Spectrum, Perfect Vision Coax - Any Good? (1 Viewer)

[cakins]

Curious if anyone has heard of or has experience with Spectrum brand or Perfect Vision brand coax. I'm seeing several for sale on Ebay for decent prices and wondering if these are US made and about their general quality.

The Perfect Vision says it's DTV approved. Both are solid copper.

 

[David Willow]

What does DTV approved mean, anyway (rhetorical question)? I seen a commercial on TV the other day about getting a "Digital Antenna" for the February change over. These marketing folks just kill me.

Any RG6 coax will work. Go to Home Depot or Radio Shack.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

I hope not, because the shielding layer should be anything but "solid copper", it should be braided out of many lengths of stranded copper, if it is copper at all.

Don't believe the BS. Just go to Home Depot and buy some coax that you can afford.

 

[Clinton McClure]

What David said. Coax is coax as long as it's RG-6. The cheaper coax will work exactly the same as the expensive X Brand coax.

 

[cakins]

DTV is Direct TV I believe. I know certain of the cable and satellite providers specify certain cable specs - mainly solid copper. So some cable is now "cable company approved" I guess.

Various coax ads suggest things like: "Beware of the cheap cable sold elsewhere ..." I know it's all marketing, but was just curious is there is any validity to some of it. I HAVE seen a few posts on a different forum from 4 years ago suggesting some of the Perfect Vision cable had been problematic. But a lot can change in 4 years. Any company can have some mistakes, no matter how good the company.

 

[David Willow]

I have DirecTV (for 11 years now) and I have used cable from the original RCA kit, from Home Depot, and who know where else. As long as it is RG6, the ends are attached properly, and your runs are not over 100' you should be fine.

 

[Robert_J]

The anacronym DTV stands for Digital Television. For example DTV Answers : What you need to know about the February 17, 2009 switch to DTV. . The acceptable forum abbreviation for DirecTV has been D* for years. In the early years of satellite TV, there was Alphastar (A*), Primestar (P*) and Dishnetwork (E* - Echostar is the parent company). Since all used 'star' somewhere in the name, the asterisk became a 'star'. It was easy to just use D* when DirecTV came along.

Like David posted, if you get RG-6 from Lowes, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Monoprice or any other discount outlet then you are OK. You don't even need the quad shield stuff. Yes, the recommended limits are 100ft but I've gones as far as 145ft with standard RG-6 with no issues in the last 6 years.

-Robert