[Colin A]

Never used an optical cable. Have the oppurtunity to hitch my AV receiver to my V+ STB (cable TV) which now delivers DD.
Would like recommendations on a low cost high quality optical cable (if that's possible) 1m length. I am a UK poster BTW.
Brands available easily here are QED, IXOS, Monster, Chord and Profgold. Thanks in advance for advice

[Rhoq]

I swear by the Radio Shack Gold Series TOSLink cables.

[Bob McElfresh]

Hi Colin.

Digital signals tend to be very insensitive to the cable so a inexpensive Radio Shack toslink cable works just fine.

Now there IS a huge quality difference in optical materials and you can find cables from $20 - $500 and the more expensive ones ARE really better cables.

But think of it this way - you are shining a flashlight on/off/on/off through the glass. If you had a friend do this in a dark room through the bottom of a drinking glass ($3) and through a Zeiss or Lica camera lens ($1,000) : which one will let you count the on/off/on/off combinations better?

Because you are just counting the on/off sequences - both work equally well.

(Of course the camera optics will do a much, much better job of transmitting the light - but the DVD player does not care about the quality/purity of the light - only that it can tell if it is on or off.)

A inexpensive, plastic-fiber based toslink cable will work great.

One caution: call your CATV company and ask if ALL the channels deliver audio through the optical port, or only the 'digital/premium' channels. In the early days, only the digital stations used the optical/coaxial output so the nice sound went silent when people changed to the lower channels which where the 'analog' stations. Very frustrating.

[ChristopherDAC]

At 1m length, the cable is unimportant. At 5+ metres, you can start running into trouble with the materials and workmanship letting too much light escape, resulting in difficulty recovering the signal, but for short runs almost anything will do. The RS Gold cables are very heavily built ; I also have an old 2m of theirs which is very lightly built and narrow, making it easier to thread through narrow spaces, and it works just fine.

[marcIs]

I love monster cable, but you should check out a site called "blue jeans cable"
thies cables get kick but reviews. There price points and tech beat any one out there including monster, and lets face monster is a little over priced www.bluejeanscable.com