Coax Cable
Will I be able to see a difference in Coax cable RG6 vs RG 59?
Just got a 50" 720p Plasma TV & a High Gain outdoor antenna.
Getting ready to install the antenna and I saw a few people talking about how much better RG6 coax cable is, but I have a bunch of RB 59 Coax Cable laying around the house. Is it worth spending money on getting new RG6 cable or will the old stuff do? Can you see a big difference?
Thanks HDTV guys.
YES.
Hm, well, let me amend that. I can't promise you will see a difference. I can tell you, though, that RG6 is the right thing for your antenna lead-in, and RG59 is not.
If you have a need for a high gain antenna on a mast, you don't want to risk losing signal in the cable, or interference into the cable ("ingress") from nearby noise sources.
RG59 is ok for VHF, but for a long run (like from an outside antenna) it does have a more loss at higher frequencies.
RG6 is also much better shielded against signal ingress above 50 MHz.
You want RG6 dual or quad shield for your antenna cable.
Conversely, the foil shield and copper-clad steel center conductor used in RG6 don't work so well at lower frequencies, so you want to use RG59, not RG6 for baseband video (which includes component video, the Y Pb Pr signals) and digital audio, and even composite video.
It is not true that "since it's digital it doesn't matter so much." If you have a marginal signal, very close to deteriorating into "blockies", the extra noise ingress allowed by RG59 might be enough to push it over the edge into "blockies most if not all of the time."