Best composite video cable to use with CECB?

Well I am no pro and others might know better. BUT as far as my experience and price. Anything MONSTER cable makes is the best and most expensive. They use real gold on the tips for best signal.

Anything Monster Cable makes goes for about double what it should reasonably cost, particularly if it's in consumer packaging. Their consumer-grade cables are quite a bit more expensive than their professional line! If you can afford to blow money on Monster Cable, then for crying out loud, just buy a new TV.

If you want Monster quality cables at sensible prices, this forum has several sponsors that specialize in such things. But the GE's should do you just fine. It's a $60 converter box, for use with what is now obsolete technology. We're not talking state of the art here.

If you're determined to squeeze every last ounce of quality out of a CECB, get one with S-Video out.

On a run of 3 foot or less it really doesn't matter which cable you use. Actually, the patch cables that come free with equipment work as good as any. There is no reason that your dollar store cable should have worked any better than any of your other cables unless the other cables were damaged in some way.

Well I can tell you a good cable makes a difference. For example. The tv I used with CEBE only has RF cable. So I tried the following with different results

1) Used FREE RF cable that came with box. Got 20 to 30 signal strength.

2) Used old cable from Cable company. Got 45 to 60 Signal Strength

3) Bought HD quality RF cable from Best buy total $20 got 79 to 95 Signal strength.

They didn't have monster cable and I didn't have time to order it.

I am happy with what I got out of RF cable. The HD quality does make a difference. Is it overkill? Maybe but worth $20 for me. Very little interruption on tv screen

Of course RCA cables are different so I defer to the experts here

For the most part your all right in your own way. The tin plated plug, thin wire gauged, crappy dielectric, poorly shielded dollar store wires feed is mildly worse on a spectrum analyzer not because of the quality of the wire or the lack of gold plated mating surfaces. The loss is due to the dielectric insulator around that center wire. The smaller size of it increasing the capacitance which rolls off higher frequencies quickly. Just buy good quality microphone wire and make your own if you can.

Good rule of thumb. larger core insulator and at least a fair shield is what you look for in audio.

The topic changed from the audio spectrum to the UHF RF spectrum for a sec also. Here the game changes. The reason those better wires got higher signals was also a better dielectric insulator material used, but the main contributor there was the shielding.

The better the shielding (Can you say: Quad-Shield?) prevents the virtual sea of RF noise our intended signals swim in from causing an unhealthy interaction and making crosspath/multipath an additional burden these tuners must contend with. The center core didn't magically conduct signal that much better (lol)....



I can't say "Shield" enough for RF wire! Dielectric insulator material plays a close second. And be careful of copper plated steel cores if your running a mast mount preamp. The voltage loss is awful. I've seen it. Go with pure copper center.

Hope this helps somehow

And for the love of pizza, don't pay "Monsor Cable" prices!

He didn't ask for the cheapest. He asked for the "BEST" Thus Monster cable

If you want to over-pay, then sure - buy a Monster Cable brand cable. However any gold plated, high grade cable will give the same results. And we're talking about composite which isn't exactly the pinnacle of picture quality to begin with.

Since the OP got a visible improvement from the General Electric cables then I have to assume they're made reasonably well. I doubt going with a Monster is going to yield much, if any, additional improvement.

I get my cables from http://www.monoprice.com/. Very good cable at very good price. If you do a search here you should be able to find many favorable reviews.

Doesn't the signal strength meter measure what the antenna pulls in OTA? How can changing cables between your CECB and TV affect signal strength?

I was talking about the Antenna to TV cable that made the difference for my signal strength. Just showing how a good cable makes a difference. I also changed the CEBE to TV cable with a short HD quality cable. Just for the hell of it

I have done A/B comparisons with Monster Cable VS the free patch cords that come with equipment and I could not discern one single bit of difference. I made the comparison using a Hitachi 65 inch HD 65S700 tv. On long runs thicker cable will make a difference but on a 3 foot run the free patch cords that come with equipment work just fine.

ABSOLUTELY! Especially for those with more dollars than sense.

Clarification:
I didn't say monster cables weren't reasonably top end materials,
I was indicating they are at the very least twice the price they should be for said materials...

And for the record, even the output wire on a CECB (As example) can bring bad signal interference back into the unit lowering the signal slightly. Just as the power wire, the other wiring for audio, etc. can to.

