An RG6 cable story

[Indydan]

So about 25 years ago, I "heard" RG6 was better than RG59. I had a 25 foot coaxial RG59 plugged into a coupler, to the cable coming out of the wall. This 25 foot cable went to the modem-router. From there, an ethernet cable went to a switch, etc.
I changed this 25 foot RG59 cable to a 25 foot RG6 cable about 25 years ago. The only RG6 cable I could find was a (bear with me) Monster cable brand. So, I installed it.
Last week, I decided to get back into cable TV. I hooked up my fancy little 4K Cable box. The picture quality was not very good.
An AI search pointed to the 25 year old Monster Cable RG6 cable as the possible problem. The Monster is only dual shielded, and has bad connectors according to AI. Plus, the connectors might also be tarnished.
I replaced it with a G-Plus RG6 cable I found on Amazon. It is triple shielded and has better connectors and pins. The G-PLus is also much thicker than the Monster Cable. Lo and behold, the picture quality on my TV cleared up.
Another reason to hate Monster Cable!

 

[highfigh]

So about 25 years ago, I "heard" RG6 was better than RG59. I had a 25 foot coaxial RG59 plugged into a coupler, to the cable coming out of the wall. This 25 foot cable went to the modem-router. From there, an ethernet cable went to a switch, etc.
I changed this 25 foot RG59 cable to a 25 foot RG6 cable about 25 years ago. The only RG6 cable I could find was a (bear with me) Monster cable brand. So, I installed it.
Last week, I decided to get back into cable TV. I hooked up my fancy little 4K Cable box. The picture quality was not very good.
An AI search pointed to the 25 year old Monster Cable RG6 cable as the possible problem. The Monster is only dual shielded, and has bad connectors according to AI. Plus, the connectors might also be tarnished.
I replaced it with a G-Plus RG6 cable I found on Amazon. It is triple shielded and has better connectors and pins. The G-PLus is also much thicker than the Monster Cable. Lo and behold, the picture quality on my TV cleared up.
Another reason to hate Monster Cable!

25 years ago, RG6 QUAD shield was widely available, but maybe not at retail. Munster Cable bought from manufacturers, sold to retailers, had their F-Conn brand ends gold plated and that caused problems with some equiment because the ends fit too tightly on the RCA jacks.

Thickness generally doesn't matter unless they want to make people believe that bigger is better- while it's true that the distance from the center conductor to the outside of the dielectric helps to lower noise, it's not as simple as diameter.

If the cable was left alone for the whole period since installation, it's possible that oxidation occurred and degraded the connection. OTOH, 4K didn't exist at that time, so you couldn't have known it would be a problem in advance.

Never heard of triple shielded and I have been in the AV business for a very long time. Under normal conditions, RG6 without quad shield is fine, unless the area has a lot of EMI/RF interference.