Which cable will be good?

[asaldharan]

Hi,

After a good guidance and suggestion from this FM, I have bought a Onkyo HTS 3500 finally:yahoo:

Now I have 2 clarifications:

1. Do buying a HDMI cable is really needed? I have a TATA sky HD and neither my TV nor STB supports ARC. And even TS not supporting 5.1 through HDMI. So I feel routing a connection to TV from STB via HT is not needed.

2. Which optical cable and coaxial cable would be good ( may be cheap & best)?

I was planning to buy a Belkin brand but at the meantime I saw there are some optical cables for Rs.198 in ebay. Are these really worth to buy?

Thanks in adavnce

 

[technobhatt]

Hi,

After a good guidance and suggestion from this FM, I have bought a Onkyo HTS 3500 finally:yahoo:

Now I have 2 clarifications:

1. Do buying a HDMI cable is really needed? I have a TATA sky HD and neither my TV nor STB supports ARC. And even TS not supporting 5.1 through HDMI. So I feel routing a connection to TV from STB via HT is not needed.

2. Which optical cable and coaxial cable would be good ( may be cheap & best)?

I was planning to buy a Belkin brand but at the meantime I saw there are some optical cables for Rs.198 in ebay. Are these really worth to buy?

Thanks in advance

1. TS does support 5.1 via HDMI (Only TS support 5.1 over HDMI, none other DTH in India).
However if you wanna use Optical cable, that would be a good idea; as you won't have to switch on the HT all the time for watching TV and you can utilize TV speakers for watching stuff like news etc.

2. You can buy any Toslink Optical cable for your TS STB to connect to Home Theater. Don't go for expensive cables. There is no quality difference at all.

 

[asaldharan]

1. TS does support 5.1 via HDMI (Only TS support 5.1 over HDMI, none other DTH in India).
However if you wanna use Optical cable, that would be a good idea; as you won't have to switch on the HT all the time for watching TV and you can utilize TV speakers for watching stuff like news etc.

2. You can buy any Toslink Optical cable for your TS STB to connect to Home Theater. Don't go for expensive cables. There is no quality difference at all.

Thanks technobhatt.

But when I contacted the customer care of TS, they told it wont support 5.1 through HDMI and it only do through coaxial only.

 

[baijuxavior]

I'm sure you already have one hdmi cable to connect to TV. Using this cable connect the STB to AVR and use an AV cable to connect the stb to tv. Now check if the audio is in 5.1.

 

[technobhatt]

Thanks technobhatt.

But when I contacted the customer care of TS, they told it wont support 5.1 through HDMI and it only do through coaxial only.

I'm sure you already have one hdmi cable to connect to TV. Using this cable connect the STB to AVR and use an AV cable to connect the stb to tv. Now check if the audio is in 5.1.

Never go on the words of customer care. They may not be capable enough to guide their customers about such kind of technical query.
Just try to follow the method told by 'baijuxavior' and you should get 5.1 over HDMI from your TS HD STB.
(You will need to buy another HDMI cable if you don't wanna use Optical cable. Because with AV cable you would not get HD video on TV while watching HD channels.)

 

[asaldharan]

Thanks Baiju and technobhatt. I will try that.

 

[asaldharan]

I have one more doubt... Should I not use the speaker cable that comes along with the box?
Should I buy it separately?

 

[baijuxavior]

You can use the speaker cables that came with the HTiB. If you want something better then get the DAC cables from hifimart. 18AWG will be enough.

 

[asaldharan]

Thanks Baiju. The length of the cable is not sufficient for my room so I can join the 18 gauge wire with this? Will there be any distortion because of this?

 

[baijuxavior]

It can affect audio quality if the speaker wires do not match. But for an HTiB like Onkyo 3500 and for mainly movies most time you won't be able to distinguish the difference.

 

[asaldharan]

I checked connecting a TS to receiver, it supports 5.1 through HDMI.

Thanks Baiju and Technobhatt.

 

[asaldharan]

Hi guys,

Let me know one thing - Using too lengthy cables ( HDMI, Optical & Coaxial) will affect the sound or video quality?

 

[Thtpro]

Limit your HDMI cable to 25 feet.
Coaxial cable will be fine upto 100 feet.
Most of my optical cables are under 10 feet-- but I do not see any problem going upto 25 feet