Optical cable doesn't fit?

Sounds like (without looking at the manuals) that some are toslink and some are coax - they use different connectors. One looks like a minijack and the other is a funky little irregular box.

Here is a cable from monoprice that has both ends - hope it helps!

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...ormat=2&style=

I bought my DVD player in 2000 and it accepted an optical cable I bought earlier this month.

I'm glad someone created a thread to ask about this.

I'm going to show my newbie colors here and admit that the optical Toslink type cables are new to me. I recently had an LG 32" LCD that had an Optical output, but after only a few days the screen went out and thus we returned it. We also had the Samsung HT-Q70 but it only has one optical audio input. Our replacement TV only has one coaxial audio out. The lack of a coaxial audio jack on the Samsung HT-Q70 meant we would not be able to use this unit with the new TV, so the Q70 has also since been returned.

OK, well here's my point. Because I had never used a Toslink optical cable before I didn't know anything about them except to plug it in and hope it works. Well it was a Monster Toslink cable I bought from RdioSchk and it fit fine in the Samsung HT-Q70 but I could not get it to fit into the optical jack of the LG TV. It just would not go in. So I unplugged the end that was in the Q70 and looked at both ends. They didn't appear to be exactly the same. One end was a little bigger, and one end has a tiny little clear plastic bulb-like piece on it. I switched the cable around and the other end would go in the Q70 but I still could not get it to fit into the jack on the LG. I didn't want to force it so again I removed the cable. I looked at this bulb-like end and fiddled with it and noticed this little clear bulb piece comes off. I tried the cable again with this bulb piece removed and the cable now was able to be seated into the jack on both the TV and the Q70. Sheesh what a pain!

No where on the package that Toslink came in did it say that the ends were different or to remove the little clear plastic bulb thingy. How was I suppose to know this? I'm still not even sure I was suppose to remove the bulb thingy. But I did get it to work once I did this.

Can anyone tell me if this is normal or if there's something I did wrong? Why in the freakin hell doesn't it tell you on the package how to connect these things? The TV user manual didn't make any mention of how to connect a Toslink cable either. So I still don't know if I was supposed to remeove the buld piece or if only one end of a Toslink cable is meant to be inserted into the TV's out. Any help or a link to instructions would be a great help. Thanks!

No, I had to deduce removing the bubble protector, too. Didn't say anything about it on mine. I figured it was just a protector by how easily it came off, though. If you were supposed to leave it on, they wouldn't make them removeable.

Once you're past that, they plug right in, so you're good to go. Just set your input to optical in the settings, if your receiver does that, and it should work.

Well I like how it fails to inform the user to remove the plastic little bubble thingy. Someone who is unaware of this (like I was) could actually damage the optical jack on their TV trying to force the cable into place.

Look at any of the pictures of Toslink cables on monoprice.com and there's only one plastic bubble on one end of the cable. Why is their only ONE little bubble protector? Does anyone know why the plastic bubble is not on both ends of the cable?

Also, once this one bubble protector is removed from the one end, are both ends now exactly the same? Or is the plug that had the bubble on it only for an input?

i think that i was wrong...nothing to see here keep on moving

Those bulbs are to protect the tips.

Yep, the bulb is only there for protection. I'm sorry for not mentioning anything earlier but I figured if you got one to fit, you had already taking the bulb off the tip. Ooops.

I think the first toslink cable I ever ordered didn't have the bulbs on them, so I knew from then on they would have be removed if I ever got a cable that came with them.

Thank you, I was going nuts trying to figure out why this cable wouldn't fit, you resovled that issue, Thanks for your posting on this matter.