Roger wrote: > also, as with any cox cable (or any DIGITAL cable tv provider), ... When > i switched to digital satellite service, i was obtaining the signal straight from the > satellite adn the signal was only being pipped over ~25ft of cable to my > digital cable box and then onto my tv or computer. I realize this is pretty off-topic, but digital is digital is digital. If you have digital cable or digital satellite, no amount of cabling is ever going to change your picture quality, except if it gets so absurdly long that you actually start to lose picture information (aka: image freezes, goes blocky, loses sound, etc) There are no "subtle distortions" in digital television, it's either exactly the way it was sent or it's very very obviously distorted and basically unusable. I spend a lot of time on the HDTV newsgroups and such, and there is a lot of misinformation (and profiteering) going on out there on these misconceptions, like guys being talked into buying $500 cables to carry digital signals that go error-free over a dirty coat hanger if so inclined. Even further off topic, due to recent US must-carry legislation on satellite companies (aka: DTV and dish) the picture quality on US satellite is getting worse than ever, due to the number of channels they must legally carry. (dish networks much worse than Directv) Although I obviously haven't flown to every city and set up both, in general most people seem to get better pictures from digital cable than digital satellite these days. It just comes down to bandwith, cable companies have more of it so can compress less. It's also fast becoming the trend for cable companies to offer more HDTV channels than satellite stations, because they can spare the bandwith. I get 8 HD channels on digital cable, which is more than any NA satellite systems that I know of. -- Trevor Boicey, P. Eng. Ottawa, Canada, tboicey@xxxxxxx ICQ #17432933 http://www.brit.ca/~tboicey/ "At what point does a slow puncture just become a puncture?" Will Holman
