Need advice on coaxial cable for home re-wire

[cottonchipper]

I'm planning on rewiring my home to upgrade the coaxial cable running from where the cable comes into the house and splits, to the various rooms we have TV's in. The longest run will probably be less than

100 feet, with most around 50 feet. I'll be running it through the attic and pulling it down the walls where there are already outlets. Currently we receive digital cable through a converter box on each TV, but I'd like to use something that will be good enough for HDTV when it becomes available in our area. Does anyone have any recommendations as far as the best coaxial cable for the job, or characteristics I should look for?

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, Most loss is from connector(s). So you need to do a good job when connector is atached at the end of each cable. If I were you, I'd go for mil-spec cable/connector of your chice(brand).

[Bas Pluim]

I'd use a quad-shield cable (RG-6/UQ). Regular RG-6 will probably do fine as well, but the price difference is small. Should you have any interference in the house, the extra shielding will help. You can buy this at your local home center in boxes of 500ft or 1000ft

I've used both kinds with HDTV without problems.

Some things to keep in mind:

- Splitting usually causes most of the signal loss. Use high-quality splitters suitable for digital/ HDTV. Spend the few extra dollars for a decent one.

- Connections are important. The screw-on connectors are OK, but the crimp connectors are much better. I picked up a crimper and 15 connectors for ~$20 at the local home center.

- If you have severe signal issues, a last resort is an amplifier, but these can cause as many problems as they solve.

One suggestion: If you're running new cable, you may want to think about adding some CAT-5 at the same time. I had to run a network cable to hook up a Slingbox, expect to see more devices needing network access before too long.

HTH.

cott> I'm planning on rewiring my home to upgrade the coaxial cable running

[hallerb]

really do it right get satellite tv with digital video recorders built in.

Similiar to TIVO it will change how you look at TV forever

[jJim McLaughlin]

Quad shield RG6 is what you need for coax.

As the other fellow mentioned, if you are going up to the attic and pulling cable anyway, add in CAT 6, not CAT 5. The labor is the worst part. If you are doing the labor, do it only once.

Think about the multi cable stuff. It contains CAT, coax and fibre optic. Use that and have only one thing to pull and run, but you have all options for the future.

I did my house about 8 years ago with two runs of CAT 5, one for network (blue jacket), one for phones (yellow jacket) and one run of coax; home runned them to patch panels I built in a lower level family room storage closet. If I had any sense then I would have run fiber optic at the same time. The stuff just wasn't on the horizon then.

[Pete C.]

Cable companies have the same DVR offerings. Better yet, stop watching so much TV and find some outdoor activities and get some exercise.

[Pete C.]

It still isn't for the most part. You can do gigabit on copper and copper is easy to terminate unlike fiber. It is really unlikely that any individual end point device you might have in your home in the next couple decades will need more bandwidth than you can get on copper. The only exception might be your central server and that would just have fiber the few feet to the network switch which would still have copper out to each end point device.

[CJT]

What can you do with CAT 6 that you can't do with CAT 5?

Nothing I'm aware of.

The labor is

[jJim McLaughlin]

Different and higher standard. If the computer and telcom industry teaches one immutable lesson it is that the technology evolves, and that as it evolves, old hardware ceases to be supported.

Seem a mobo lately that supports RMR (I think that was the acronym) hard drives lately?

Let me repeat. The labor is the worst part. If you are doing the labor, do it only once.

If you don't like CAT 6, at last be sure ou leave pull strings in every cable run.

[jJim McLaughlin]

MFM and RLL were the ancients I was thinking of.

[Steve Barker]

Quad shield RG-6. Make a home run from each location to a central location where you can mix and match as needed.

[mm]

What do you think about gold-plated connectors and switches?

I don't know if this applies to tv coax but for whatever configurations they do sell them.

[Mike Ruskai]

On or about 14 May 2007 07:47:00 -0700 did cottonchipper dribble thusly:

RG-6 (also called RG-56) should be the minimum gauge. That's probably also the heaviest gauge you're likely to find in the store.

I wired my house when it was built with a number of very long runs of RG-6, and it works fine with my current digital cable (which has HDTV channels, though I don't yet have a TV to display them).

Make sure you check what you're already wired with, so you don't spend all that time trading one RG-6 wire for another.

[Mike Ruskai]

On or about Mon, 14 May 2007 19:38:34 -0500 did CJT dribble thusly:

Nothing now, except make your wallet more empty.

But it should be CAT 5e, not just CAT 5.

The technical difference is in bandwidth. CAT 5e is tested to 100MHz, while CAT 6 is tested to 250MHz. No current copper networking technology uses more than 100MHz.

[Steve Barker]

Ahem! RG-6 and RG-56 are two completely different cables. You may want to review before typing. Pay particular attention to the outside diameter.

[EXT]

The standard today is RG-6, but whatever you install make it changeable. Standards keep progressing and what is great today is inadequate tomorrow. Such as those recommending you install some Cat 5 cable -- while it is still good today -- it is being replaced by Cat 6, just as the Cat 5 replaced the former Cat 3. Don't install the cable in such a way that you cannot pull something new into place as you remove the old stuff.

[Mike Ruskai]

On or about Wed, 16 May 2007 09:27:54 -0500 did "Steve Barker" dribble thusly:

I guess that's what I get for listening to professionals.

The cable installer told me that RG-56 and RG-6 were the same thing.