Is the snake oil slowly retreating from the Hi-Fi industry?

And that is basically what I said, back in 90's a £20 Scart (short) was not a cheapo when you got them at £5 and today I still use good cables and my Kenwood had 4 speakers up in corners of room back then wired with good quality thick gauge cable buried in the new plaster (at that time).
 
Grimley said:
Them & Monster Cable. There's no way in hell I'm paying £60-70 for a 3m HDMI lead from them when I could argue that even the own brand basics equivalent from the rainforest is 10% of that price & do the same for me at 1080p, which is the resolution at what I watch my content on my hardware. Even at 4K thats expensive.
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At least with RA there's the 60-day money back guarantee and a lifetime warranty on the products. That doesn't guarantee that the gullible won't get taken for a ride. That happens in so many spheres of life. At least though anyone with some healthy scepticism can try with minimal risk.

A bigger problem in my view is a lot of low level stuff such as the cables sold by Argos, the supermarkets and DIY sheds. This dwarfs what the likes of RA are doing simply because of the comparative volumes sold. However, it goes under the RADAR because it's not big ticket prices. Fleecing thousands each week to pay £10 for a 7-Pence cable is easier and bigger business than convincing one person that they need a £90 (!) Kimber coax TV fly lead. I'll bet it's a damned sight more profitable too. There's no lifetime warranty on these things.

I can't say that I know this for certain, but my guess is that the number of £10 TV coax cables going through the retail tills on any one day would knock RA's annual sales in to a cocked hat. The products are crap, which is the really annoying thing.

As someone who installs aerials myself, one of the common weak links in any customer's TV system that's giving problems is usually the no-so-cheap supermarket-bought aerial fly lead. They're inadequately shielded, poorly constructed, and often one of the first things to fail thanks to the use of acidic solder which basically eats its own core to pin connection over time. Of course, very few people ever realise there's a cable fault because the whole thing is shrouded in moulded plastic.

Monster Cables is just overhyped gear sold on the basis of dealer incentives.
 
lucid said:
At least with RA there's the 60-day money back guarantee and a lifetime warranty on the products. That doesn't guarantee that the gullible won't get taken for a ride. That happens in so many spheres of life. At least though anyone with some healthy scepticism can try with minimal risk.

A bigger problem in my view is a lot of low level stuff such as the cables sold by Argos, the supermarkets and DIY sheds. This dwarfs what the likes of RA are doing simply because of the comparative volumes sold. However, it goes under the RADAR because it's not big ticket prices. Fleecing thousands each week to pay £10 for a 7-Pence cable is easier and bigger business than convincing one person that they need a £90 (!) Kimber coax TV fly lead. I'll bet it's a damned sight more profitable too. There's no lifetime warranty on these things.

I can't say that I know this for certain, but my guess is that the number of £10 TV coax cables going through the retail tills on any one day would knock RA's annual sales in to a cocked hat. The products are crap, which is the really annoying thing.

As someone who installs aerials myself, one of the common weak links in any customer's TV system that's giving problems is usually the no-so-cheap supermarket-bought aerial fly lead. They're inadequately shielded, poorly constructed, and often one of the first things to fail thanks to the use of acidic solder which basically eats its own core to pin connection over time. Of course, very few people ever realise there's a cable fault because the whole thing is shrouded in moulded plastic.

Monster Cables is just overhyped gear sold on the basis of dealer incentives.
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Tbh I'm amazed your still in business, I'd have thought with sky/freesat/streaming services that most people would bother with an aerial, I'd guess only a couple would actually use them down my street going on the number of satellite dishes.
 
theone8181 said:
Tbh I'm amazed your still in business, I'd have thought with sky/freesat/streaming services that most people would bother with an aerial, I'd guess only a couple would actually use them down my street going on the number of satellite dishes.
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People keep the dishes up. IOW they don't bother to take them down. Whether they're used or not is a different question. The presence of a dish then doesn't directly correlate to a live Sky subscription.

I haven't seen any figures for the last couple of years, but Sky peaked at around 40% market share sometime around 2010. It has been losing ground since. Sky's still the biggest Pay TV platform though, of course. However, the continual price rises and now the challenge from streaming plus the change in viewer habits as the gaming generation grow in to the twenty- and thirty-somethings with their own homes is changing the viewing habits of the market.

