Coaxial Video Cable

Coaxial cables are very popular in video distribution, bringing video into a building from an antenna, cable provider or satellite TV provider. Most Coax video cables use the F-Type screw on connectors. Coax cable has a high bandwidth and is a versatile cable. Often coax cables are wired throughout both residential and commercial buildings during construction, then connected to the service provider of choice for TV services.

There are also digital coaxial audio cables used in home theater (surround sound). They use a coaxial cable, but use RCA connections. It doesn't carry video so we won't go into detail in this article, but since it is also often called coax, it is worth mentioning.

Quality

Coax cables use a center pin and an exterior shielding or braid for ground. A plastic buffer maintains a uniform separation which enables consistent signaling, therefore cables that are damaged, kinked or crushed should be replaced to avoid signal loss. Coaxial cable used in homes is a 75 ohm cable which was often RG(Radio Grade)59, however in all current installations or RG6 is recommended.

Applications

Coax is used in connecting antennas to TV, connecting satellite to receivers, connecting cable service to TVs, cable boxes or HD receivers. Similar cables are run in walls, as well as short connections from the wall jacks to the TV or Set top box. Coax cables are the only consumer cables that send a "tunable" signal to devices--if you want to use the remote to change channels, you need to run coax to it.

Conversions

Simple conversions require only a passive adapter or cable, there is no active conversion simply different pinouts of the same signals.
Complex conversions require active circuitry to convert the signal, to change it to the new signal. These often only work one-way.

Simple

• Compression F-type connectors to add connectors to your own RG6 bulk cable

Complex

• S-Video or RCA to Coax. this is called an RF modulator, and is commonly used to connect DVD players etc to old computers. Another popular application is to use with a channel injector to add a custom channel to a coax distribution system.