I know this post is going to create a lot of controversy. As I have said before everyone has their personal taste in engine oils and many other products. Cables are another area where everyone has an opinion.I have considerable experience with cables, speaker HTMI or whatever. I have 8 TV’s in my house, yes I know I am addicted, 3 rooms with surround sound with a variety of Media centers TIVO and replaytv’s. Yes I do hate to watch commercials, I like to control my own time, not have it controlled by a TV schedule. In my defense one room is mainly for my grandkids. When they have a sound system with a DVD, as it is meant to be watched. Their attention span is longer. Monster cables or any other overpriced cable is not worth the money. With HTMI and optical the cost of the cable has no bearing on the quality digital is either on and perfect or off and no amount of money you spend for a cable is going to help. All other cables RG 6, S-Video, composite, coaxial RCA and speaker the cost can make a difference. The amount of shielding is the biggest concern with an S-Video cable a metallic shield is the best option. Insulation is important on RG 6, All others except for speaker wire the connector, wire size, remember the smaller the number the bigger the wire, and insulation are factors to consider. Composite and component should be molded together. Speaker wire size is a concern but more important is the number of strands of wire. Special alloys, magical filaments or direction specific are all a waste of money. Sound is carried on the outside of the wire so the more surface you have the better the sound. I have used the flat molded wire for surround with success and it is very small about 24 gauge but it has numerous strands. 14 gauge is the one I usually use any bigger and it becomes a problem to connect and route. I do plate all connections with solder including the ones at the component. The exception is sub-woofer wiring use the biggest wire that will fit in the component connector usually this is a 12 but with some of the new style connectors it is a tight fit. Computer cables RJ-45 are rated, cat 5 and 6 which rates there transmission speed and connectors are rated by their contacts most quality are 50u. All of this is little concern to the average person very few homes need a 550MHz RJ-45 cable or above 50u rated connectors. At some point in time, as more and more services are available on the net, this may change so consider this if doing new construction. I buy the majority of my cables from Monoprice, there are other sites with equal quality and fair pricing, I just like there cool colors and I would like to know why they use them. Buy several cables at one time to keep shipping costs down. Cables will develop problems they can come loose RG 6 cables are the worst for this and I wish I knew why, they never move I actually use a wrench to snug mine up and this helps. All cables will develop problems over time and usually the sound or picture deteriorates slowly, with the exception of digital, until you notice a difference. With any feed use as few splitters as possible, and a booster if necessary. Always use a surge protector including cable feed and phone if used.