I have to disagree with John on this one.
At any given time, I might have $150,000 worth of equipment plugged into the wall and have lost equipment in the past to "electrical issues"...certainly not direct strikes but more than a spark from a dry room.
ALL of my equipment is connected through suppressors and voltage regulators from Furman, Tripplite, Monster and APC...despite that there's a "whole house" lightning arrestor on my main panel.
One of the issues that people face in a HT environment actually makes it more vulnerable than my professional equipment: There's cable/satellite coming in, and maybe telephone as well. Even with a whole-house lightning protector, I've lost TiVos, credit-card verifying apparatus, etc.., from surges on telephone lines.
Despite all that, I STILL agree that Monster is overpriced and use this model from TrippLite in my HT:
It ran about $130 (compared to Monster's $250 equivalent) and offers coax and phone protection as well. It's the model HTPowerbar10 and you can find info on it
here. There's many online dealers for it; a Google search will bring up many good choices.
