Digital Coaxial Cable deal

[skunky]

I Just thought I would pass my fiding onto anyone that has or is planning on buying a home theater package. I just recently bought a reciever at Circuit City and they tried to seel me a Coaxial Cable there to hook up the DVD player to the reciever. They were going to charge me 50 bucks for a monster cable which was a total ripoff. I went over to Radio Shack a couple of days later and found the same thing minus the name Monster, for $15. By the way it is worth it to spend the 15 bucks on the cable. The sound is MUCH BETTER!!!!

[Roy2001]

Any A/V cable will do the job. The signal from DVD player is digital, 0 or 1. There will be very small chance of noise come in. And I believe DVD player will come with that cable. For speaker wire or A/V cable, monster could do better job, but for digital connection, any A/V cable will be capable.

[skunky]

Not quite true Roy, you need a Digital Coaxial Cable to get true DOlby Surround or DTS from your rerciever. That is the only way to decode it from the DVD player. Trust me if you have a DVD player and a reciever that support a Coaxial Cable it is WAY worth it to get one. The sound from regular AV cables is ok, but it is 10 times better with the coaxial cable.

[PZYCHO]

Or optical cable. Pretty much same quality, although it is said that optical is better for longer distances.

[Roy2001]

Hi,

This time I think I will be right. For AV cable, you will get better quality from those like monster with gold plated connection. It's true since analog signal go through these cables, if the copper is not pure enough, connection between cable and AV/speakers is not good, which means larger resistance, current will change and noise could be mixed with original signal and it won't be good enough.

But for digital connection, signal will be 0 or 1, or in other words, will be 0v or 3.3v (for 3.3v technology). But there is some noise margin, say 0-1v will be 0, and 2.5-3.5v will be 1. So even cable quality is not so good (for example resistance is too large and/or noise coming) and 0v could become 0.3v or 3.3v become 2.8v, decoder still can work perfectly.

Roy

EDIT: one more word, optical cable has the same quality as coaxial cables. I think the only advantage is you can connect it to other device like MD.

[Roy2001]

Just like (digital) file on a disk, you have it or you lost it. They are the same, optical or coaxial, as long as signal reach your receiver/decoder.

Trust me, I am EE engineer in chip design company.

[froggystyle]

i cant activate dts or dolby digital on my sony reciver without a digital coax or optical....i was trying to get it to work and it just wouldnt...then i bought an optical cable and badda bing its working. standard a/v do not always do the job is what im trying to say

[DanielNTX]

I gotta agree with Roy if it remains in the digital domain, it doesn't make a difference. It's all in the bits... the same bits.

Originally posted by Roy2001
Hi,

This time I think I will be right. For AV cable, you will get better quality from those like monster with gold plated connection. It's true since analog signal go through these cables, if the copper is not pure enough, connection between cable and AV/speakers is not good, which means larger resistance, current will change and noise could be mixed with original signal and it won't be good enough.

But for digital connection, signal will be 0 or 1, or in other words, will be 0v or 3.3v (for 3.3v technology). But there is some noise margin, say 0-1v will be 0, and 2.5-3.5v will be 1. So even cable quality is not so good (for example resistance is too large and/or noise coming) and 0v could become 0.3v or 3.3v become 2.8v, decoder still can work perfectly.

Roy

EDIT: one more word, optical cable has the same quality as coaxial cables. I think the only advantage is you can connect it to other device like MD.