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TV cable question

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  • 19-09-2005 4:00pm
    #1
    FrankGrimes
    Registered Users Posts: 4,031 ✭✭✭


    I had my house recently rewired by my girlfriend’s brother who is an electrician. I have NTL coming on Friday to install our digital cable TV and broadband and I have to add some cable into a room he forgot to do. Electrician lives miles away so can’t look at it so I will do add cable myself – I just need to be sure I use the right cable.

    Electrician says he has used RG59 cable, though another lad that looked at it said its RG6. Electrician wasn’t sure if its RG59 or RJ59 – looking on the web it seems RJ59 cannot carry a digital signal.

    Whats the difference between RG6 and RG59 and should either carry the NTL digital signal ok, and would RJ59 (though I doubt it is this as he clearly said it was satellite cable) do the same?

    Thanks


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    #2
    Tenshot
    Registered Users Posts: 648 ✭✭✭Tenshot


    FrankGrimes wrote:
    Whats the difference between RG6 and RG59 and should either carry the NTL digital signal ok, and would RJ59 (though I doubt it is this as he clearly said it was satellite cable) do the same?
    No doubt someone in the industry will correct me if I'm wrong, but:

    My understanding is that RG59 is the standard old co-ax (often brown) that you used to get; it can be variable quality, and is not great for long runs or satellite. RG6 is higher quality, and rated for satellite use. Most new installs should be using RG6 everywhere if possible.

    (Superficially, they both do the same thing: carry a high-frequency signal on an insulated central copper core; the gap between the core and the outer shield is chosen to present an impedance of 75 Ohms regardless of cable length, and pretty much all TV equipment is designed to operate based on this assumption.)

    On the other hand, I had a friend who ran his NTL Analogue connection down a CAT5 cable in his apartment to get to his bedroom and claimed all the channels were perfectly watchable...


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