CABLES 101: How to Choose The Best Cable
Are you using the best cable for the job? You may have heard terms like RG59, RG6, RG11, and Slim RG59 but you didn’t know what they meant. There is actually a real difference between these…
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What is a dB and why is it so confusing?
This is Alexander Graham Bell. He gets the credit for inventing the telephone, although it’s possible he doesn’t deserve it. Still, history is written by the winners, and it was the Bell Telephone Company that dominated the…
Can you use RG59 cable for satellite TV?
All cables are not made equal. Even two cables that look identical could still be completely different. When it comes to the coaxial cables you find in your home, they tend to fall into one of…
What is a dielectric?
Easy answer: It’s the thing marked “C”. Dielectric is the term used for the layer of plastic or foam between the center conductor wire of a cable and its outer braid. Coaxial cables are designed so…
DON’T DO THIS: “Go to town” on loose connectors
So the other day… A guy says he is having signal loss problems with his DIRECTV system. We went through all the regular troubleshooting steps and he casually mentions that his cables are nice and…
Broken cables? How does this happen?
I just read another story about it today. A 3-year-old cable “magically” went bad all by itself. How is that? The cable was fine, then it wasn’t. Sometimes, it’s a snap like you see in this…
Cables: How short is too short?
When wiring up an equipment rack, the tendency is always to try to be neat and eliminate unncessary cables. This can mean creating some extremely short cables to connect items that sit next to each other….
How can a coaxial cable give you true HD?
If you listen to the cable company, it can’t. But they’ve been known to be wrong. If you’re a cable customer you’ve probably been told recently that every TV in your house needs a cable…
Looking for custom 50-ohm cables? Solid Signal is your solution
Sometimes the right cable is hard to find. Trust me, I have boxes and boxes of them and sometimes I still can’t find the one I want. Luckily my friends at Solid Signal are there to…
What is the difference between component and composite?
This article originally ran several years ago. I thought it was time to bring it up again. Sometimes they don’t make it easy. The photo you see above is a component video cable. It’s got three RCA connectors…
What is “dual bonded” cable?
It’s a great way to save time. Dual bonded cable is a pair of cables that have been molded together so you can run them as one. It makes it easy to run cables from place…
Is RG59 cable really worse for antennas?
One of the blog staffers asked me recently if RG59 cable was really all that bad. Seems that some other blogs are claiming that if you don’t use RG6 cable, you’re doomed. Friends, I’m here to…
Is there an easy way to calculate loss over a cable?
Not if you really want to be accurate but… if you’re willing to cut a few corners you can calculate signal loss in your head. There are a lot of variables but if you’re willing to…