I never liked Monster cables, too fancy for my taste. Now getting the $20 Dynex HDMI cables for under a buck, that was fun. Still have a decent sized box of those and power strips.

Former Best Buy employee as well. I heard the same thing - that there was a “Black Friday model” TV made, perhaps with less ports, or some other cost cutting measures of that sort. And yeah, price matching warehouse stores was tricky because of a) membership fee and b) because they could also be selling a model like…