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Gear / Technical Help => Cables => Topic started by: Jimna on October 20, 2009, 06:47:49 PM
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any advantage? i can get RG59 silver solid core cable for free from work, they use it in the headends, but im not sure there is an advantage to doing so. i wanted it to make a new 30' cable to run from my PC to preamp.
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Silver is a slightly better conductor than copper. I suspect your company uses it to convince the customers "we use the best available", even if it doesn't make a huge difference. With digital signals especially, I'm not sure it makes a difference. If you have a copper run now which works good, then bits and bytes are going from one end to the other just fine. They won't travel "better" on silver.
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no one sees what comcast uses in the headend, nor do they advertise it either, so i would say there is a reason they use it.
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Yes, silver is a better conductor, no doubt about that. About 4% better. Does it matter for most things? I doubt it. But marketing hype by cable salesman will directly contradict my opinion.
A 24/96 SPDIF signal is about 5 megabits/second, which is about the same bitrate as a home Internet cable modem (give or take some amount), and they aren't afraid to use ratty old copper going into the cable modems. That's pretty low tech really. On the other hand, digital cable probably has phenomenal bitrates, so that's a different story. Also, if they drop bits, and some guy sees a glitch on his new 99" high def TV, then they have a pissed off customer and have to send a high paid tech out on a call. In that sense, spending a few extra bucks on cable, even if it might only reduce the likelihood of problems a little bit, is good business sense.
If you have a run of copper in your house now, and you aren't hearing glitches, you won't hear LESS glitches by switching to silver. And you won't hear higher highs and lower lows.
If you just want to run it, run it.
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and have to send a high paid tech out on a call.
no your confused, this is comcast not the phone co. no high paid techs in the cable co. >:(
but thanks for your input!
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What are you using it for?
BTW, you may not see drop outs in digital cable video service very often but that is
because of the forward error correction that is used over the link.
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What are you using it for?
a run from my PC to the stereo
BTW, you may not see drop outs in digital cable video service very often but that is
because of the forward error correction that is used over the link.
yeah, im very aware. i measure BER & MER at all homes now.
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a run from my PC to the stereo
Use it. In this case the biggest advantage is price. ;)