Video-Cable Reviews

Don't listen to any of us.You already have an internet connection because you are here. Go to a browser and ask the question you asked here. You will find that any review that is NOT a store will tell you that ALL speaker wire is the same. They just look cool. If that's what you need, then buy it. Otherwise, stay away from monster. It's just like bose speakers. BUZZ word, that's all. These companies can't make any money selling you a 10 dollar cable.

Ultimatly where it makes a difference is in the connector and the quality of the fiber. Since the signal doesn't have to travel a great distance, the quality of the fiber doesn't really matter all that much unless it's so bad that it actually attenuates the signal. But that's really bad!
Second, the connector is the most important part of the cable. Since that is where the end of the fiber is and where the lite must leave the fiber, it has to be either clieved very well or highly polished so the signal is not refracted.
All of this attention to detail adds to production so ultimatley, you get what you pay for. Paying $20.00 for a Monster cable is very reasonable. If you were to buy a professional cable you would pay close to $100.00, you don't see those cables on amazon.

The first reviewer is somewhat correct. Don't spend too much on digital interconnect cables....the digital format is used so quality will not depend on the transfer medium, that's the whole purpose of digital. I'm an electrical engineer, PCM audio for all intents and purposes is a pretty slow bitstream, you could use pretty cheap cable and not notice a difference. Just my humble opinion.

I could switch from one of my boxes, but not from the other-- meaning once I switched to the second box, I was hosed! I don't know if it was defective, or if it wouldn't work with that mobo (VIA KT266), or what, but I returned it ASAP.

This product has undocumented problems with Microsoft and Logitech WireLess MultiMedia keyboards (most likely all wireless keyboards), namely the port switching doesn't work (rending it useless).

Shame on Belkin for not reporting this, and shame on them for not providing support for highend keyboards and mice.

Just purchased this KVM (from DELL) and could not be any more delighted!
I have a Windows XP PC and an Intel-based Linux box (RedHat 9.0). I use my 19" DELL monitor, standard DELL keyboard and DELL PS/2 wheel mouse. Both machines have display resolution set to 1280x1024 32-bit color.
I have had zero installation, distorsion, power or switching problems. The wheel on the mouse also works.

I bought the NextVision 6 primarily so that I could watch TV on my brand new 22" IBM C220p monitor (which is way OUTSTANDING, lemme tell ya!). I toyed with the idea of getting a video card, but balked at dealing with potential software and picture quality issues. The NextVision 6 is a stand-alone unit, so it looked like a great alternative to simply buying a small TV (it is right about in the same price range as a 13" Sony).

The setup is relatively simple, however, the end result is very unpleasant. There is a special cable provided, which is designed to interface with your graphics card output and feed into the unit's RGB input. You then connect your normal VGA cable out of the unit's RGB output and into your monitor, thus establishing a pass-through. However, the resulting output signal is highly degraded and of such poor quality by virtue of this cable/pass-through combination that your computer graphics suddenly look like doo-doo. Forget the TV part, because you've just hosed your computer graphics!

Now, in my case, my IBM C220p monitor has dual inputs. So, I said, "Forget it!" to this whole pass-through business and I simply connected the unit's output to my IBM C220p monitor's second input. Unfortunately, the aforementioned special cable provided is not useable for this purpose. Just as well, since it's a piece of junk. So, I had to drop another $30 on a decent VGA cable to make this connection. The resulting TV signal was very acceptable (with the TV signal source being standard cable via coax), however I dunno if I would call it 'high definition'. You cannot sit too close to the screen without seeing some sort of 'digital smear'. Since my monitor is a 22", I can kick back on the bed and watch TV but this may be more of a problem with a smaller monitor or if you had plans on watching the TV from directly in front of your computer.

Anyway, I run my monitor at 1600x1200 resolution. The NextVision 6 touts 1280x1024 resolution. I tried different combinations of monitor/ NextVision 6 resolutions and found that if I kept my monitor at 1600x1200 and ran the NextVision 6 at 1024x768 I got the best picture. Why? Who knows. But you do have to play around with both the monitor/ NextVision 6 resolutions and the NextVision 6 brightness/contrast settings to really find the optimal settings. Patience is required!

The remote control, from which most of the functions are accessed, is, as others have noted, a pain in the rear. Some of the buttons respond to a lighter touch than others. To scan up/down through the channels you had better be able to squeeze this punk with all your might to get it to actuate! I have to hold it between my thumb on the bottom and middle finger on the top/button to apply sufficient pressure. I may opt to get a digital cable box in order to use it as the tuner/remote, which will leave the NextVision 6 to function simply as the means to convert the cable signal to a computer-compatible signal. Another expense - ugh.