All roads lead to Rome in the case of the box. If you think they put ferrite beads or RF shunt caps on the audio outputs your crazy. Many do on the power lines to keep RF leakage going out from screwing up FCC certification, but they don't care about many other paths both in and out on to much of todays equipment.

So just as putting that crappy plastic cased CECB on top of that old crt-based tv overcomes the poor excuse for shielding they spray painted on the inside of the plastic and poked a grounded wisker at. A poorly shielded RCA set can bring performance reducing RFI back into the unit through the RCA audio left and right plus the baseband composite outputs if that wire runs behind the same offending TV to a metal encased CECB box.

Shielding is complicated business, and often overlooked.

I don't know...monster sells hundred dollar HDMI cable that can't make any difference compared with a 10 buck hdmi cable, since they are both digital and both deliver exactly what goes in the front end. But apparently people buy them, because CC loves that 50 buck profit margin.

As far as composite cables go, I seriously doubt expensive versions produce any noticeably different result from those that come free with various units you get...I'm not nearly as sure about other types of cables...when I put together my high-def systems 5 years ago, I went for high-end component cables pushed at me by the salesman...I always wonder whether that made any difference in my picture quality...

Yeah, It's an odd arena.

I remember the the RG-59AU verses RG213U debacle as a marine electronics technician. It was clear. You held in one hand a piece of 5/16" stock, then in the other a piece of 9/16" stock.

Common sense said the larger core-to-shield distance would yield better performance at any frequency.

Larger was the only way for high powered SSB (Single SideBand broadcast),yet the smaller 59 stock yielded better power transfer during transmission of marine VHF plus It's vestigal side bands.

But alas for CB and RG-8U, also marine and RG-213 ALWAYS yielded the best reception transfer.

My point?

For low level RF transfer even the cheapest POC (Piece-O-Crap) wire will do better S-Video if the wire's insulator core is larger. All shielding issues aside. And yes, S-Video qualifies as an RF transfer ! sails way past the 1/2-Mhz line into RF ! (AM Radio is 520-Mhz-...)

And yes Avnstf, It either gets there (at decernable levels of 1/0) or it doesn't. On the topic of purely digital digital transfer it only counts if the wire screws it it up with SWR bounce or refraction delay that fogs the equipment (Can you say heavily condensed internally marine wire?).

This is interesting. Now, can I assume if one is using an indoor antenna, such as the Silver Sensor, signal strength can be increased by using a higher quality coax cable than what comes with the thing? I've got plenty of old Direct TV and Dish spaghetti. I might be able to bring the coax length down to less than a couple feet between Sensor and CECB. This would make a difference?

basicly no,
You aren't provided with the ability to maintain a single coax size properly from unit to unit. The termination connectors are the bottleneck. and at that length the only factore is stem resonance. Ever blow across a coke bottle? That short a length actually introduces a new problem.

But then again yes, the connctors on that cable are a better quality compression type that provide a better shielding ohmic source resistance, and tend too help a touch cancelling problems

We're getting way off topic here, but there is no common sense that would predict such performance. For a coaxial cable, the diameter of the center conductor and distance between the center conductor and the outer shield (and the type and construction of the dielectric between them) determine the characteristic impedance of the cable. The thickness of the conductors themselves describes the power-handling capability of the cable, which is unimportant for receiver applications with cable lengths less than about 100 feet.


That's a transmission application, and since when is a SSB signal a vestigal sideband?


How does a cable know it is transmitting or receiving?


Video cables are not transmission lines. In order for a cable to affect "RF" transmission, the cable length needs to at least 1/10 of the wavelength. Otherwise, anything you use is just acting like a straight wire. For video cables shorter than about 15 feet you could use "zip cord" (speaker wire) with RCA connectors on it and it wouldn't be better than the oxygen-free Monster cable.


What the heck are you talking about? There are no "purely digital" transmissions. Digital codes are always represented by electrical or optical analogs. Standing waves are analog phenomenon.

What is "refraction delay?" "Fogging the equipment" and "heavily condensed internally marine wire?" English, please!


You don't need to match coax size for video interconnects in the home. Longer cables need their impedances matched, not sizes. And again, if we're talking video cables we aren't talking about transmission lines. Antenna cables, however, are transmission lines. Coke bottles only whistle if the volume resonates at an audible frequency.


"A better shielding ohmic source resistance?" What the heck is that, in English.