AV Accessories

Audio Cable

Can i use a RCA audio cable for a Digital Coaxial cable?

Have some spare,are the rca audio cables (red/white) the same as component cables?

They can be used in place of component RGB. Hopefully these are high end RCA audio cables with gold plated connectors and noise cancelation shielding.

Good luck!

Should Cars Have High End Audio Cables

For years it has been well understood in home audio that cables can have a tremendous impact on a sound system, both good and bad. Choose the right cables and you can expect a system to come to life. Choose poorly designed cables, and you may forever be wondering why you can’t get your system to come to life.

Car audio however, has been a different story. While many companies still offer coaxial interconnect cables, most have come to realize that the basic twisted pair design offers far better noise rejection in a vehicle. And then… Nothing. That’s it. Innovation seems to have hit a brick wall at the shielded twisted pair interconnect in car audio. This begs the question; Should Cars Have High End Audio Cables?

To begin with, let’s briefly go back to home audio. After many years of fighting an uphill battle, the idea that cables make a difference has become a mainstream ideology amongst audiophiles. But it isn’t just audiophiles who can hear the difference. In fact, in our own testing, the differences can be heard by just about anybody, even on very modest audio systems. It just takes a willingness to discard any preconceived notions and actually listen to some music.

So, if cables make a difference in home audio, is there a reason why it shouldn’t matter in car audio? The quick answer is no. The following outlines some of the reasons why cables matter just as much, if not more, in car audio.

Many people are under the impression that car audio uses shorter cables than home audio, and therefore does not need to bother with high fidelity cables. This is completely incorrect. While the typical interconnect length in a home audio system is about 1 meter, vehicles will frequently use 5 or 6 meter interconnects to put amplifiers in the trunk. In terms of speaker cables, car audio almost always uses cables longer than the 6-8 feet used in most home audio setups.

Vehicles represent a far more challenging environment for cables than home audio systems. Two typical sources of noise in cables are Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI) and Radio Frequency Interference (RFI). In vehicles, the entire chassis is frequently used as the ground return path. This allows noise from car components such as the alternator to be inducted into the audio cables via EMI. In terms of RFI, unless proper shielding is used, the longer cables in cars will act as antennas and pull in more noise. A third source of noise in a vehicle is vibration. This is of course far worse in a vehicle than in a home system. Pear Cable is the first company to bring out a car audio cable that virtually eliminates the noise caused by cable vibration. The TRIBODeadÔ technology present in the Comice Silver Interconnect is an electrically conductive plastic layer that prevents static electrical charges, caused by vibration, from building up in the cable.

- Is Quality Sound Just for Home Audio or does it have a Place in Car Audio Too?

Some people feel that a car audio sound system will never be as good as a home audio system, and therefore high fidelity cables are a waste of money in a car. This is a faulty conclusion. The experience of listening to music in your vehicle while driving down the highway is unique and cannot be replicated in the home audio environment. The bottom line here is that many people spend more time listening to their car audio system than their home system, and they want it to be the best that it can be. The characteristics of bad audio cables (listening fatigue, poor realism, overly bright treble, or general noise) will all still be audible in a car audio system. Just like home audio, the wrong cables in your vehicle will kill the listening experience.

At the end of the day, many people want quality sound in their vehicles. If you are installing an aftermarket system in your vehicle and you care about sound quality, you need to care about cables. If you are only interested in having the loudest car, without regards to accuracy, then high fidelity audio cables probably aren’t for you. Otherwise, it simply doesn’t make sense to shell out good money on amplifiers and speakers, only to hook it all up with mediocre wire. Car audio enthusiasts are every bit as serious as home audio enthusiasts, and now there is finally a cable company that is serious about serving their needs.

Article written by Adam Blake.

About the Author

car entertainment - car audio - car dvdplayer

Rca Male

Two with Plainview ties to be inducted into Country Music Hall of Fame
Two country music stars with ties to the Plainview area will become the newest members of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Security Camera Mysteries: What Is A Bnc Connector

Pretty much everybody who's ever watched a television commercial lately has seen those that depict an anti-intrusion alarm system.

The theme is forced entry into a home, with a loud alarm going off at one point or another.

However, these systems don't feature video surveillance, which might have given someone more warning.

That's why knowing something about these systems – including their BNC connectors – can be important, especially when a system is going to be purchased.

Knowing something about cameras, recorders, monitors and the cables that run between them to connect them to each other might be necessary when trying to decide how durable or sturdy the system needs to be.

Consider the cables, for one, and how strong their physical connection might be to various pieces of equipment. These connectors come in a couple of different varieties.

The connector spoken of in the introduction – a BNC (Bayonet-Neill Concelman) connector – is usually used in a wireless security camera system that makes use of RF ("radio frequency") to send images captured by the security cameras to monitors and recording equipment.

