What is the point of High-End ($$) A / V wires, when it all comes in on Coaxial?

An easier question to ask than to answer properly!

The main thing to understand is that what comes over the cable and into the cable box (or satellite box) is a different type of signal than what comes out of the box and the different signal types can be degraded in different ways.

A cable TV cable coming to your house (or the cable coming from the satellite dish) contains information for many different channel signals spread across a wide frequency spectrum. For digital signals, which you seem to be most interested in here, the picture as well as the sound for *every channel* you can get is there on the cable, encoded digitally at one frequency or another. The broadband cable is designed to carry all these signals at the same time to the decoder box, and does a fine job of it.

The job of the box is to select and decode *just the channel you want to watch* and send that signal to your TV and/or sound system. However, your eyes and ears cannot sense digital data, so at some point the signals must be converted back to analog. This is where a lot of the confusion comes in. Once the signals are analog they are subject to degradation.

The rankings of quality for different types of cables (with coaxial on the bottom) have to do with the type of signals they carry. This is mostly an issue when you are sending an analog signal from the box to the TV.

The reason composite (which is transmitted by an RCA cable that you are thinking of as "coaxial") is on the bottom of this list is not so much because coaxial is bad cable (it's not), but because this particular coaxial carries an analog signal that is already a kludge - a modulated combination of a black-level (lumina) and color information (chroma). A device called a comb filter in your TV must seperate out these two components, potentially causing signal degradation.

Next on the quality list is S-video, which uses different wires to carry the chroma and lumina information, which is better but still requires the TV to decode color information from the degradable analog chroma signal. Even better is component cables which sends the analog signal for each color independently.

Each of these analog cable options is actually "coaxial" in construction! So it's not the cable type, it's the *signal* type that leads to differences in ultimate quality. This is why you want to use decent cables to transmit the signals without degradation, but recognize that high-priced "exotic" cables are still subject to the limitations of the signal type.

Now, in the HDTV world, things are a bit different (pun intended). Your HD cable box will still output analog signals which are subject to some of the same types of degradation as standard analog signals. A bigger problem is that the TV now has to digitize that signal (that started digital but is now analog) back into a digital format and re-map it to pixels, resulting in some degradation.

So the best objective is to get the signal to the TV in digital format and let the TV do the decoding more or less directly to the pixels. In this case the box is just picking out the right channel and converting it to bits that are sent to the TV and/or sound system. Often the digital bit stream for audio and video signals are seperated. And, in fact, again all the different options are essentially coaxial cables in different forms.

Here, you are absolutely correct in thinking that any cable that can successfully get the bits from one place to another will work equally well. In the digital realm there is even less reason to use exotic or expensive cables. But because there are multiple bitstreams involved, there generally needs to be more than one wire used and thus multi-connection formats such as SPDIF and HDMI (really just multiple coaxial wires bundled together) are used. Since these cables are mechanically more complex than a single-signal RCA cable they can be a little more expensive, but there is still no need for a "fancy" expensive version where a simple one will do.

Also, it *is* technically possible to just run the same cable that comes into the house directly to the TV, provided that the TV has an integrated digital cable tuner (or "cable card" capability). All the connections and converstions I talked about above are still present, they are just being done internally to the set.

Whew! Hope this helped.

It is all about the transport protocol. The HD (ATSC) service you get is on a specific type of coax (RG-6) this will handle the broadband digital signal into a receiver. The specified communications are a poled interrupt and carried along at specific modulated frequencies that carry the data in a digital form. The speed and amount of retransmission or signal bit paring for error detection make this a rugged transport. The reason most cable providers had to change out the existing RG-59 cabling that they had was to account for signal entropy and far field harmonics. The existing cable could not deal with any change in temperature or even humidity to reliably carry a signal. Hence the use of a higher bandwidth cable with a different set of RFI/EMI shielding. Signals can range from very low 500kHz to the GHz range.

The RF cabling referred to is a AV connection one that is decoded by what ever box and then re-modulated to an antiquated carrier with less of lines of resolution with audio and has a lot of issue with interference this modulation conforms only to NTSC standards and thereby would not be capable of a HD signal.

That said the proper cabling is important in a system. the cabling you choose should be 10% of your total system cost. Monster is a great value brand and if the proper level of cable is sold to match equipment then you will get good results. It is not a 10% to component cost but total system cost. You should be able to get $100 dollars worth of cable for a $1000 system and get 98% performance out of the system. However to get the remaining 2% you will have to invest a cabling cost of 70% of system cost, that is what we call a diminishing return of performance. Most systems are designed with a 5% flux in signal quality so at worst two components will have 6% loss but they are designed to 5% so we are really only talking about 1% signal improvement.

Now on to the Digital is digital it doesn't matter. Again it is all about the transport. don't even get me started on HDMI, so I will ignore that altogether. Even though a digital audio signal is digital it can be affected by interference, meaning that the DAC is programmed to interpolate results for a signal that is not there based upon the previous and next signal. But what if a key signal is contained in that sample? You loose it, forever. This is why a good Coax or Optical cable is key to good performance.

Analog of course you need a good cable ( but not too good remember the diminishing returns above).

HDMI is such a flawed transport on so many levels ( connector, twisted pair cabling, error detection and correction AV sync), that the only reason I recommend a Monster cable for it is the improved connector that won't fall out, otherwise it is a little too much for most systems.

It is good you question cabling, it is a integral part of any system and should be given consideration when you set up and evaluate your purchase. However if Best Buy and Circuit City are where you think the top of the line is then stay away from anything besides the 10% rule.

Also consider power conditioners and cable management, these two alone will help improve the performance of your system.

