I recently bought a new HDTV along wtih a Blu-Ray player.  Prior to the 
purchase, I spent a lot of time trying to understand the technology.  One of 
the things that struck me, was the fact that Walmart's HDMI cables cost 
between $30 to $40+ for a 6 foot cable.  I can find other HDMI cables from 
various reputable sources for less than $10.  Heck, when I bought my new LCD 
monitor last Fall, it came with a "free" HDMI cable.  I've used it and it 
works great.  Certainly, the manufacturer would not have included a $30 
Cable with the monitor.  In fact, they probably wouldn't even include a $5 
cable.

Since HDMI is a digital connection, any cable capable of handling a 1080p 
connection (Blu-Ray) is good enough right?  Short answer, "Yes."  Long 
answer, "Maybe..."  As the length of the cable grows, the quality of the 
cable becomes more important.  Gizmodo.com actually did a really good write 
up on the issue, eventually concluding that while way overpriced, the 
"Monster" brand cables were actually higher quality, but again, so what?  If 
you have an 8-bit-color 1080p signal, any cable shorter than 10' should be 
able to handle the job.

What's interesting is to read reviews of the Monster HDMI cables where they 
sell a 3-foot HDMI cable for around $100.  Some poor saps are saying, how 
it's well worth the money, because it's so much better than composite video. 
Well, yeah, HDMI is much better, but you're still stupid for spending $100 
on a 3-foot cable that you should be able to find for a few bucks.  Others 
claim that the $100 Monster cable gives them such a better picture than the 
other (mon-Monster) HDMI cables.  Unless I'm missing something, that's like 
saying your Internet looks a lot better since you switched from a cat 5 
ethernet connection to cat 6.  In the analog realm, high quality cables 
meant a lot.  In the digital realm, anything capable of handling the signal 
should be as good as any other, although I've seen my share of really crappy 
quality ethernet cable, as well.  But they either work, or they don't. 
Sometimes you may have partially working ethernet cables, but with HDMI, 
your picture would be getting noticeably screwed up.  i.e. a bad cable would 
become very apparent, very quickly, because you'd see a very screwed up 
picture on your TV, or no picture at all.

Another thing I hear mentioned is the higher bandwitch capacity of Monster 
(and other) HDMI cables.  Again, I'm a bit confused here.  Some day, when 
Blu-ray discs start using 12-bit color or perhaps higher resolutions, then 
the higher bandwidth might be necesary.  But for now, what good is it? 
Isn't that the same as running 100 megabit ethernet on a cable that can 
handle gigabit ethernet?  Yeah, it's nice for the future, but it's not going 
to give you anything extra in the present.  Am I wrong about this?  This is 
the part that confuses me the most, because I see a lot of reviewers 
claiming that the higher bandwidth capacity actually works better for them. 
I believe 1080p/60Hz/24-bit with audio is about 6GB/s, so why would a cable 
capable of handling 15GB/s make anything any better?  Isn't it still 
transmitting at 6GB/s?

Finally, 120Hz LCD.  I suppose in the future, we may have a 120Hz signal 
from a Blu-Ray (or whatever), but currently 60Hz is the max.  So, you're 
still transmitting a 60Hz signal into a 120Hz TV, so I don't see how a 
better quality cable would help there either.  In fact, I'm still not 
convinced that 120Hz LCD makes any sense whatsoever.  With CRT's, it made a 
LOT of difference, because it substantially reduced flicker.  LCD doesn't 
have flicker.  It has response times, and lowering the response times does 
make a difference.  I'm not convinced that a 5ms 60Hz screen would be any 
different from a 5ms 120Hz screen, or even a 5ms 240Hz screen.

There it is.  Let me know if I'm wrong.  I can't believe that I could be 
right about all of this stuff, as there seem to be so many people out there 
who seem to think I'm wrong.

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