? about old RG6 cabling with new HD install

[gnostic19]

Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 12


Question about RG6 cabling w/ DirTV install
After having Charter Cable for 5+ years i finally went for the dish. I got Direct TV installed today. I have an HD set and two SD sets. The cabling was set up as such: two bedrooms have RG6 cabling that was just installed less that a year ago when i had cable boxes run to my two bedrooms. The issue is this...10 years ago i had Primestar(remember them) installed in my living room. They used RG6 2200 mhz cable. The cabling was run in pairs under the house, from the outside in the back to the inside in the living room. These cables had been sitting there, sticking out of my floor, for the past 8 years. The DirTV installer said this cabling would be fine, even for the HD i was going to be viewing off of those feeds(Dir TV used 2 cables for the dual tuner). So...we hooked it all up, after putting on new connectors. I expected the HD channels to be better than what i was getting w/ Charter. It turns out that's not the case. It seems not near as sharp. Less detail on faces with more softness on the DirTV feed. I guess i can take the trade-off, as there are 5x more HD channels on DirTV. The picture difference is maybe 15%.

My question is...could the cabling be the issue? I noticed the installer was running RG6 3 Ghz "digital" cabling and would have used that if i didn't have the previous cabling. I guess it could be that the cables need a good "burn-in", as those cables have laid there cold for 8 years.

I am willing to bet i could get the new cabling...it turns out we went to middles school together and knew some of the same people. He gave me his personal number to call in case there was a problem with anything. I would need to have some tech support, however, if i ask him to do this. Is there an issue with this cable?

fwiw, i have a Panasonic 720P plasma, and the Scientific Atlantic Charter box was 1080i.

 

[charper1]

WELCOME!

What is "cable burn-in"?

 

[KE4EST]

Welcome to the forum. If you go from 2.2G cable to 3 it won't matter. I see this same thing all the time installing with top of the line cable etc. A new tv and over compressed channels or up-converted channels. Its 90% not your installation it is just the way it is.

 

[dunigan1]

"So...we hooked it all up, after putting on new connectors. I expected the HD channels to be better than what i was getting w/ Charter. It turns out that's not the case. It seems not near as sharp. Less detail on faces with more softness on the DirTV feed. I guess i can take the trade-off, as there are 5x more HD channels on DirTV. The picture difference is maybe 15%. "

The signal from the dish to the receiver is digital, therefore if you are getting a stable picture without breakups then the cable is fine. There is no such thing as a "digital" cable. The cable just moves electrons around and doesn't care if its sending a digital form or morse code. It doesn't work like analog where noise in the line will cause noise in the picture. Check your signal levels for the 103c satellite to make sure. They should be in the 90's.

The softness you are describing is probably just a difference in the way D* processes the signal compared to Charter. Or it could be some channels like TBS don't have a lot of true HD on them. You would need to compare the exact same channel and program to know for sure.

Richard

 

[grydlok]

cable is cable. You will probably have to adjust your tv some for D*.

 

[gnostic19]

f you go from 2.2G cable to 3 it won't matter.

the older cable is 2200 mhz, not ghz. Does 2200 mhz compared to 3 ghz make a difference?

And, i get the idea about digital meaning either you get it or you don't but i didn't know if it could still affect nuances of the picture quality. And yeah...digital cable doesn't mean squat, it usually is just a "selling", marketing method when electronic manufacturers stick the word DIGITAL on anyhting they sell.

The signal is 95%.

Cable burn-in is a source of much discussion, esp in the audiophile circles. Some think, (me included, i guess), that if you run a cable for xx hours, esp when new or if it hasn't been used in a while, then by some source of sorcery the picture/sound is better because the flow of electrons has been established and is now continual, resulting in improved quality. 90% of you are laughing out loud, i know, but companies make a fortune in the cable industry, as most of you know. The highest mark-up/profit margins in the AV business is cabling, from what i understand.

And thanks for the welcoming.

Any special initiation i need to concern myself with due to my introduction to satellite?

So, is the answer not to worry about it? I'm the kind of guy who will sit around wondering if my picture could be 15% better if i had the new cabling run to my HD setup. It's no fun, believe me, because this mindset extends to all other aspects of day to day life.

I'm having a blast trying to figure out of the 1080i from the box into my 720P set looks better than the 720P signal from the box to my 720P set. You'd think i would stick with the 720P feed to keep from having to downconvert, but the installer said to keep the box at 1080i.

Thanks again,


dave

 

[dunigan1]

the older cable is 2200 mhz, not ghz. Does 2200 mhz compared to 3 ghz make a difference?