A lot of caveats here, folks. Certainly, if I did not have a dual-input monitor, the NextVision 6 would have been returned as totally unacceptable. However, since I was able to get it up and running to a truly acceptable level via the procedure outlined above, I am well-pleased with the TV signal. Of course, I cannot watch TV while working on my computer since I have the unit's input on a completely separate monitor input from my computer, but no biggie. I just A/B between them with the monitor selector switch on my IBM. In the final analysis, I was able to accomplish what I started out to achieve, which was to watch TV on my IBM C220p monitor. Yeah!

Oh, one more problem: When I am not using the unit I have to unplug the audio cable (which runs from my sound card's audio-out to the unit's audio-in) because it generates a hum in my speakers. No doubt the shielding on this cable is poor - I may replace it with a higher-quality cable. More $!

As far as hooking up an external DVD player, I haven't tried it. I use Power DVD 5 on my computer, which is outstanding, so no need to use the NextVision 6 for that. If I want to play console games (X-Box, Game Cube), I'll stick with my 35" Sony TV. Maybe I'll hook up a VCR, which should work fine.

All in all, unless you have a dual-input monitor, plenty of patience and want to spring for a second decent VGA cable, forget this unit. Otherwise, as I said, I have achieved a very decent TV viewing experience on my monitor.

I have a very small office and I wanted to make some space by getting rid of my 21" CRT monitor and 24" CRT television and getting a 19" LCD monitor which would perform double duty as a TV and PC monitor. Well at 19" and larger, the fastest response time I could find was 25 ms (2003). Faster response times can be found on 15" and 17" LCD's (note that longer response time means you'll see "ghosting" with action scenes). I checked the 19" LCD reviews on CNET.com and decided on the Planar. So I hooked it up to the Nextvision which was connected to my Direct TV box and surprise - what a horrible picture! I made adjustments to the sharpness etc. on the Nextvision and the Planar monitor and the picture was still too pixelated. As a comparison, I tried the Nextvision with my 21" Sony CRT monitor and the picture wasn't too bad. It wasn't as good as even the cheapest 20" TV but it was viewable. So I ended up using the CRT monitor as a TV for a while until I picked up a small Sharp LCD TV. There's no comparison between the dedicated LCD TV and either type of computer monitor for TV viewing. If you want to use an LCD monitor as a TV, I would suggest a TV tuner PCI card or USB device. I've tried a TV tuner card on a 15" LCD and the picture isn't bad. The advantage of a card is that you can resize the picture so that it doesn't use the whole screen like with the Nextvision. The smaller the picture, the sharper and less pixelated it becomes.

I bought this, hooked it up to my 19" LCD monitor, and immediately pushed the old 27" TV tube out of the room (Bigger is not always better). Side by side, the color on the monitor was much better by default than any amount of adjustment on the TV could achieve. I cranked the resolution up, and text on the screen looks like it's actually in a font, readable and all! (TiVo output is amazing, but even all the text in commercials and credits and such are so much better.) DVD looks even better. I can't compare this with HDTV because, well, if I could afford that, I wouldn't have bought this.

Minor annoyances: It remembers most settings but not my closed captions on (and the CC is placed horribly and too small). You won't find Viewsonic on any universal remote codes; I wrote to the company and they advised me that I must buy a learning remote. Too bad my TiVo remote can't learn... gonna to be hard to find something workable enough to replace my TiVo remote. Can't afford the Pronto right now so I'm just dealing with multiple remotes.

I recently purchased the Gamelink 200X and the Lightwave 100X for my Xbox and I must say that I would like to know how can Monster claim that their hookup cables put out a dolby digital signal when the fiber optic cable (100X)plugs into an adapter which then plugs into the A/V cable (200X). This adapter has a headphone style connector which isnt capable of producing a 5.1 surround signal compared to a toslink connector. Therefore, an A/V receiver does not encode the signal as a dolby digital source, rather it interprets is as Analog/PCM or stereo sound. I must say that I have been extremely happy with all of my other Monster purchases. I have all my home theater components wired with Monster, but this product falls well below my expectation.

For a company that prides itself on having the best audio and video wires monster made one mistake. They forgot to make sure their product works before they shipped it out. I hooked up my xbox to the game link 200x and monster audio light link 100x and everything video wise was fine. yet I could not turn on the dolby digital in the dash. It seems the xbox did not aknowlege the dolby digital output of the monster cables. For something that costs almost 15 dollars more then the offical xbox packs it should work better and more efficently, but maybe this once i should have gone with the cheaper cables.

