[horsawlarway]

And frankly - the know-it-all customers are still right...

In the large majority of use-cases, the cheap cable is going to do fine.

In the small minority of cases it won't... choosing to buy the newer spec cable from a company that's promoting obvious bullshit (like gold contacts) just screams "I'm getting scammed". If the only version of the new spec HDMI cable you carry is a needlessly upmarket and expensive version of the cable... assume they're slinking off to amazon for good reason... to go buy the cheap version of the right spec cable online.