Video Asylum

Posted by Joe Murphy Jr (A) on November 19, 2003 at 19:43:19

In Reply to: phone line posted by Joe Murphy Jr on November 18, 2003 at 18:23:36:

what you guys are saying. When you say that you have digital cable, do you mean that you subscribe to the cable company's digital channels or do you mean that the cable company has upgraded its distribution network to fiber optic transmission?

If you're talking about the fiber optic network, you should see an improvement in the picture quality for all channels. The actual signal is only analog a very short distance (a few hundred feet to as little as 25 feet, compared to the miles and miles that it used to be). This benefits everyone -- including the cable company.

If you really are talking about digital cable, you will have a digital cable box. The cable company may offer several outputs from the box: coax, composite, S-video, component or even DVI. Just use the highest quality output that your display accepts. The box is converting the digital signal into an analog signal (except in the case of the DVI output -- it's a digital output).