Awesome HdBaset HDMI extender with ir, you wont believe the price.

How does 'street' pricing compare to the Monoprice HDBaseT w/IR?

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2

Jeff

Hi Folks - David here from HydraConnect. The MonoPrice product is a typical first generation HDBaseT product. It is twice the size of the HEXT-21, requires a power supply at both ends, and does not power down. This requires this large box and a plug in power supply to be scrunched behind a TV that you would like to be flat against the wall. Not an easy feat. And because it does not power down, you should see how hot the unit behind the TV gets, since it is on 24/7. Because the HEXT-21 is so small, and powers down, it is really the ideal solution to put behind a TV. If none of these issues are important to you, the MonoPrice product is probably fine. But a word of caution - beware that there are many vendors selling these - they all look identical except for the custom labeling - and some of them do not work reliably. Always test them before installation.

Thanks for listening.

Is this just a Control4 product?

The extenders work with any HDMI data stream from any HDMI connected product. The switcher we manufacture is presently only for Control4. It will be available for other systems in the near future.

I don't think its much of an advantage to use less power for the price differential. Monoprice is $300 cheaper which will buy quite a few kWhs. I realise that this is fairly new tech but the price gouging is ridiculous. I can buy an Onkyo NR609 for cheaper than an HDMI extender! Forgive me for not sharing jwhitaker's enthusiasm.

The "price gouging" comment is really out of line, since you are clearly not a manufacturer and do not understand the industry. Let me share a few items with you so you can understand reality. I accept that you may not care and will buy the cheapest anything, but I would like you to understand what is really going on here - there is no price gouging, the implication of which I frankly resent.

Monoprice is selling their item below the landed cost in the US of this class of product from any off-shore manufacturer I know of, and I know most of them. The Valens chips, the only HDBaseT solution, are $30/ea and you need one for each end. Add in connectors, circuit cards, hardware, other electronics, two metal cases, a plug in power supply, assembly labor, packaging, IR cables, and necessary profit, even in China. Every importing business as well needs to make a profit to stay in business, so with an industry standard markup on a landed cost you get prices like you see from most reputable suppliers. Additionally, there are constrains in the CI market whereby the dealer needs margin between the MSRP (which we quoted) and their cost. I seriously doubt you will find any CI dealer installing Monoprice extenders without a markup - they need to make some margin to stay in business.

So this was a long winded answer as to why we certainly are not "price gouging". With several mouths in the food chain, our profit margin on these products as sold to our dealers is minimal. DIY folks who will buy the cheapest product on the market and don't have to pay for the time finding problems in the system are welcome to do so. We have tested many of these bargin basement extenders and found many of them simply do not work, or worse are unreliable. Read the Monoprice reviews of this product on their own web site - several people claimed that the product had issues with their gear. I don't know how Monoprice sells the product as they do, and I am implying nothing negative about them. They simply appear to operate on a business model that most companies cannot support.

Additionally, our product uses POE to power the receiver to avoid having to find a place for the power supply behind the TV. This has both cost and value, and if it has no value to you then clearly the cost is not worthwhile. Put your hand on an HDBaseT receiver behind a TV that has a power supply and see how hot it gets (24/7)- ours does not. I doubt that this will change your opinion, but at least now you hopefully have a better understanding.

Thanks.

I don't think ljo000 was necessarily directing the "price gouging" comment towards you, but to the industry in general. Regardless, it came off that way, and yes, was not fair. Can't really gouge on non-essential items anyway. But his point about these products costing more than much more complicated products is a common complaint, and as you point out, volume/R&D/dealer channel all make those comparisons problematic. The industry is going to have to deal with consumer perception that items, for example, that look like an iPod touchscreen shouldn't cost more than an iPod...

But this is a forum full of DIY folks, and as you're aware it's a price-sensitive bunch of folks... If you come into a thread as a manufacturer, I'd suggest answering questions about your own product, correct any inaccuracies, offer technical support, even suggest solutions - but leave commenting about other vendors' products to the "relatively unbiased" crowd.

Jeff

This sums up my point exactly. The chip is $30. If that plus a few readily available components such as power-supplies and metal cases comes to $475 because of markup in the chain, then there is gouging due to a lack of competition. I'm not blaming companies from doing it as it makes perfectly good business sense but I'll happily take my business elsewhere if I can.

I also agree with you that the POE and IR has value - what value customers place on these features depends on their own setup. In my case I have a recessed box behind the TV so a wall wart is not a problem. However, I do have to take issue with your assumption that I don't understand the business. Its a fairly normal scenario with many new products. HDMI cables have come down considerably in price over the past couple years in-spite of much industry FUD. Incidentally, the monoprice unit has a 95% rating on their site and also includes IR.

I for one, am very appreciative of industry folks like 1949live, Dennis, Ted White, and many others who take time out of their day to participate in the forums and help all of us to better understand their products and our hobby in general. They certainly don't need to do it, and I'm guessing they don't come close to making up their time by way of sales. I hope it helps though. I think it's absolutely insulting and condescending to throw truly unwarranted accusations and insults around like this.