It's a good method for terminating the coaxial cable that's used in many RF signal connection uses, by the way.

Where the BNC connector might be seen in this regard is as an alternative to RCA connectors.

These are the ones with the red, white and yellow plugs at their ends and which insert into tiny holes in the back or along the side of composite video equipment such as a DVD player and the like. Almost everybody's familiar with an RCA plug.

But the downside to those plugs is that they can be pulled out of video equipment such as video security cameras relatively easily or inadvertently, thereby preventing the RF signal equipment from sending their signals to the receiver equipment in the system.

For example, the threaded BNC connector (sometimes known as a TNC), can be screwed down and locked from the male connector to the female connector and vice versa, though the bayonet (the "B" in the BNC) lock is usually sufficient.

Using this sort of connector can be an effective and inexpensive way to keep cables connected to their equipment in even the most "shaky" of environments (high winds, extreme movement).

It ensures no dropping of video images if cables happen to be pulled from their RF signal sources, for one and it's also a relatively inexpensive upgrade from RCA plugs.

All isn't golden with a BNC connector though, because the same things that make them attractive (their locking ability, for one) can make them more difficult to easily move around, especially if the bayonet lock becomes damaged or pinched or crimped excessively.

The cable would then need to be cut and a new connector affixed. And they're still more expensive than standard coaxial cable connectors.

Still, BNCs are the standard for wireless security camera systems and any problems they present are usually minor.

Check with the installation professional as to what cabling and connectors he intends to use. Some money can be saved by going with RCA plugs, but for those who want to make sure their cameras continue to transmit because they won't suffer cable disconnection, BNC connectors may be the most appropriate choice.

Get the best wireless security cameras online. Visit Chinavasion.com or paste this link into your browser: http://www.chinavasion.com/index.php/cName/surveillance-equipment/

About the Author

Rose Li is the PR Manager for Chinavasion, China's premier dropshipper for wholesale consumer electronics

Optical Digital Audio

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The 50th Anniversary of the Optical Disc

The 50th Anniversary of the Optical Disc.

From the “Laser Disc” to “Blu-ray”

History of the Optical Disc

In 1958, 50 years ago, David Paul Gregg invented the first optical disc using a transparent disc technology. The disc is 30 centimeters in diameter and uses an analog format and laser technology. It is therefore also called a “Laser Disc” He patented his design in 1961.

A later development of the Optical Disc were patented in 1969.

In 1967, David Paul Gregg's company, Gaus Electrophysics, contacted Royal Philips Electronics, but was met with disinterest.

The laser disc player sold only about one million units in the United States and approximately four million in Japan and the last LD released in Japan was the “Tokyo Raiders” in 2001.

Laser Disc Museum gives some interesting history of the Laser Disc. See the link below:

http://laserdiscplanet.com/museum.html

One of the influential contributors to Audio, Video and Data recording, is Kees Immink.

Dr. Kees A. Schouhamer Immink was born on December 18, 1946 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He Joined Philips research laboratories in 1971.

His contribution to the technology of digital audio and video has enabled all of us to listen to audio and watch video on reliable, high quality media. Dr. Immink's coding methods are essential to CD's and DVD's. For a full biography about Kees Immink see the website:

http://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/history_center/biography/immink.html

The Compact Disc (CD)

The Optical VideoDisc, although a major development to be used in later research, was not a great success. I recently talked to a number of people about the Optical Video disc, but they had never heard of it.

The Sony/Philips team was not idle, and building on some of the laser disc technologies, they set out to develop a new digital audio disc; in contrast to the earlier OpticalDisc, which had an analog format.

In 1979, they set up a task force of engineers led by the prominent Kees Immink and in 1980, the group produced a Compact Disc (CD) Standard, called the Red Book.

Compact Disc format

The CD uses a red laser to scan the patterns of bumps on a mirrored surface which are interpreted as bits. These bits can be assembled into bytes. A CD can hold about 700 megabytes of information or about 80 minutes of music.

The Red Book gives detailed information on the design of the compact disc and was released in 1980 by Philips and Sony.

It was adopted by the Digital Audio Disc Committee and ratified as IEC 908.

The development of the CD was the combined work of a large number of scientists working as a team. The Compact Disc Story, written by Kees A. Schouhamer Immink provides a lot of background information. See the weblink below for the full story.

http://www.exp-math.uni-essen.de/~immink/pdf/cdstory.htm

The CD, available on the market since late 1982, remains the standard playback medium for commercial audio recordings to the present day. Various formats of the CD were later developed. Some of the common formats are:

1. Audio files CD

2. Data storage CD-ROM

3. Write-once audio and data storage CD-R

4. Rewritable media CD-RW

By 2007 200 billion CDs had been sold world wide.

