Here’s the one thing you need to know about computer and audio/video cables: They’re cheap.

“NO!” you exclaim, perturbed by my obvious and odious lie and my use of purple prose in this paragraph.

“But I spent $75 at Best Buy on an HDMI cable, and…”

Yeah, you’re an idiot. Though it’s not your fault. You, like many before you, have been duped by the markup gods and the big box retail game.

The truth is, depending on your technological needs, you can get away with paying little to nothing for cables and wires. Here’s what I mean:

Case #1: I have a new HD flatscreen television with a cable box. I do not have surround sound or an A/V receiver to hook up

You need: One HDMI cable. It will handle audio and video.

You could get away with: One component video cable (Red/Green/Blue plugs) and a Red/White RCA audio cable.

You should spend: $0. Comcast will give you either cable for free. Ask for the HDMI cable. It’s one wire that does everything instead of five wires. HDMI also supports 1080p, whereas component video only goes to 720.

What the stores have tried to sell me: An $89 — yes $89 — Monster HDMI cable. Again, you should spend ZERO dollars for the same quality.

Case #1a: I also have a Blu-ray player.

You need: To buy an HDMI cable, because it most likely did not come with your $30 Blu-ray player.

You could get away with: Asking your cable company nicely for a second HDMI cable. They literally have piles of these things.

You should spend: No more than $5. Don’t believe me? Click here.

The stores have tried to sell me: The $89 — yes $89 — Monster HDMI cable and a $35 optical audio cable. You don’t need an optical audio cable when you’re using HDMI. Ever.

Case 2: I have a flat-screen television, a brand new A/V surround sound receiver, a cable box, and a Blu-ray player.

You need: Speaker wire, a subwoofer cable, possibly a subwoofer Y-adapter, and three HDMI cables. You run one HDMI cable from the television to the receiver and one each from the receiver to the cable box and Blu-ray player. Same with a PlayStation 3. No audio cables needed. You run speaker wire from each speaker to its corresponding port on the receiver. DO NOT buy banana plugs or any other kind of accessory for the speaker wire. It’s simply another point of potential failure. Just use the bare wire.

You can get away with: Do not use component video cables. You’ll have to buy a separate coaxial or optical audio cable for surround sound (Dolby Digital/DTS) audio. Just use HDMI.

You should spend: $5 or less per HDMI cable and no more than about $15 for the speaker wire.

The stores have tried to sell me: The $89 — yes $89 — Monster HDMI cables, $35 optical audio cables, $40 Monster speaker cable and $10 speaker cable attachments.

Case 3: I have several home networking devices, including a NAS device, home theater PC, video game consoles, and a network printer

You need: Cat 6 cables and a gigabit router with Wireless N. You can use Wi-Fi for things like Wii, room monitors/security cameras, a smart thermostat, etc. For an Xbox 360/PS3, a computer, a NAS, and anything that is storing photos, videos, or music, you should make sure it is plugged into the network directly. Just my advice. Some will say Wi-Fi is there, but I say plug it in.

You can get away with: Cat 5e cables and a gigabit router with Wireless N.

You should spend: About $100 on the router (see this story) and $2-20 on each network wire.

The stores have tried to sell me: Extremely marked up routers and $20-40 cables. Think twice.

And here we go again.

Try walking into Target, Wawlmart, Staples, or a discount furniture store this time of year.

Everyone is spending all that discretionary income on back to school and back to college items. Beds and futons. Microwaves and microfridges. Notebooks and netbooks. It’s a cornucopia really.

We guarantee you missed something vital.

Here are five things you need, but didn’t buy, for your dorm or recently graduated apartment.

1. A home theater receiver with HDMI

You may have speakers. You may not, so keep that in mind.

What we know you DO have is a video game console or two, a Blu-ray player or DVD player and cable service with DVR. You also have that shiny new flat panel your parents bought you.

You need a home theater receiver to (a) have surround sound and (b) organize everything into a manageable mess.

An old hand-me-down receiver will not work. You need a receiver with HDMI ports.

