Coaxial cable Vs. Composite for cable box (yellow, red and white)?

Question

I had cable installed and the guy put in a cable box. I wanted a yellow red white composite cable coming from the box to my TV.

He said coaxial is just as good, is this true?

I guess it must be because the coaxial cable goes into the cable box and I guess it makes the coaxial cable the weakest link anyway.

Answer 1

If this is for cable TV, you should have the option of using either.

The yellow red white wires are video and audio left and right which should have less chance of interference then the coax signal will be remodulated in the TV to one of your tv channels.

Answer 2

No, it isn't true. You should use composite to hook-up. If you check, you'll probably find that the coax output from the cable box isn't even stereo.

The box demodulates the RF input to video, and then re-modulates to RF for the coax output. By using the composite video output, you skip that extra step of signal degradation.

Answer 3

Composite video (yellow, red, & white) forces luminance and the two chromanance video signals into a single signal, destroying the ability of your TV to recover all the original signal information. The result is an inferior picture quality. Coax is by far the better choice.