Search for a new way to play video movies and “super density” data storage.

The time was ready for a new way to play Videos and provide a higher capacity disk to store data and programs. Cd's were rapidly replacing the audio tapes and the VHS was coming to an end. Data often had to be stored on multiple discs.

Two teams set to work to produce a video disk to replace the VHS tape; the Philips and Sony team and Toshiba.

Philips and Sony started the Multimedia Compact Disc (MMCD) and Toshiba the Super Density Disc. Notice the emphasis on each of these, “Multi Media” and “Super Density”. Of course both of these had both the video and data capabilities in mind.

Multi Media Compact Disc (MMCD) 1990s Philips and Sony

The MMCD was designed as a single sided compact disc, with a single or dual layer. The capacity for a single layer is 3,7GB , compared with 7.4GB for the dual layer. It is backward compatible with the CD and CDROM. It did not become a standard.

Super Density Disc (SD) 1990s Toshiba

The Super Density Disc (SD) was adopted as the standard format, with an addition of to two options, proposed by the Philis/Sony team. For more information see the section on the DVD below.

DVD

With the two competing options, one offered by Sony/Philips and the other by Toshiba, we seemed to be on the brink of another format war. It looked like a repeat of the format battle of the 1980s when the Sony Betamax was battling it out with the “Video Home System” VHS standards, at the expense of the consumer. What does the consumer buy? In my opinion the Betamax was a better option, but the consumer market decided, and the victory went to VHS.

But the impeding battle did not take place Through the with mediation of Lou Gerstner, president of IBM a compromise was reached.

The Sony and Philips MMCD format was abandoned and the Toshiba SD format adopted, with these two additions:

the pit geometry which allows push-pull tracking, a proprietary technology of Philips and Sony, and the EFMPlus, created by Kees immink. The EFMPlus encoder is based on a deterministic finite state machine, having four states, which translates 8-bit input words into 16-bit codewords.

This compromise created the DVD format, which became the standard format in December 1995 and will continue as such until the majority of people will no longer be satisfied with “standard video” but demands high density video for all there movies. Than the new Blu-ray format will take over.

DVD format

The DVD uses a red laser to scan the patterns of bumps on a mirrored surface, which are interpreted as bits. These bits can be assembled into bytes jus as on a CD. However the bumps and tracks on a DVD are much smaller and can therefore hold significantly more information, up to 4.7GB.

Professional Disc for Data (PDD)

With the decision made in favor of the Toshiba, Super Density Disc and the abandonment of the Multi Media Compact Disc (MMCD) as the main technology for the DVD, Sony set out to design a disc they called Professional Disc for Data (PDD). The need for a higher capacity disc for the upcoming high density television systems was a certainty.

Sony introduced the PDD in 2003 and it became available in 2004. This new format utilized the 405nm (Nana meter), BLU-violet laser for reading and writing to the disc, allowing for a much higher data storage than the red laser used in the DVD. The capacity of the disc was 23GB compared with 4.5GB for a single layer DVD.

The PDD format was very short lived and was discontinued in 2007. This made way for the next generation of optical media for the Philips/Sony team, the Blu-ray.

Blu-Ray

Blu-ray technology was developed jointly by Sony & Philips, along with an extensive board of directors.

Apple, Inc. Dell HP Hitachi LG Mitsubishi Electric Panasonic Pioneer Philips Samsung Sharp Sony

Sun Microsystems TDK Thomson Twentieth Century Fox

Walt Disney Warner Bros.

Blu-ray uses a 405nm wavelength blue-violet laser and has a tight track pitch of 0.85

The surface layer is 0.1mm-thick, which enables the laser to focus at the 0.85 aperture.

The disc uses a hard polymer coating called Durabis, which was developed by TDK and is supposedly? extremely resilient and fingerprint resistant.

The Java platform, which is used for menus and multimedia, is mandatory. Blu-ray systems must support JVM.

Capacity

Rom Single Layer 25GB

Rom Dual Layer 50GB

RW Single Layer 27GB

RW Dual Layer 54GB

Highest Test 100GB

Theoretical Limit 200GB

HD DVD

Toshiba

Rom Single Layer 15GB

Rom Dual Layer 30GB

Highest Test 45GB

Theoretical Limit 60GB

Abandoned February 19 2008

©Copyright Jacob Romeyn

About the Author

Radio Microwave engineer for 25 years, instructor in radio microwave engineering, computer technology 20 years.
I have been involved in online learning for 20 years and the 2nd user of the Moodle program.

Home Theater

How do I know the quality of a home theater system?

Using specifications such as wattage, etc, how can I tell the quality of a home theater system? I want to find a good set for around $100-$200 but I don't know a lot about sound fidelity. Also, any home theater system suggestions?