On a budget, the Yamaha RX-V371BL will do the trick. It has four HDMI inputs as well as an output. This means you only need HDMI cables to wire up your PS3, video player, etc. You do not need several multicolored cables for video and optical cables for audio. One wire, done.

Of course, if you want to get a little more complicated and a lot more high-end, check this out.

2. A personal smoothie blender

You want the Oster BLSTPB-WBL My Blend 250-Watt Blender. Just trust our judgement on that.

You want to get in shape. You want to eat and drink healthy things. You just don’t have a handy solution. For all of $29.50, you can have a personal blender that makes fruit smoothies, mixes protein shakes, and allows you to craft something just for you.

The 20-ounce BPA-free plastic bottle is dishwasher safe and fits most cup holders.

It will pulverize frozen fruit, fresh fruit, ice, and even veggies, if you’re really healthy.

The My Blend also comes in a variety of stylish colors.

3. A keyboard case for iPad

You may very well have been lucky enough to own an iPad or have received one as a gift. The iPad is wonderful. The apps. The multimedia. The battery life. Love it.

The super duper new folding case? Not so much. It slips off and doesn’t provide much protection.

It’s also a bitch to type anything long on a touchscreen.

The Logitech Keyboard Case for iPad 2 solves a lot of these problems.

First, it is an aluminum case. It adds a new level of protection beyond the soft cover you may have purchased with the iPad. It’s also soft on the inside to keep your screen safe.

Second, it’s a real keyboard, no worse than a laptop keyboard. It lets you sit there and take notes or write emails or blog more comfortably on an iPad.

It also works in portrait or landscape mode.

4. HDMI and Cat5e Cables

We touched on wires a bit in the first option, but cables are the salt of the techno-dorm’s earth. The two main wires in services today are HDMI multimedia cables and Cat5e network wire.

Do. Not. Buy. Them. At. Best Buy.

At their core, cables and wires are cheap. They are just wire! Copper, plastic, rubber. Raw materials. They cost very little to make.

Do not pay $50 for an HDMI cable and $30 for a network cable.

Buy your cables on Amazon. You can get a good HDMI cable for $10 or a decent cable for about $3.

Network cable is even cheaper.

You can get 25-feet of Cat5E (which works for gigabit ethernet) for 30 cents on Amazon.

You need cables for all your devices. Don’t pay a lot for them.

5. A Crock-Pot

Even if you can’t cook at all, you can still use a Crock-Pot to make food.

And the Crock-Pot Cook and Carry 6-Quart Oval Manual Portable Slow Cooker lets you not only cook but bring your melange of foodstuffs with you. You can actually bring something homemade to that housewarming party you’re going to next week.

These slow cookers make stews and and chilis very doable. Anyone can cook with a Crock Pot, and if you’re new to living on your own, you need one. Unless you enjoy Ramen every day.

Oh, and it’s $29, so no price excuses here.

If you’re doing well in this economy, and you really want to blow the world away with your audio and video, check out the Marantz SR7005 receiver.

There is simply nothing better on the market right now.

Some people who spend a lot of money on audio/video products will say “no, Denon is better,” but they are essentially the same thing in different cases.

The SR7005 has six HDMI inputs, including one in the front, iPhone/iPod integration/AirPlay receiver, network media (Windows 7 compatible) playing and multiple zones to power speakers in different rooms.

OK so the catch is it’s $1500, but when you figure out that you spend about triple that on speakers, a TV, video game systems, Blu-ray, etc., it gets less scary.

The unit is advertised as a 7.1 system, but I’m very happy using it as a 5.2 system, as it has two subwoofer outputs.

As our friend Kirk Hobbs from South Shore Audio Video Installation points out, if you are going to go 7.1 or increase your speakers in any way, it’s best to start from the front. You don’t necessarily need four speakers behind you. Start with the basic 5.1 system, and add two additional front speakers, set above your first ones. This is especially true if you have high ceilings and are mounting speakers to the wall with the television.

You have plenty of room on the SR7005, because it supports up to 11 speakers in three different zones.

