False economy

No, not about cheap flyspray or weedkiller but about the MSM's obsession with spurious data and trying to make themselves look like consumer champions.
Mail.

Cutting through the sales patter when buying a TV is difficult at the best of times.
But now it seems that the cables can trip us up, too.
High Street chains have been accused of ripping off customers by encouraging them to spend up to £100 on high-definition leads which are no more effective than ones costing as little as £2.
However, when a technology magazine showed experts footage using a £100 cable from electronics company Monster and an unbranded version costing about £2, they found the picture quality to be identical.
Ruslan Kogan, the boss of cable manufacturer Kogan Technologies, claims retailers are carrying out a marketing scam.

The only scam going on here is the sales patter to get people to buy an expensive lead, sure £100 pound is far too much to spend on an HDMI cable, but rest assured, £2 is far too little unless it meets certain requirements.
Yes a £2 cable will work perfectly at first, that's because when you get it, it wont have any oxidisation on the terminals. Now oxidisation is bad news on any signal carrying cable as oxidised matter (rust) does not transmit an electrical signal very well and when it goes on for too long it will have an effect. You also have an anode/cathode effect between dissimilar materials too which will accelerate corrosion, essentially a cheap cable made from cheap materials will deteriorate quite badly possibly within a year and may not just damage itself but the connection to your device.
Oddly enough there's one material which does not corrode or oxidise and which is a very good conductor of electrical current and frequencies and that material is gold. Gold is not cheap, gold plated connectors are however still pretty cheap and you can find them online for about £1.70. However the savings you make there will be offset by the quality of the product as the plating itself will be so thin (0.7 micron) as to have a chance of wearing away, gold is expensive, but it's also soft too.
Essentially you should when connecting an HDMI cable from the dvd player/sky/virgin connection box use a quality cable. No, don't spend over £100 on one, you'd be daft if you do. But on the otherhand don't spend any more than £15 which will give you a better level of plating (1.5 micron) and a better level of shielding from other interference.
But it's up to you in the end what you do, unlike the government I'm not about to force a minimum standard on you, but one of life's basic rules when playing in a market is that you get exactly what you pay for.
Same with cheap sausages.