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How many people do you think have $5,000 TV's and use coax to hook it up? (1 Viewer)

Kenneth Harden

Screenwriter
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May 13, 2002
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Think about it. Someone goes to Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. and buys a nice 65" RPTV, takes it home, and hooks it up to their $500 DVD player via coax or RCA cable? They are clueless, and if lucky (VERY lucky), a HT buff comes over to their house and shows them what they have been missing.

Imagine having a nice HDTV and nice progressive scan DVD player - but hooking them up with some coax :eek:
 

Dave Milne

Supporting Actor
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Jul 2, 2001
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568
:confused:

What's wrong with coax? Virtually all signal cable is coax. My display (a CRT front projector considerably more expensive than a "$5000 TV") is connected to my video scaler (also considerably more expensive than a "$5000 TV") with 5 runs of RG-59 coax (soon to be replaced with Canare L5-CFB coax). My DVD player is connected to my pre-pro with AudioQuest coax terminated with WBT RCA connectors --making it an "RCA cable". I guess I'm clueless ;)
 

JohnnyG

Screenwriter
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Dec 18, 2000
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When I'm hooking equipment up for a customer in their home, I explain the difference and benefit of hooking up equipment in different ways. In *most* cases, the customer will readily opt for simplicity over quality. For example, most would prefer to have all their signals go through their receiver with s or even composite video in order to use the receivers video switching and not have to bother switching both the TV and the receiver.

I would also guess that at least half the HD capable sets I've sold will never display an HD signal!
 

Kenneth Harden

Screenwriter
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I guess I'm clueless
I guess you are :D

Anyway, the jump from composite to S-video is amazing. Back in 1992, we bought a really nice 27" Toshiba and it had a S-video jack on it. At that point, we had a VCR and cable TV. In 1996/7, we bought a DSS system (we bought it a month after the service started and have never looked back) and the receiver had a S-video output on it. We stood there (well, my dad and I...) in awe of how good it looked. It was night and day. Now we have component video running to our new TV from the DVD player (the $$$ gold Radio Shack RCA's)
 

StephenL

Second Unit
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Nov 21, 2000
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Composite Video: one coaxial cable
S-Video: two coaxial cables
Component Video: three coaxial cables
RGB+HV: five coaxial cables (typically)
 

Kevin Deacon

Second Unit
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Dec 18, 2001
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Hey Kenneth, what you don't understand when you say,
"Imagine having a nice HDTV and nice progressive scan DVD player - but hooking them up with some coax" is that coax cable can be terminated with RCA jacks and used on the component(RBG)outputs. In fact Belden and Canare supply some of the best coax cable in the industry to be used as digital and analog interconnects, speaker connects, as well as video connects.

Maybe you mean the clueless(less informed) people use the composite connections instead of the s-vid or component connections. Also, Belden and Canare Coax cable will walk all over those "$$$ gold Radio Shack RCA's"
 

Mike Boniferro

Second Unit
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Aug 21, 1999
Messages
273
That's what I took him to mean (F-connections) ... (ie a DVD/VCR combo that outputs the DVD A/V signal through modulated RG59 coax with f connectors... and progressive scan turned off, and the DVD player set to 4:3 on their new 16:9 set) :D
 

AaronSP

Auditioning
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Jul 30, 2003
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12
I've heard of custom installers charging rich people an arm an a leg for sweet HT systems, then using COMPOSITE cable to hook the video eq up!
 

David_Rivshin

Second Unit
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Dec 13, 2001
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350
This anecdote isn't exactly inline the discussion here, but I think it's related enough to mention it :)
Awhile back I was picking one of my friends up from her parent's house. They had recently purchased a nice Panasonic HD RPTV (on the order of 55" I believe) and seemed relatively proud of it. While I was waiting for a few minutes I watched what was on the TV at the time. The first thought that entered my mind was "wow, the convergence on this thing is really off." Now mind you I was sitting in the range of 12 feet away from the TV, at approximately a 30 degree angle and wasn't even attempting critical evaluation. Upon closer examination the red, green, and blue signals were evenly distributed over a distance of probably a 5mm, and that was near the center of the screen. I mentioned this to my friend, and she agreed that it might be abit fuzzy, but didn't particularly seem to care much. Neither, I presume, did her folks. I also mentioned that perhaps they should hire an ISF calibrator to come in and fine tune the set as it would undoubtedly make it look much better. Not much interest there either.

I would think that this scenario is pretty common among the J6P crowd. Big TV = good. Bigger TV = better. Having laid down the cash insures it's as good as it can be, and that's what's important. Likely just a matter of education, but not many people care to be educated about such things.

Oh, while I'm at it, I also noticed the speakers that they had. Some little Sony cubes, IIRC, which wouldn't be so horrible in and of itself. The bad part is that *all* 5 speakers were placed ontop of the TV. The center all the way forward, the mains about half way to each side and back an inch or so, and the surrounds farther over and farther back still. I have no idea why they were placed like that, and I wasn't about to ask. I also wasn't about to go poking around at how things were connected, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see that dental floss cable that likely came with the components, if not just standard A/V composite+L/R cable all around... Some things are just better left unknown :)

-- Dave
 

Jack_TN

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
May 5, 2003
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88
The bad part is that *all* 5 speakers were placed ontop of the TV. The center all the way forward, the mains about half way to each side and back an inch or so, and the surrounds farther over and farther back still
Well, the surrounds are 'back' speakers :D

Jack
 

ChrisWiggles

Senior HTF Member
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Aug 19, 2002
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Gosh, and then there are all those clueless people feeding digital projectors with component video. :D :D :D

Will be no less than htpc feeding CRT via RGBHV here. ;)

And Kenneth, your post is confused, I assumed you meant composite connectors. These are ALL coax connections...

What exactly DID you mean??
 

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