Setup was a breeze. The on-screen menu makes life easier. Plug everything in, then assign the correct names to your devices. Then plug in the included microphone, which automatically starts the speaker setup. Let it run through its paces, and your surround sound will be optimized automatically to the architecture of your room.

AirPlay is certainly one of the best features, especially for iPhone users, you can literally press a few buttons and send music and movies to their television. Windows 7 connectivity adds a similar bonus.

With its network connectivity features, the SR7005 also allows you to access Pandora and similar music services. The only thing I was looking for was Netflix. Perhaps in a future firmware upgrade…

Audio quality blew me away. The unit’s seven discrete, 125 watt amplifiers really do the job. Bass is powerful, high notes are clear with no distortion. Voices sound like they are in the room with you.

It also handles the full suite of Dolby technology: TrueHD, Digital Plus, Pro Logic IIz, IIx, II, Virtual Speaker, and Dolby Headphone as well as DTS features including HD Master Audio, High Resolution Audio, ES Discete6.1, Matrix6.1, Neo:6, 96/24, Express, and Neural Surround.

The unit is also sized right. It’s no bigger than any other receiver. It fits in your rack or TV cabinet just fine with the cable box and PS3.

If you’re looking for a high-quality choice to focus your home theater around, the SR7005 is right on the money.

We can finally declare things interesting in the Blast Audio Issue by looking at the Orb Audio Mod series product line.

Blast got to, well, blast, some tiny little Orb Mod2 and Mod4 setups, done by combining two or four of these baseball-sized speakers and pairing them with their Super 8 subwoofer.

We were quite satisfied with the setup of two speakers each for front left, front right and center and a single Orb for the rear left and right.

The system is completely modular, which is both a pro and a con. The good thing is that you can tear the system apart, pulling speakers to where you want them like a delicious 4-speaker center channel option. The bad thing is that it’s an utter pain in the ass to assemble the setup, and even harder to MacGyver the wiring, as you have to series-wire each speaker into the next.

There would have been a simple solution to this. The speakers use a simple, small binding post for plugging in speaker wire. Orb should have added a banana plug port at the top of the binding post or made the binding post longer with two holes so that you can completely fit the wires in the speaker. Wires popping out during use remained a concern for us, though it didn’t happen in our tests.

When you’re done pulling your hair out, the system sounds great. You really need to have the subwoofer for the whole experience, however. There is good bass definition with just the satellites, but there’s a clear improvement with the Super 8.

Under the hood, the Mod speaker has rare earth magnets paired with Santoprene, Nomex and CCAD voice coils that enable a good audio response.

The speakers also look great. They come in black gloss, pearl white gloss, polished steel, copper, and antique bronze. The subwoofer doesn’t match, however. It only comes in matte black with a gray grille.

You do get a big sound with these little speakers, and that’s always a positive. We’re seeing a ton of little speakers making a splash in home audio, but don’t confuse these with cheap bargain store specials. The setup we tested starts at about $1,000.

The speakers are only rated for about 110 watts, which is confusing and disappointing for such an expensive system.

If you’re really curious, you can get a starter package of two Mod speakers for $239, that are ready to plug into your home theater.

Technical specs on page 2.

High-end component maker Rotel recently let us test out their RDV-1093 DVD player to some fantastic results.

While we’re at the point where we’re thinking of Blu-ray, professionals and philes will appreciate the 1093 for its rich audio output and 1080p upconverting display.

The player supports a variety of formats including: DVD-Video for movies, DVD-Audio for high-resolution audio, DVD-R and DVD-RW. SVCD and JPEG photo discs, conventional music CDs or CD-R/RW discs and full MP3/WMA support on recorded discs.

There are also plenty of plugs including optical and coaxial audio, component and HDMI, 5.1 channel output and old-school composite video/stereo audio.

Another aspect not overlooked by Rotel is power management. “A switching power supply with an advanced pulse circuit and individually regulated supply stages generate optimal voltages,” Rotel says about the product. “Critical audio and video D/A converters are all wideband designs.”

It’s an amazing audio/video device that really blew us away. It’s an expensive toy at over $1,000, but it’s really solid.