Whether of the plasma, LCD or DLP variety, flat-screen televisions are a fact of home entertainment life for more Americans. Although these sleek machines come with basic plugs to get picture and sound, they lack the additional cabling, adapters and set-top boxes to facilitate the performance and options customers expect.

"Consumers often don't realize when they buy a television that they need a particular kind of cabling to get the quality they see in the store, so they often come back for that," notes Kelly Courter, a personal shopping assistant for Best Buy.

Cabling also is needed to connect televisions to ancillary devices, such as speakers, DVD players and the exploding digital video recorder (DVR) market which is expected to rise to 67 million units in 2009, according to research firm In-Stat.