Also, I think it's useful to remember that having Sky doesn't preclude someone from also having Freeview and Freesat either as a backup or an alternative for less important viewing rooms.

Although it's info from about a decade ago, I doubt the proportions will have changed drastically. It gives an easily digestible view of the market mix. Here's a link: How many Freeview, Freesat, Sky and cable homes are there in the UK? | free and easy (ukfree.tv)


Freesat has been on the wane for some time. The loss of some of the Channel 4 services, and both Samsung and Panasonic either scaling back- or dropping completely the inclusion of a Freesat tuner hasn't helped. That probably goes to explain part of the decision to move the Freesat receiver contract from Humax to Arris back in 2019(?). The recent news of the merger between Freesat and Freeview makes some sense then given this background.

What happened in the Freeview/aerial installation sector around the time of Digital Switchover is that a lot of the cowboys were shaken out. Many moved in to CCTV and some in to networking. Others moved in to roofing/gardening/fly-tipping businesses... LOL.
 
lucid said:
I can't say that I know this for certain, but my guess is that the number of £10 TV coax cables going through the retail tills on any one day would knock RA's annual sales in to a cocked hat. The products are crap, which is the really annoying thing.

Monster Cables is just overhyped gear sold on the basis of dealer incentives.
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I used to be in Electrical retail myself over 20 years ago & if you go back over my posting history on here over the last 14 years I've said this a fair few times. ;) I don't recall ever posting about selling connecting leads in that time.
I'm quite aware of the markup on said leads. I sold many a 'cheap made in China' bog standard scart lead with a telly sale at £10 a pop. If it was a telly & video package (sold a few of them in the early years) with a insurance on one or the other I used to throw one in for free and the management didn't mind too much due to the 'cost price'. Markup was around 500% Same with Aerial leads. I'm certain you are aware same quality leads can be bought in the local 'pound shop' these days, back then people would pay that & if there was a problem later on they would assume the telly was at fault. If I travelled to do a 'fault finding poor signal problem' I would sometimes take a bit of co-ax lead & a couple of male and female co-ax plugs. A 'home-made' lead did on occasion solve the fault.

I found that some people would happily pay £1-1.5k on a telly and then baulk at spending another £100-150 on a new telly aerial if it was old. the response was; 'aerial worked fine with the old telly' I'm just glad I got out of that business when they started the switch to digital en masse. It was bad enough selling the analogue/digital tellies in the late 90's turn of the century back then.
 
lucid said:
People keep the dishes up. IOW they don't bother to take them down. Whether they're used or not is a different question. The presence of a dish then doesn't directly correlate to a live Sky subscription.
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makes me wonder why scrapman don't target old satellite dishes.

you basically just need a ladder and a van surely, gotta be tens of millions of old satellite dishes just sitting there and google suggests they are mostly made from steel

maybe technically they are property of sky or something weird though
 
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arknor said:
makes me wonder why scrapman don't target old satellite dishes.

you basically just need a ladder and a van surely, gotta be tens of millions of old satellite dishes just sitting there and google suggests they are mostly made from steel

maybe technically they are property of sky or something weird though
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Maybe because a satellite dish is barely worth £0.50 as scrap.
 
Poneros said:
"the evolution of the power kord"
then I look at price

tenor.gif
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Burn In
What's this?
Speed up the natural cable burn-in process with our Burn In service.
£15.00

Dam I never burned my power cables in, I'm such a noob!
 
"There is a special natural feeling, it becomes more smooth and calm, the thickness is slightly increased, and overall it is more resistant to hearing but still slightly dry."

Sounds like something you could say about a glass of wine, to justify it's price.... a bunch of nothing."

:D
 
Snake oil has existed for way too long.
I have used car audio as home theatre stuff for years and saved so much money whilst gaining the same or better than most high end gear.

My current 300 quid setup will blow the doors of of anything under 1500 GBP.
 
Poneros said:
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I hate to be that guy but..replace his hobby with say... junk everywhere and phone up a person to come clean his house, this would look a lot different, yet I see him no differently to anyone else who hoards and goes to insane levels of rationalization over the real issue and that they likely have been compensating their entire lives for something deeply traumatizing to them, trauma and obsessive / OCD are linked.
 
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