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Cables for HT system

Tidings:

I have been in the 2-channel game for moons (separate room and system), but a move has prompted me to upgrade in the HT arena. I have just replaced a 15yo and decidely pedestrian Onkyo receiver with an Arcam AVR350. I will use it in conjunction with my Mitsubishi WS-65413 HD RPTV (with DirecTV H20 receiver), a Zenith DVB318 DVD player, and an older JVC Super VHS. I may or may not add an SACD or DVD-A player at a later date.

Currently I am using fairly standard cabling (most from Radio Shack or a cut or two above factory grade, but I don't recall the names). Using component cables between the SAT dish and the TV, DVI cable between the DVD player and the TV, RCA ended cabling in the audio postitions, and S-Video for the VHS player.

What I am wondering now is what folks might recommend with respect to cabling - different from what I now use, if anything. Also, the AVR350 has HDMI video (but not audio switching and the H20 is capable of HDMI output). Wondering if I should count on buying a DVI-HDMI adapter to utilize that feature, or no. I was contemplating Blue Jeans coaxials for the audio connections, as opposed to Toslink cabling - but perhaps I need to first differentiate between analog and digital audio signals? Too, I probably know just enough about video at this point to be dangerous, so help in this area would be appreciated, as well. Thanks
4yanx
4yanx OP
1,576 posts
 
Cytocycle, sorry, my post which was in response to no responses at the time I posted, obviously came after yours in the queue resulting from this silly delay that occurs as the ministry reviews our posts before posting. Why?

Anyway, I am not sure what you mean saying coax for non cable sources - I guess you mean digital sources which are not related to cable TV (or DirecTV in my case). (?) Also I have hear pro and con regarding Toslink, but I have never used one, personally. Perhaps I will try a cheap one (they all look cheap to me) to audition.
cytocycle
1,043 posts
 
4yanx: No problem, yeah the mystery post reply time and the mystery thread delete and finally the 11pm west coast Slow down of the site to a crawl (from their backup or database indexing).

Digital RCA cables are considered COAX 75ohm versus standard audio cables which are 50ohm. Cable TV is known to cause ground loop problems and one of the ways around that is to isolate it via Toslink (glass or plastic) instead of linking the grounds with a metal cable like Coax Digital cable. Coax has high bandwidth potential and it will sound better depending on the content.. I don't think dish/direct/cable have enough information to make that big of a difference. If you don't have a humm through your speakers then you don't need to do a toslink cable.

I probably made that clear as mud, if so PM me your phone number and I'll be glad to discuss it on the phone.

Chris
streetdaddy
349 posts
 
I was at tweeter the other day and they said they run hdmi from the dvd/sat to your reciever. Then they run coax cable terminated in rca's to the projector. They said this will allow 1080p. It's dirt cheap as well. Will this cause a drop in performance? Or do you need to run a hdmi to the projector?
cytocycle
1,043 posts
 
Streetdaddy: I would not recommend switching from HDMI to Coax, as the receiver's scaler is probably just ok or actually less than average. If you were running this into a Lumagen scaler, I wouldn't be critical because that makes my Crappy COX cable look amazing. The problem with component and your projector is that most projectors (those under 6k) have really cheap scalers and natively they accept HDMI digital which is best. otherwise you are asking the cheap (sorry all receivers get lumped into this category) receiver to take a digital signal convert it to analog (which they lack the raw horsepower) and then ask a digital device (your projector) to convert that back from analog to digital... more conversions with less horsepower means an ugly signal. HDMI to HDMI to HDMI (most receivers don't upscale this they just pass it along)... The HDMI cables are cheap enough at www.monoprice.com to run them all the way to your projector.

The only reason Tweeter recommends this is because they sell HDMI cables for WAY TOO much $$$$....
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