Are coax cables good quality?

Question

I'm a little confused. Are coaxial cables now considered good quality?
I remember coax cables from 15-20 yrs ago and they were always though a sub-par choice (even lower than RCA composite -r/w/y), at least I thought.
My wife and I just bought an HDTV for the bedroom and it lists the different possible connections with coax rated as "Best (digital)", which is the same rating they gave HDMI.
I was hooking up my cable box, which only has coax, RCA(composite) and S-video. I figured that S-video + RCA would be better than coax, but maybe I'm wrong?
What's the deal here? Is there a coax digital and a coax analog or something?
I'm pretty sure I have some old white coax cables in a box o'junk somewhere. lol

Answer 1

There is quite a bit of confusion here that stems from general use of the word co-ax.



Co-axial refers to a wire type with two conductors that are separated by an air gap. The centre conductor is a straight drawn copper wire and the outer conductor is a copper braid that is wrapped (co-axially) around the plastic that forms the air gap. This is then insulated normally shielded and then covered with a further insulation.



I think when you are referring to co-ax from the old days you are talking about the cables that were made to take an over the air RF TV signal from the antenna to the TV. These cables (which were made of co-ax) used either a bnc, "F" or belling-lee type connector.They carried an RF (radio frequency) composite audio/video signal and could only support 480i video and 2 channel stereo.



The step up from this connection was to separate out the audio and video signals from RF and transport them via RCA cables using a composit video and 2 channel audio 3 piece cable (red,white and yellow) This cable did not have to be co-axial construction. This still only supported 480i and 2 - channel stereo.



The step up from here was to separate out the colour (not quite technically right but enough for a lay explanation) components of the video into red green and blue. This could be transported down a normal RCA cable. These typically had red green and blue RCA connectors. This video supported analogue video up to 1080i.

Audio continued to be transported via the red and white RCA in a 2 channel analogue format or you could use a digital format that used one RCA cable (normally orange connector) that was made out of co-axial. This gave you 5.1 channel audio in a compressed format.



S-Video tried to separate out composite video into 2 channels of color and luminance. It still only gave 480i but was better than either RF or composite.



Cutting to the chase here regarding your bedroom TV.



The best cable to use would be the HDMI. This will give you digital all the way, up to 1080p video support and digital audio all in one cable.



The next best alternative.

Use a component cable (RCA red green and blue) for the video This will support up to 1080i analogue and if your TV has a digital audio input use a digital co-ax (Orange RCA) or optical (toslink) connection. This will give you digital compressed audio support up to 5.1. If your new TV does not have a digital audio input you will need to use the 2 channel stereo input (red and white RCA)



It is probably best to buy some new cables rather than rely on the ones from the "box o'junk" as corrosion on the connectors will effect your signal transfer.



Hope this has helped.



If you want to know more about the HDMI interface and HDMI cables you can download the free 21 page ebook "HDMI Demystified" at the following link.

http://www.hdmisystems.com/

Answer 2

Coax carries radio frequency. But the signal that comes into your house is different than the one runs from the cable box to the TV. The signal that comes into your house contains dozens of different channels, each at a different frequency.The cable company has rooms filled with racks of transmitters, each sending one channel at one frequency. If you have digital cable, you can compress more on each channel. In either case your cable box tunes/decodes these. coax serves a different purpose when it leave the cable box (or VCR, or other device). Unlike the cable company, your box has one very low power and cheap transmitter for either channel 3 or 4. Signals sent in this manner are of poorer quality because all the video information (color, brightness, etc) and all the audio information are just within that one channel. It usually isnt even stereo. I suppose cable boxes and DVD players could encode the output as the digital channel 3 or 4 but they would be very expensive. The other cables you mention are, in fact, better. They all use some form of spreading out the video and audio info so it's put together right at the TV. The scam in all of this is the different kinds of HDMI, component, etc. Monster cables, gold plated nonsense, etc. is the real crap.

Answer 3

Generally,digital coax outputs/inputs are colored orange.They allow transfer of 5.1 6.1 and 7.1 surround signals(you can only get these signals by using digital coax,an optical cable or hdmi).If both of your inputs/outputs are orange then you can use a digital coax cable, which is really just a shielded copper wire.You can also use a single RCA cable if you don't want to buy a new one.I think there is a difference in using an actual coax cable.

Answer 4

I'm pretty sure they're right. I'm not 100% on what digital coax is, but it's not low quality.



To the guy above me: I think you mean RCA plug when you say "regular" plug. Banana plugs are only used for terminating speaker wire, not line level signals.

Answer 5

no no no. coax cables are horrible..





for your case, get a new cable box from your cable people if you can... you want one with hdmi (or dvi, or at LEAST component (rgb)) and either digital audio optical or coax



the coax cables they are referring to is AUDIO coax.. which is a special coax with banana plugs (regular plugs) at the end and not that tiny metal stick. it's confusing but don't use those obsolete screwy coax cables out of your cable box..

Answer 6

yes, good quality.