Coaxial Cable

[nchammer]

I just bought coaxial cable for my home theatre, in which we are putting a projector. The coaxial cable was 12.99 for 49.2 feet. 75 oHm, omega coaxial cable. Does the coaxial cable come in different qualities? Like, I want to know if the image quality coming from the projector will be less with different coaxial cables. (For watching regular TV on the projector, ie. sporting events).

 

[mtrycrafts]

I just bought coaxial cable for my home theatre, in which we are putting a projector. The coaxial cable was 12.99 for 49.2 feet. 75 oHm, omega coaxial cable. Does the coaxial cable come in different qualities? Like, I want to know if the image quality coming from the projector will be less with different coaxial cables. (For watching regular TV on the projector, ie. sporting events).

No, that cable will be fine, not to worry. But do you need the full 50 ft of it or you will cut and terminate?

 

[nchammer]

No, that cable will be fine, not to worry. But do you need the full 50 ft of it or you will cut and terminate?

Yea, we needed pretty much the 50 feet. Had to fish it through the walls and get it upfront of the room, and the end it going to be plugged into a splitter from another cable outlet.

 

[WndrBr3d]

Yea, we needed pretty much the 50 feet. Had to fish it through the walls and get it upfront of the room, and the end it going to be plugged into a splitter from another cable outlet.

You lose about -3.5dB per split, and 50' of RG6/U has about -2.5dB of signal loss. This puts you at about -6dB signal, which is one fourth the signal strength of the input.

You might want to put a coax amplifier in front of the splitter. You could get a 15dB 2-way cable amp for roughly $25 which would help. If you do go this route, please make sure it's connected to a clean power source because most coax amplifiers can feed power noise into the signal very easily.

 

[nowonder]

I just bought coaxial cable for my home theatre, in which we are putting a projector. The coaxial cable was 12.99 for 49.2 feet. 75 oHm, omega coaxial cable. Does the coaxial cable come in different qualities? Like, I want to know if the image quality coming from the projector will be less with different coaxial cables. (For watching regular TV on the projector, ie. sporting events).

Hopefully this will be a stupid question, but what are you using for a tuner? You are aware that projectors don't have tv tuners built in... You need a cable box or vcr or something to change the channels, so you would want to run a HDMI or component video cable to the projector from the cable box.

Unless there is a projector with a turner I don't know about.

--nw

 

[nchammer]

Cool, thanks a lot! I never knew about the dB loss, and the tvTuner part. Appreciate the help!

 

[nchammer]

You lose about -3.5dB per split, and 50' of RG6/U has about -2.5dB of signal loss. This puts you at about -6dB signal, which is one fourth the signal strength of the input.

You might want to put a coax amplifier in front of the splitter. You could get a 15dB 2-way cable amp for roughly $25 which would help. If you do go this route, please make sure it's connected to a clean power source because most coax amplifiers can feed power noise into the signal very easily.

What do you mean about the power noise/clean power source? Enlighten me!

 

[jaxvon]

Basically that you're using either a dedicated circuit or power conditioner to plug your cable amplifier into. The same should go for all of your audio and video components. The other devices in your home can put garbage into the electrical lines which translates to noise in your audio and visual noise in your video. A quality power conditioner can alleviate this problem and, at the same time, protect your system from electricity spikes that occasionally occur in the power lines.

 

[Hi Ho]

Does the coaxial cable come in different qualities?

It does come in different quality levels. There is the really cheap stuff that just has a foil outer "wire". Then there is the middle quality cable that has a braid but no foil shield. The best coax has a braid and a foil shield. Luckily there is not much price difference between the three grades.

 

[jcPanny]

Projector connections

Your coax connection will only support 480i. Even low end <1K projectors have a native 480p resolution. If you are setting up an HT with front projection, you will probably want a DLP or LCD projector with 720P native resolution. This will require a component video or HDMI connection from the video source to the projector.