yea, MonoPrice !
Ten+ years ago, a friend needed his first TosLink cable to hook up his new DVD player to his sound system.
We were at Fry's, and they had 'em for $60.
I told my friend he could do better.
He blew me off.
By careful shopping you could get one for about 1/4th that price, even back then.
(he's an idiot, if you hadn't figured that out)
I'd been through all this with Svideo cables, the decade before....
NOW, or at least recently, Fry's has had HDMI cables on special in their store for about $6 for 6'.
So has NewEgg. So have other internet sites like WiredCo.Com
And, $10 to $12 is still quite the bargain.
But, these are the exceptions and the specials.
MonoPrice has had good HDMI and TosLink prices for a long time.
I recently went to visit them at their facility.
Walked in, asked to see some of the TV swivel wall mount brackets.
Was taken upstairs where a very helpful fellow with native English demonstrated and explained the several models I was interested in!
Downstairs, I typed in my order to their web site on a terminal they provided at the front counter.
When I asked how long it would take, the nice guy there said: "It'll be printing out in just a second and then I'll get your parts".
And he did.
I'm not sure I spent more than 30..40 minutes at their warehouse, including a quick look through the on-line catalog to get more goodies that were on special for the day.
(that day, they had 3' Toslink for $1 each !)
My wall bracket was in the $40 to $50 range, and would easily sell for $100 to $150 at many retailers, if they even had as nice a model as I got!
For those less picky, MonoPrice had some in the $20 to $30 range which would compare to $75 to $100 retail.
Oh, and I figured I spent about the same $12 in gas getting there (it was a ways) as I would have paid in shipping.
But by visiting, I got the exact solution I was looking for ! - :up
