I just heard a RS commercial, and while the radio was on low and the car window was open, I’m pretty sure they just outright lied. I’ll have to listen for the commercial again but the gist of it was “some DVD players won’t output progressive scan video unless you use the component output” (duh!) and that you may not be getting DD audio from your AV receiver. But this can all be fixed by switching to MONSTER cables. What a sack of shit. They actually said that simply switching to monster will give you progressive scan and DD if your not getting it currently. Did anyone else hear this commercial. Maybe I heard it wrong.
(This is almost as bad as a salesman I watched at BB. He was selling a family a set of Bose speakers (along with a bunch of other HT stuff) and told them that they can’t get 5.1 surround sound unless they use S-Video instead of composite. I REALLY REALLY wanted to interject, but from the looks of it they were already planning to spend several thousand dollars. Whatever the reason, they’re probably better off with s-video anyways.)
I haven’t heard the commercial you refer to, but I did work for RS for some time. I can tell you that though their product claims are often dubious at best, they always do fall within the letter of the law - they’ve got an army of lawyers to make sure of that. I suspect that what they were saying is that if you aren’t using the component video or digital audio outputs, you should use Monster component video and digital audio cables to improve performance, and not that using these products would get you progressive scan video and DD audio if your system does not have these capabilities.
What QED said (I’m also an ex-RS manager) and whatever it’s failings may be RS does not generally play all that fast and loose with product claims. If it’s conflating the necessity of component video cables for progressive scan, and then saying the Monster brand of component cables it’s carries will accomplish this, that’s a fair advertising claim in my view. It’s not RS’s job to say “…but you can also get perfectly good component video cables at 1/3 the cost if you don’t buy the Monster cable brand.”
I would disagree slightly with that, but we may have differing ideas of what “fast and loose” means. I would say that RS definitely does play fast and loose with the facts, but always (as far as I’ve noticed) on the legal side of it. For example, they claim their Gold Series video and audio cables will get you better picture and sound because the gold plating makes for a better connection. While this is true in the strictest technical sense, I doubt you’re going to notice any improvement in the signal quality over less expensive nickel-plated connectors, short of employing sophisticated measuring equipment.
Well, that’s pretty mild compared to the claims other audio cable manufacturers try to pull off.
The dirty secret of audio is that no one should ever pay more than about .25/ft for speaker cable - that being the price of Home Depot 12 ga speaker cable. Anything else is a complete waste of money, because it will make no sonic difference whatsoever. None. I remember reading about a double-blind test that had two speakers - one was wired up with about $1000 worth of pure copper, oxygen free, unobtanium-plated super wire, and the other with a rusty coat hanger. None of the audio ‘experts’ could tell which was which.
But as far as RS goes, they’re pretty mild in their claims, and in fact their ‘gold’ series interconnects are pretty darned good. Excellent mechanical connections, good quality sheath, and they’re cheap. I recommend them to everyone.
Hey, I’ve still got a pair of Minimus-7’s. They’re 25 years old now, and I still use them. I also have some LX-5’s, which use a Linaeum tweeter not normally found on a speaker worth less than $500. They sound great in the high end.
A lot of Radio shack was junk (I’m a former assistant manager of a store), but occasionally they’d bring in a product that was a true bargain. The Minimus-7’s were a fine speaker for their time, and a great value. The LX-5’s are surprisingly good.
You wouldn’t say that if you knew what the markup on them was! And I’ve seen enough of them to know the quality isn’t all that good; though they are heavier and more durable. Still, good enough is good enough, for most purposes.
Astro, those Minimus 7’s were actually decent speakers. I wish I still had a pair of them.
Agreed. That’s why I was teasing him. It’d be one of the speakers that an an ex-Radio Shacker would most likely have around. I remember in the early 80’s we had a setup with a stereo Betamax and a pair of Minimus 7’s, and people could not believe the sound coming from those little speakers.
QED: Oh, I know what the markup on them is. But the markup is like that on ALL interconnects, even the el-cheapos. But even with the mark up a good set of video interconnects is still only $15-$20 or something, and since the construction quality is good, that’s about all you ever need to pay.
The cheaper interconnects will sound as good, but they are more likely to develop mechanical problems after being tugged around for a few years in the rats-nest of wiring behind most equipment setups.
Just to get almost totally off-topic, I was a programmer for RS from 84 to 88, on the Store Operating System. So if some of you store managers worked that time period, you worked (in part) with my code.
Amusing anecdote from working there - the SOS forced the managers to do regular backups and validate the backups as well. One of the managers kept having problems with his backups not validating. After trying unsuccessfully to determine what was going wrong with the backup process, one of our programmers travelled to the store to physically watch the manager create and validate the backup. The manager did the backup, took the floppy out of the drive (and this was when floppies were actually floppy), placed the floppy against a wall… and placed a magnet on the floppy to keep it up against the wall!
[sup]SAY WHAT?[/sup]
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