So, is the answer not to worry about it? I'm the kind of guy who will sit around wondering if my picture could be 15% better if i had the new cabling run to my HD setup. It's no fun, believe me, because this mindset extends to all other aspects of day to day life.

1 Ghz = 1000 Mhz, so the 2200 Mhz cable is the same as saying 2.2 Ghz. Directv doesn't use any frequencies above 2.2 ghz on the cable so you're fine. I'm not sure the highest frequency they use but its not over 2.2ghz. Even if they did, the cable doesn't just cut off all signals above 2.2ghz, it just means that cable has been tested to perform within tolerences at frequencies up to 2200mhz. The higher the frequency the shorter the cable has to be before the signal gets lost, which is why there is a 100 foot limit(I think) on the cable between the multiswitch and receiver using RG-6 cable.

As far as cable burn in goes my opinion would be if there is a difference it would be so small that unless you had some kind of device to measure it you wouldn't be able to tell. You would also need super highend gear because it would be dumb to connect $200 cables to a $100 TV.

The best thing to improve the picture quality on your setup would be to have you tv professionally calibrated or at least use one of the calibration dvd's you can get.
Also make sure the receiver is hooked to the tv with the hdmi cable or at least some good component cables, but changing the cable coming from the dish will do nothing about picture quality.


Richard

 

[Bob Nielsen]

2200 MHz and 2.2 GHz are the same thing (G=giga, M=mega, m=milli; 2200 mHz would actually be 2.2 Hz). The highest frequency used in the dish to receiver cabling for DirecTV is 2.15 GHz.

 

[bhelms]

"Cable burn-in" sounds completely bogus as the OP described it. For all intents and purposes, the cable is "stable" and electrons move back and forth without a change in performance over a relatively short period that would be associated with a burn-in in the classical definition of the term. That said, certain physical changes CAN occur over a longer period of time (years or decades) that could result in a change in performance. If the dielectric changed properties over time, if moisture penetrated the cable, if low-frequency current (like the power to the preamp or LNBs) caused a change in the conductivity, etc. - all of these could result in a change in performance. More likely would be something more catastrophic, like a mouse chewing through it! All the subtle performance changes would not be readily noticed. As others mentioned, a digital signal is pretty much an "all or nothing" proposition. As long as you are getting an adequate signal strength to the digital receiver - and the cable is indeed part of that equation - then you should see a "perfect" picture. Degraded cable quality could contribute to more "outages" when signal strength is close to the threshold where it is not strong enough for the receiver to lock, i.e., an increase in drop-outs could be an indication that there are problems with a cable.

In general, buying the highest quality cables for most consumer-grade A/V installations is not going to gain any additional performance. Likes of Monster Cables are highly overrated in these applications...

(PS - There have been reports of cable "burn-UP" from time to time. The power to multiple LNBs, switches, can cause I-squared-R heating issues especially at connectors. If a connector is improperly installed and becomes a bit "resistive" due to corrosion or poor contact, etc. that can be a point that will spot heat. In the limiting case there could actually be some burning...

 

[gnostic19]

1 Ghz = 1000 Mhz, so the 2200 Mhz cable is the same as saying 2.2 Ghz.

I think i knew that. Or should have.

 

[William1]

LOL, cabel 'burn in'. So much of the audiophile stuff is total malarky. Soley aimed at getting the money from people with more money than brains.

 

[charper1]

Sadly I see just as many with little spare money and decent brains following the same pattern.

 

[Jimbo]

So, is the answer not to worry about it? I'm the kind of guy who will sit around wondering if my picture could be 15% better if i had the new cabling run to my HD setup. It's no fun, believe me, because this mindset extends to all other aspects of day to day life.

If your dead set of checking to see if there is any noticable difference, do this.

Go get yourself enough cable to run from the dish or ground block into your rec.
Make it a straight shot, your just testing at this point.
Hook it up and try it for a bit, if you think it's really worth it, go ahead and make a permanant run.
If you don't see a difference, coil up the cable you made and use it somewhere else, or keep it for future use.

Personally, I doubt that you will see any difference.

Jimbo

 

[toober]

One thing I didn't see stated was the type of connection between the receiver and TV. That would be where you'd see a difference in picture quality.

 

[Mark_R_G]

And, the settings of the receiver. One of the submenus on the receiver should have choices of what resolutions to use, turn off the 480 one altogether, then try it first with just the 720p one checked then with only the 1080i one checked and see what the picture quality is like.