I've lost quite a bit of faith in the quality of their product.

As for the person who said that monster cables got rid of jaggies... honestly what have you been smoking?

A higher quality cable will net brighter more accurate colors and less picture noise, in some extreme cases remove fuzzyness... it will in no way shape or form ever remove jaggies. If anything it will add more jaggies that were hidden by a previously blurry picture.

I had bought the monster cables for my Xbox 1 because I was having issues with some faint noise appearing in my picture, I didn't mind fronting the extra cash in hopes of getting rid of it. The reason the Monster cables didn't help at all was because the root cause of the noise wasn't the cable but the Xbox itself. Monster cables may be able to produce a higher signal quality then most, however you're always limited by the weakest link. Unfortunately Video game consoles are not high end AV equipment (regardless of how much they cost or how they're marketed). The fact of the matter is it doesn't matter how good your cables are if the original signal is crap to begin with.

It's like buying the most expensive and highest quality wheels and tires money can buy in hopes of improving the performance of your Yugo

[Mr Ed]

QUOTE(twistedsymphony @ Dec 12 2005, 08:12 PM)

As for the person who said that monster cables got rid of jaggies... honestly what have you been smoking?

A higher quality cable will net brighter more accurate colors and less picture noise, in some extreme cases remove fuzzyness... it will in no way shape or form ever remove jaggies. If anything it will add more jaggies that were hidden by a previously blurry picture.

Amen brother.  

[hoobatech]

i cant remember ever needing a lifetime warrenty, but i guess if you like to beat yours up it might be a good investment.

but seriously just look for a good set of shielded cables

[BiGx5MurF]

OK, I'll be upfront first, I'm a monster hater.

OK now to answer your question.  Picture quality is determined by both cable quality, and connection type, with more emphasis on the latter. Here's a list of connections types for xbox from worst to best, and I've tried all of them.

composite cables (what your xbox came with, red yellow white) - sucks

S-video (advanced AV pack) - big improvement over composite, also I used AR performance series (the cheap blues ones) s-video cable instead of the thin black one that came with the advanced av pack.

component cables (hi-def av pack, similiar to the monster cables your interested in, and actually a great deal considering I paid just as much for the hi-def av pack) - I'm using AR master series component video, and optical audio cables with this.  The improvement is incredible, whan xbmc is set to 720p, my friends claim that from the couch it looks almost as good as a computer monitor (i sit maybe 6-8' away)

My TV is a sony 42we655, a 42inch rear projection LCD. 720p is its native resolution.

Some stuff I need to mention is that with the advanced av pack, if i used the s-video cable it came with I get artifacts sometimes, like waves, or ghosting, or rainbow, it was only noticeable under certain colors, but it was annoying. But the problem went away when I used a cheap Acoustic Research s-video cable.  Also with this if you kink the optical cable, audio will lose sync, it will lag compared to the picture.

During college, my room mate had a PS2 with monster cables, and I had my xbox with the advanced av-pack hooked up to his TV.  The 20" phillips tv had component video inputs, but the tv was not a hi def unit, so there was little quality difference that we could tell. But chaning from stock cables, to monster cables on the ps2 did make a noticeable difference. One thing though, for some reason the monster cables would not sit tightly, it would loosen from time to time, and the display will go monochrome because of it, but just pushing it a little fixed that problem.

Now the hi-def av pack had great image quality since the day I got it, especially once I enabled 720p.  I changed the cables only because I'm a dealer, and had them, not becuase I had to for any issues.  I'd argue that the new cables did improve image quality slightly, but I did use $100 component video cables, and even though they cost me almost nothing, I think the placebo affect may be some cause of improvement.  

Now I really doubt monster cables will give you a significance difference in quality, when my $100 cables failed to do anything noticeable. But then again you will be bypassing the hi-def av package box, while I'm not, so maybe there is some improvement in there. But since its $20, just get the monster and be happy with the placebo affect.

[t12121]

there really is no difference between monster av cables and normal ones besause when you get down to it they still use copper and tin (solder) inside of the wire just like all the other ones

[The Zep Man]

QUOTE(hoobatech @ Dec 14 2005, 01:13 AM)

i cant remember ever needing a lifetime warrenty, but i guess if you like to beat yours up it might be a good investment.

but seriously just look for a good set of shielded cables

A lifetime warranty is bullshit in the first place.

I mean, if your cable is broken then it's dead. There goes your warranty.

QUOTE(t12121 @ Dec 16 2005, 06:13 AM)

there really is no difference between monster av cables and normal ones besause when you get down to it they still use copper and tin (solder) inside of the wire just like all the other ones

Indeed, Monster cables are simply said: crap. You won't get anything extra for the money (and I prefer good/cheap cables over expensive/nice looking/crappy quality cables).