Hilarious! I use Monster Cable, because it's pretty...
Actually, I have a Panasonic home cinema setup, one of the "all-in-one" sets. The cable provided was crap; a hanger would have been better because it wouldn't be so easy to snap. I felt I could pick out a very tiny amount of distortion on the centre speaker. Nothing to get upset about, but a niggle all the same. So I replaced with some Monster Cable with it's gas filled sheath treated with yak urine housing copper made from the red hair (the little curly ones because they're thicker) of a thousand virgins.
Heck this stuff is so good, the cables only work
one way! That's right. The connectors are the same at each end, but there are arrows printed on the sheath to tell you which way the cable should flow! Genius.
Now I do think there was an improvement over the whole setup from using the new cable. Bear in mind these are 25ft lengths though for the surround speakers, so there's a bit more mileage than the coat hanger test. Even so, no way is this cable so much better that it is worth spending hundreds on. But I can afford to be flippant, because I got my retail packed Monster surround kit worth a small mortgage, from Ebay for £20.
Also, it's worth noting that the original cable was bare-ends, the Monster had proper connectors (sealed in whale semen, probably). I might have been able to get the same effect from soldering the ends of the original cables to "cap" them.
In Monster's and other manufacturers defence, the better the shielding, the better potential you have. If there is anything in the vicinity liable to cause interference, it's less likely to affect it. It's just they take their own hype to the maximum and it is absurd.
I've read in the past that when you budget a home cinema, you should allocate 10% for cabling. It's easy to forget where you put £3000 when you build a new system, with the TV, speakers and player/recorders. So I'm supposed to spend £300 just on wire?
F**k off.
