Hi Adam, While a $14,000 HDMI cable may seem ridiculous to you, there is a market for this level of product. No matter the arduous standards that have to be upheld to even qualify and be sold as a compliant HDMI lead, you are correct that if there is a cheap cable and an expensive cable that meet those standards there should be no difference in either audio or video quality, and so to the average punter these cables seem disgusting - even predatory - in their sale. This ignores several major factors, however;