hdtv over coax q (1 Viewer)

[JamesHl]

I've been thinking about this since I've been playing with the hd cable box more lately. I'm watching harry potter on hbohd right now and it's quite phenomenal. So how does this picture and sound come out of a ratty coax cable, lowest of the low quality interconnects?

 

[Bob McElfresh]

The audio and video both arrive at the CATV office in a digital format. Digital is much less sensitive to the cable than analog so it appears 'perfect'. Here it is converted to a different digital format on some 'channel' your CATV company chooses to use for HBO-HD. Your STB decodes the 'channel' back to the original digital, then decodes the video to component (analog). It also decodes the audio to L/R (but hopefully you have a digital connection to your receiver).

 

[JamesHl]

Yeah, I'm also surprised by the quality of the 5.1 sound...

So it's by virtue of the fact that most interconnects are analog that you can tell a difference in what sort of cable that you're using?

 

[Chu Gai]

sometimes not even then if one carefully matches output levels.

 

[Bob McElfresh]

Well it takes a fairly sensitive system, and it has to be a persons own system using CD's he plays over and over again so he is very attuned to it's sound - then this person could hear the slight difference a change in analog interconnect can make.

Analog interconnets, and speaker wires, DO make a difference. But it's a slight one and not worth all the hype that some $$$$ cable companies claim.

Think of drinking wine from a plastic cup, a drinking glass or the correct-sized wine glass. In all cases, the wine tastes the same, but the glass 'colors' or 'changes' the experience. Wires .. have a similar effect.

Your CATV company is using digital encoding so you experience essentially perfect transmission over inexpensive RG6 coax.