While it’s clearly a publicity stunt, I’m glad to see Kogan smacking down other companies regarding cable prices:

When you buy a TV from John Lewis, Currys, or countless other high street stores, you will be offered hideously expensive accessories such as HDMI cables. These cables are sold with absolutely ridiculous markups, many multiples of the actual cost of the items.

These stores are trying to trick people into thinking they need an HDMI lead costing over £100 after buying a Full HD TV. This is simply not the case. You shouldn’t be spending more than £4 on an HDMI cable!

An HDMI cable is an HDMI cable. It’s a digital cable. You either get a picture or you don’t. Don’t get conned into buying a “fancy” HDMI cable because it will make no difference!

Amusingly, the company is now offering free cables and shipping to people who buy a TV from John Lewis or Currys; naturally, those companies are pissed off and so Kogan’s also challenging them to a blind test.

Thing is, this is a con that’s been going on for years, and it’s just become more apparent in the digital space (where cables either work or don’t); but even with analogue kit, too many people have been fooled into buying expensive cables. That’s of course mostly down to chains like Currys. Last time I attempted to buy a lead in one, I was ushered towards cables costing about 50 quid for a metre’s worth. I asked for whatever they had that was cheapest and ended up with some dickhead sales guy arguing with me that I’d “ruin my home system” if I plumped for anything other than unicorn-coated expensive-o-cables. I mentioned I’ve worked with sound engineers in the past and used to make my own cables, at which point the sales guy went a bit white and sulked off in a huff.

My advice today is pretty much as per the last sound guy I worked with: look for the cheapest cables you can get and then buy the next one up from that. As long as the connections are reasonably solid, you’ll be fine; and that goes for speaker wire, too—if you’re paying 20 quid per metre, you’re merely fooling yourself, since wiring a system with coat hangers (Consumerist) is often as good as using the most expensive wires.