It is a well known fact that many electrical retailers make very high margins on accessories and of course insurance policies that you don’t need. I usually say no to both, but when I bought by first HD LCD TV with a PS3 from the Sony shop I found myself saying yes I will have one of those £40 HDMI cables - cheaper than the most expensive one. I told my colleagues in the IT department about this and they said I could have picked one up in Argos for £10 and I had wasted my money as the connection is digital and the cable will either work or won’t. I’ll dig around over at AVforums later to see if they are correct, my feeling is that they are.

I think this post proves the point that some HDMI cables have a mark up of a whopping 80%.

I had a quick read of this post about HDMI and it seems that HDMI does have loss problems over long distances, would the cable make any difference though?