Cable Question?

Question

Is the coaxel cable used for BroadBand Internet a special cable? Does it send information faster or what? What if I plugged it into my tv. Will it improve the picture quality?

Answer 1

If you mean the cable that's going into your broadband cable modem... then no. To that extend Cable TV and Broadband use the same cables. The only difference could possibily be if some of the cable wiring in your house still uses the older/cheaper coaxial cable wires.. called RG-59.  What you should use whenever possible is "RG-6".  

If you have a seperate cable line going to your house just for the modem though.. or if the modem splits off from the main line sooner.. the signal could feasibly be stronger for it then at other points in your house.. so to that extent it could improve your TV reception IF you using basic cable.  If your using Digital Cable and it's working properly already then there will be no quality benefit.  If your having problems with your basic cable reception then remember, the more times you split the cable signal and the longer the cable has to go from when it first enters your house, the weaker and more degraded the television signal will be. Using the best and fewest splitters and the best and the shortest cables can help prevent signal loss. If you basic cable reception is bad you could/should call a cable guy to come check it out. Sometimes they can fix the problems just buy replacing the connectors at the end of the cable wires.

Basically your internet service and TV as well as digital phone all go through the same wires out on the street and even in your home. They just use different RF frequencies on the same wire for these different applications. For instance there's a specific frequency range that is used for downloading on cable modems.. and a seperate range for upload.  Likewise there's a specific frequency range for recieving TV and on Digital Cable there's a specific frequency range used to send information back to the cable company if you order something on demand or Pay-Per-View via the cable box.

Answer 2

Hi Jose,

The cable you are referring to is a Category Five cable. It is designed to carry data at a different frequency. It would not be good to transfer TV pictures. The video signal and the Internet signal operate at different frequencies.

Norm