A wise man once said-

"Good stuff not cheap, cheap stuff not good..."

That being said, if you do your research and you know what you're looking for, you CAN put together a budget system that sounds decent.

Choosing speakers is a very personal thing; what sounds good to one person may sound horrible to another. The speaker recommendations you will get here will cost you ten times your price range. No one will recommend the "HTiB from Wal~Mart for $49.99 is all the surround sound you will ever need."

If you are serious about home theater, start saving your pennies and start doing some research. By the time you have the money saved that you will need, you will be able to make a confident, informed purchase.

Home Theater Curtains

If you are left with no choice but to build a home theater in a room where there are windows, you need to consider putting curtains over the windows. Home Theater Curtains can really help in preserving the atmosphere in the home theater. Movie theaters are known to be dark rooms where only the light coming from the screen can be seen.

A home theater becomes useless when you are watching a movie with bright light from outside is infiltrating the room.  Having the room dark allows your eyes to see vivid color and every detail on the screen.

What do you need to know when choosing your home theater curtain?

These are commonly referred to as draperies because of their thick material. Yes, a thicker material sets home theater curtains apart from others since it can completely block out the light trying to enter the room. Their main purpose is to keep the room as dark as possible.

The most important factor that you need to consider when making the home theater a dark place is the color. Curtains come in a variety of colors like blue, pink, yellow, camel, black and all the other colors that you may have in a 96-piece Crayola box. The best choice that you can have is to choose dark colors. Lighter colors reflect light which may cause chaos in the color that are projected from the screen, darker colors do not allow light to penetrate into the room unlike when light colors are used.

Choosing whether to go for a plain home theater curtain or a patterned one is a decision that depends on the design of your home theater. You need to consider the overall look of your theater. Your curtains may be a big part of your home theater which may pull the look together. The material to be used can also be chosen depending on your home theater. Curtains are available in velvet and remain a popular choice for most owners. They look sophisticated and add an edge to your room’s design. Cotton is another choice but you may want to consider this cheaper alternative to be effective when used in layers.

Curtains are available in a variety of sizes ranging from 28 – 200 inches. You need to keep in mind that you would want just the right height of the curtain, a few inches from the floor. If it touches the floor, people might get caught in it causing accidents. Besides from the size, materials used can differ from each curtain.

Usually, they are classified based on how they open whether through the center, from either sides or from only one side. You may want your home theater curtain designed according to what you like. There are manufacturer who accept custom made jobs depending on the specifications. No matter how or where you would purchase your curtains, you need to make sure that you are getting your money’s worth.

Just remember to keep in mind the tips on what home Home Theater Curtains will maximize you movie experience.

About the Author

For more great information on Home Theater Curtains
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Cable Hdtv Plasma

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The Top 4 Things To Look For In A Plasma TV

If you have ever seen a plasma TV screen displaying HDTV programming, you know why so many people are rapidly discarding their old CRT type televisions and getting ready for the digital TV revolution. Plasma TVs produce such sharp, crisp images that they make perfect companions to the new HDTV standards that will be widely used in the coming months and years ahead. So if you happen to be in the market for a plasma TV here are the top 4 things to consider as you shop:

1. Determine if it is indeed a plasma TV, or just a plasma monitor. A plasma TV already has the tuner built in to receive it's own television signals and it usually has it's own built in speakers. Plasma monitors on the other hand, are just simply large display screens without the tuner and speakers. If you subscribe to cable or satellite TV, you can use their tuner for programming, but you will still need speakers. Just understand what you are buying beforehand.

2. Is the set HDTV enabled? Since HDTV promises to be in full swing very shortly, you don't want to miss this great leap in TV viewing quality by not having a plasma TV that is at least ready and able to process the HDTV signals sent to it. Again, if you subscribe to cable or satellite TV you will be able to receive HDTV broadcasts as they make them available, but just make sure that your plasma display can indeed process high definition signals.

3. Choose in advance your mounting system. Will you mount the plasma TV to the wall, or will you use a stand instead? Don't forget that just getting the television is only part of the expense. Since most plasma screens sold are in the larger sizes, they will have to be supported by either a stand or wall mount because of their thin configuration. So make your choice and factor in this added expense beforehand.

4. Consider an extended warranty. Often extended warranties for electronics are not really as cost effective as they may seem, but especially for high cost items, they can be useful. Plasma TVs are not cheap, and they are not cheap to repair either, so buying an extended warranty that will cover you for needed repairs later on can be a good investment in this case.

Using a few simple guidelines such as these as you shop for plasma TVs can help you make better buying decisions and save money as you do.

About the Author

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best plasma tv
and getting a
plasma wall mount
by visiting our HDTV website.