1 vs 5 RG6 Cables

[kimvi]

Cable/Sat companies r able to transmit channels to multiple boxes throughout our entire home via a single coax. Why do we need to use 5 RG6 or 2 Cat-5e for whole house HD Video & Sound?

 

[Micah]

Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but Sat and Cable companies are able to do HD over a single RG6 because they compress the signal at the source and decompress the signal at the box.

When you're talking about using 2 cat-5 or 5 RG6, you're talking about transmitting uncompressed HD over the wire, which a single RG6 can't do.

 

[kimvi]

Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but Sat and Cable companies are able to do HD over a single RG6 because they compress the signal at the source and decompress the signal at the box.

When you're talking about using 2 cat-5 or 5 RG6, you're talking about transmitting uncompressed HD over the wire, which a single RG6 can't do.

Thanks. Just for information, do you know how much bandwidth HD uses compressed and uncompressed?

 

[royalj7]

They also use very expensive equipment at their headend to do the compression, it's not something you can pickup from your local electronics retailer. Also, while it's compressed it's also encrypted (digital cable and satellite at lest), so the set top box does double duty.

--Jamie