Happy Home Theatering

The easy answer is that coaxial cable can transfer analog and digital signals. Analog and digital signals are just RF signals modulated on copper wires.

Digital signals will usually yield a higher quality image than analog because digital signals are more robust than analog signals. It has to do with signal degradation, resolution and amplification in the RF network. It's much easier to control the quality with digital.

The reason why HD cannot be demodulated at the TV is because you need a different demodulator for different cable providers. You can almost think of it as an encrypted or password protected signal. If you don't have the password, then you cannot watch the shows. That is why you need a set top box, which decodes or demodulates the signal. After it leaves the set top box, the signal is unencrypted and you can watch it on your TV through composite, s-video, component or HDMI.

The digital signal coming over your cable can withstand the poor quality of the coax cable.

However, when you connect a coax OUTPUT from your cable box to your TV, the cable box is converting the digital signal to an analog video signal, then modulating that signal to the normal broadcast frequencies expected by the TV, then the TV is DEMODULATING the signal back down to its normal analog video, and generating a picture. All of this conversion adds a lot of distortion to the signal which doesn't occur when the pure digital signal is passed to the TV (via HDMI or COMPONENT VIDEO cables).

Your HD signal enters through a coax cable but the data stream is compressed into a digital Mpg format to save bandwidth. When your cable box receives the information it uncompressed the file and converts it to a digital signal. Once the signal is converted it then goes to your TV in small data bits. A coax cable is one wire only allowing one large stream of data and unable to carry the full HD data stream. Component video is 3 wires breaking the data stream into 3 separate data bit signals by the primary color. s-video is a 7 pin allowing the data stream to flow over 7 separate pins allowing more data to flow more quickly. Then there is DVI and HDMI where you have 18 or 19 pins on HDMI allowing the data stream to be broken down and send data over 18 to 19 pins allowing enough data to stream with less resistance to produce true 1080p HD, the only difference really between HDMI and DVI is HDMI also carries a digital audio stream.

This post above is partially correct but long winded. The cable that comes to your cable box is copper clad steel. The steel center conductor is coated with copper and is used for high frequncy signals. These HF signals travel along the outside of the center conductor which is called "skin effect." The reason you "shouldn't" use this type of coax is because the baseband video signals such as component are lower in frequency and tend to use the entire center conductor as opposed to the skin. Coax that has a solid copper center condutor should be used for all baseband video signals. Also, the cable is not called and RCA. It is indeed called a coax. The connector is called an RCA which is the preferred connector of consumer gear.

As far as which coax to use, if you are going 3 to 6 feet then either will work. Anything longer than 6' should be a coax with solid copper center conductor.

O.K. Lets start with the high $ A/V cables.

There is something that all the manufacturers of expensive cable would like you to know.

"There is a difference between the average priced cable and theirs"

The difference is honestly minimal, but there is a difference! You can get quality cables from several manufacturers. Some of which don't spend millions on advertizing. The bottom line is you can have clean signal as long as the cable is put together right.

Now about the coaxial thing. Radio Frequecy Transmission is how most signal is recieved in the U.S.(Microwave is just fast RF) This is a broadcast carrier wave with the signal you realy want buried inside. The signal you want must be demodulated (or removed from) The carrier wave. In the case of cable or satalite boxes an authorization code must be read by the box before it will release the signal you want.

In the old days the analog carrier wave had several analog signal waves riding along it. (remember the antenna on the roof?) Today these carrier waves have digital information riding the wave. This adds up to more information riding the wave.

More info = mmore channel = more advertizers= more $

Now to address the expensive cable out there. The key to a good picture is a clean signal. Wether we are talking RF, Comosite, Component, Hdmi....

RF or that coax you see feeding every thing is great for carrier wave but when it comes to video signal there are better options. The best brand I know is Beldin

Composite is the Yellow, Red and White cables you are used to seeing. the video is seperated from the audio. This is the first step up from RF. These can be judged generally by the heft of the cabl. skinny RCA cable = High noise.

S-video was the next advancement we seperated the pieces of the video signal and ran them on individual leads inside a single wire. Audio was run seperately. Again if its fat, thats that.

Component #1 My favorite approach to video signal transmission The earlier version of component had every signal for video seperated and run on an individual highly insulated cables. (If you are gonna do something do it right!) This ended up with five seperate cables but zero chance of signal degradation on short runs. The drawback was there wer five cables running from your cable box to your TV and that was just for video!!

Component #2 The current configuration has the chroma and sinc added to one cable each This set up gives us three video and two audio for the five total cables that you see today. These are my preference in basic HD home theater installs. I just don't have as many issues as I see with HDMI. Again heft is the key.

O.K. Now what could be done to improve seperating the individual signals? Well the only thing I can think of is to illiminate the transmision. Why don't we just connect the control and processing IC's from each unit directly to each other?

Enter the age of HDMI, DVI USB...

What will they think of next?

Everything will come full circle and go wi-fi.

My friend that is just a fancy name for RF

Andyman Out

I dont believe its actually the coax line bringing you the HD signal, i think its broadcasted in HD, downconverted through the analog coax line, then upscaled and converted to an HD signal once it reaches the reciever from your cable/satellite provider, then progressively sent through your component/hdmi cables to your display.

You have stumbled across a reality that eludes most "Monster Shouters" here.

Digital doesn't care. As long as it is getting from one end of the cable to the other, it's as good as it can be. A more expensive cable will not make an already perfect (to its a to d, d to a conversion) any better.

FIGHT THE POWER!

the analog signal comes into your house and is converted to digital and or high def. once it hits the box