I am the owner of several Monoprice products and am very happy with them. That said, you do get what you pay for. This does seem like a superior product and worth a premium price if you want to use it. If not, then don't.

I'm not trying to insult anyone. Its simple economics that when you have a situation where competition is limited (new markets/products/restrictive licensing etc) then prices will be as high as the market will bear. Obviously given that there is a wide range of prices, there is some competition but there is still a market that supports vastly higher prices for small improvements to the model. Personally, I don't place much value on those improvements so am content to wait.

Do you think that the price is because that is what they think they can pick out of your pocket? Ignorance is bliss isn't it, but I'm not trying to insult anyone.

What about all the time, labor, engineering, design, testing and production it takes to bring something technical to market?

While you may not put much value into the small improvements, myself and every other professional installer and a/v company does. If it prevents call backs and from angry people saying their system doesn't work, then the price is well worth it.

For $475 I can buy a decently high spec PC with a powerful, multi-core processor, gaming graphics card and including a flat panel monitor. I'm fairly certain that Intel, AMD, ASUS etc etc etc all significant time, labor and engineering to bring their products to market. Are you trying to say that HDMI extenders are even in the same ballpark of technical sophistication?? Same goes for A/V equipment, networking gear etc.

It won't be maturing tech that brings the price of these units down - it will simply be competition.

When the title of the thread says, "You won't believe the price", I expect to see $150 extenders, not $475. HDbaseT is NOT new technology by my standards. I've been seeing products for almost 2 years now. Gouging or not, they are still not worth it. Besides, you will be able to get a 4x4 HDBaseT matrix for $2k in a month or so, which makes more sense for my application.

if one chip is $30, what is the cost of the case (if metal, then fairly expensive, even for "cheap metal", especially if powder coating), PCB, other components and connectors, power supplies, manufacturing, and packaging cost? And that doesn't include UL or any other required consumer product safety testing. The biggest driver for cost on most any device is quantities. I develop electronics for a living. WHen we go to order blank PCBs, it costs $400 for 5 copies (that's $80 just for a bare circuit board!!), and $600 for 50 copies ($12/ea, much more reasonable but still pricey). Point is, the price drops dramatically as you keep adding zeros.

My suspicion would be that if he's actually paying $30 for the primary technology chip, then he's probably looking around around $60-100 for a finished, packaged product, not including having to roll in additional monies on a per-unit basis to cover the $10,000's to $100,000's of dollars for whatever testing is required from authorized third-party testing labs. They figure they need to "break even" over the first 6 or 12 months (equating to an estimated XX number of units sold) so they can fund rolling improvements to the product, not to mention new products based upon updated chipsets that become available during that time (and replacing components that go out of production on a daily basis) that they must incorporate to maintain competitiveness. Then throw in a reasonable profit to cover advertising, marketing, and actual profit, then throw in another layer for resellers' profit margins, and I think we're getting closer...

To be fair, I also will NOT pay $400 for an HDMI extender. I can't afford it. I'd rather deal with a slightly buggier solution for 20% of that cost. But to be fair to the those actually creating a solution, my hat definiately goes off to them for attempting to solve the problem.

Ultimately it will be time and quantity that drives the prices lower. The more people that DO buy, the lower the price will drop, and the better the next generation of technology will become.


+1

I love industry solutions. While way too pricey for MY blood, it means in 3-5 years the same solutions will be available on eBay for a fraction of the original cost. That's where I sit in my household, a few generations behind, for financial reasons. I'm thrilled to say we just got a Wii, and our kids (and daddy) is absolutely having a blast with it! Who cares that it's used and a few years old, it still works great! (We still play NES as well, though. Nothing like a good 8-bit classic on authentic hardware )


and quantity. I guarantee you that Asus sells *MANY* times more units in a single day than this particular vender probably sells in a month, a quarter, or potentially even a year.


just my two cents!
..dane

Hahaha.. Funny, I didn't even notice the "you won't believe the price" part until you pointed it out. I just noticed the first half, "Awesome HdBaset HDMI extender with ir"...

In that regard, I totally agree with you. If you're going to brag about the price, make it a price worth bragging about. If you're going to tout the robustness and functionality, tout that instead.

..dane

Yeah, the "you won't believe the price" was kinda funny. So, the list price is $475. The closest, although less sophisticated, monoprice product is approximately half the price. I don't see a problem. They are aimed at different markets. The CI company is not paying $475. That is just the price the company will likely pass along to the customer. As was mentioned above, a CI company is going to tack on some profit even if they use monoprice. I wouldn't put it past them to double the price. Heck, that is what car dealers do in their service departments.

CI folks would love nothing better than to double their costs. Believe me none of them could get away with it. Consumers today are well educated and we all have Internet access. However, the CI, like any business, has to make a profit to stay in business. The failure rate of new CIs is about 30% according to one source I talked to, and one of the main reasons is the margins disapper if you have to make a few service calls to fix gear that does not work or you did a poor installation. Hence the better CIs will buy the best gear they can afford for the lowest price, and not just the cheapest gear.

The best CIs will SELL the most reliable gear while trying to mantain some sort of margin on the products.