Okay, when i bought the stuff it said Nitrogen gas-injected dielectric insulator delivers maximum video signal strength for the clearest picture possible. 1) av jacks aren't the clearest, 2)i dont see a difference from my stock av cables and these monster cable ones. 3) The dolby digital works when you buy a cable, i mean what the heck, why would i wanna buy another cable, the fiber optic one plus this one plus tax is like $50. i just suggest you get the component cables, not theese av ones. the S-video ones are okay, but i wouldn't reccomend them. EVEN THOUGH monster cable has the best cables this one is a dissapointment.

I NEED AT LEAST 6' IN LENGTH OF CABLE MABY EVEN LONGER. ANY THOUTHS?

Since i bought this cable for my receiver, i have never want to go to movies again. DVD is the answer for me.

I love it so much the picture has never been better, if you've got any sort of home theater system it's not complete without this. DVD's have the best picture you can get at home but it gets better with this. Get IT NOW for any home theater system!

I NEED AT LEAST 6' IN LENGTH OF CABLE MABY EVEN LONGER. ANY THOUTHS?

Since i bought this cable for my receiver, i have never want to go to movies again. DVD is the answer for me.

I love it so much the picture has never been better, if you've got any sort of home theater system it's not complete without this. DVD's have the best picture you can get at home but it gets better with this. Get IT NOW for any home theater system!

This video cable is too good for its own good. The picture is soo digital you can see the pixels in the screen when you are watching a DVD. Quite annoying actually, cause everything looks like it is coming off a low quality computer, or like it was stretched from a small screen to a big screen and the # of pixels that make up the picture stayed the same.
*Do Not recommend* I actually put my A/B video connection back into the TV and the picture is much better. more real less computer graphic looking.

No problems at all. and to the person with the prior review a cable cannot the effects notes. more likley they were using a non progressive source to a progressive t.v. (Which is why they were fine with a composite connector.)

this cable will work fine, but no cable will fix the problem of connecting two incompatable devices.

In cables the quality of the shielding, the quality of the connectors and the workmanship of connection the wires to the connectors are the only issues. A cable losing signal due to a broken wire, or interference from inadaquate shielding would indicate poor quality.

I use this cable in a variety of cirumstances and it works fine.

I bought this item for my home theater syatem. It performs well and give a lifelike definition on ordinary tv's. I won't recommend it though because the pins are feebly constructed and bend easily. Yesterday I removed the cables for cleaning and the pins broke...and I am very careful!

DO NOT BUY!

I recently purchased this item here, and I was so very impressed. It drastically improved the quality of my dvd player. You know the difference in quality when you switch from watching regular tapes (vhs) to dvd? Well, it is the same "step" when you watch dvds with s-video, as watching dvds with s-video. My son said his Playstation 2 looked 10 times better with this s-video cord. It is definatetly worth the money! Highly recomended.

Monster Cables are the biggest scam in all of consumer rip offs.
They do absolutely nothing as far as picture quality is concerned, and they cost a heck of a lot more than the cheap ones...

look up the "Monster Cable J2 HCAM SM-6 Hi-8/S-VHS" kit. Although it is titled for camcorders, it has the Super Video 2 (6 ft) and the Interlink 250 (6 ft) for only $5 more. The Interlink 250 are excellent quality RCA cables that by themselves sell for $30. Trust me on this one... I went and looked at the packages to compare. You can also look up the products on the Monster Cable homepage. Enjoy listening!

(this is not a toy review)
I bought this Xbox s-video monster cable because I thought that it would increase the clarity and detail of my games. I haven't noticed an increase in clarity, at all. Well, maybe slightly, but the increase is negligle. If you have Component inputs for your television, I would get the component Monster Xbox cables instead. Also the other cables Monster offers (the component ones) have digital outputs for an optical cable they sell; why this xbox s-video cable doesn't include the same functionality is beyond me. I feel somewhat gypted by these cables. Don't get them. Waste of money and time. If you don't have component input on your tv, then make sure the next tv you get has component video.

1/27/04
Update: Just found out that the problem is this cable is not: XGL300 SV-10 AV. Why would Monster make three different video cables for the Xbox? One is XGLS 100 and other is the 300 and the next is the 400 (the 400 being component and the 100 and 300 being Svideo). That doesn't make any sense! Apparently I should have opted for the XGLS 300, the one that's Nitrogen Pumped. This was the only one they had at the store though. Maybe I'll try the 300's as well. Watch for my review.

This cable is a good way to improve your connection for clearer video and offers the flexibility of both composite and s-video. I immediately saw a cleaner picture with less distortion of text and textures in game. Maybe it's not the top of line or even midrange, but it's a economical way of improving your video at half the price of the next level cable MonsterCable offers.