blog It can be an expensive task kitting out your home entertainment system. You’ve got to buy a media centre, flatscreen TV, a speaker system, a $350 HDMI cable from Harvey Norman to connect things together. Wait, what? Former Electronic Frontiers Australia activist and current IT industry worker Geordie Guy writes that he could hardly believe his eyes when he saw this one:
“Harvey Norman are selling an HDMI cable …, which is 4 meters long and $350.00. That’s right, three hundred and fifty dollars. Harvey Norman are nothing like the only offenders here, but as one of Australia’s largest consumer electronic retailers they should know better. The reason this cable costs so much is due to how it sits in a class of “premium cables”. Premium cables have gold-plated connectors, shielding inside the cable itself to protect it from electrical interference, some of them even have gas injected into them”
The problem, as Guy explains, is that these cables simply aren’t going to provide a clearer picture than a $14 cheapie — as unlike the traditional analogue signals, new digital television signals don’t degrade. They either work or they don’t. Adding in a $350 gold-plated cable isn’t going to make a lick of difference.
Seen similar pricing craziness around? Let us know. We’ll highlight it under the #techtax banner. It seems like Australia’s technology buyers have been getting a raw deal for a while now … it’s time to shine a light on some of the dodgier activities going on.
Image credit: Posted by Mark Anderson under Creative Commons (original from Walt Disney)