Monster Cable Connections: Why Digital Satellite Deserves Special Treatment

by Noel Lee

Direct Broadcast Satellite services like DirecTV and the DISH Network are one of the most successful products in the history of consumer electronics. Between them, over ten million homes subscribe to one of these two services as either a supplement or alternative to cable TV. Leading consumer electronics manufacturers market the 18" dishes and digital satellite receivers, and virtually every major consumer electronics retailer that sells video also sells the hardware for at least one of these two systems.

The reasons why DBS is so popular are clear. The programming is great, and the picture and sound are truly outstanding. And with both systems incorporating state of the art satellite uplink technology, it's now the highest-quality video source you can get for your home. In addition, for the early adopters out there, with the August 1, 1999 launch of HBO's new HDTV feed, DirecTV is the first company to provide continuous high definition programming to consumers on a national basis.

Most people buy a DBS system replace or augment their cable TV or antenna. In addition to the tremendous channel selection, DirecTV and DISH also offers much better performance when installed property. If you hook up a DBS system the same way as regular cable TV, you can lose the picture and sound quality advantages it offers. The wire your cable company uses to hook up a cable box is called coax (or RF) cable. DBS receivers have an output that works with this type of cable, but if you use it to hook your DBS receiver to your TV, you end up passing the video and audio signals through your TV's tuner, which is only capable of producing about 330 lines of horizontal resolution. The latest DBS transmissions contain as many as 500 lines of horizontal resolution. Thus, unless you hook up your DBS receiver properly, you're throwing away up to 170 lines of resolution or about 34 percent of the sharpness and detail in your picture.

The Most Critical Connection

With a DBS system, there are two critical connections. The most critical connection, the one between the receiver and your TV set, is the one where many people make the mistake of using RF coax cable. But this problem is easy to correct, because there are certain cables you can use to get high quality pictures from DBS. Your best choice is a Monster S-video cable, which you can and should use if your TV has an S-video input. S-video cable carries the color and brightness signals on separate lines, so your TV doesn't have to do the extra work of separating them. Because DBS receivers work with digital video signals, they produce a virtually perfect separation of color and brightness signals. So, if you use Monster S-video cable with your DirecTV or DISH receiver, you'll get the best possible picture your TV can reproduce. This means almost no dot crawl or hanging dots (the annoying, crawling edges you might notice on horizontal and vertical edges of colored objects in the picture).

Not only does Monster manufacture our own connectors for maximum durability, we also gold plate all of the conducting components to prevent signal-degrading corrosion that attacks conventional S-video connectors. And unlike the inexpensive S-video cables that come with many video components, our high-quality video cable delivers all the amazing resolution both DBS systems are capable of.

If your TV doesn't have an S-video input, you can get almost as good a picture by using Monster composite video cable. Composite video cables offer the same resolution as S-video cables, but carry the color and brightness signals mixed together, so your TV has to separate them. A few of today's best TVs do a beautiful job here, in which case composite cable will work about as well as S-video cable. If the TV doesn't have a very good color/brightness separator, you will get some dot crawl and hanging dots with composite cable, but the picture will still be far better than what you'd get with RF cable.

If you do need to use composite cables, be sure to use high-quality cables like Monster. Unlike most video cables, Monster video cables use pure nitrogen injected dielectrics to maintain perfect 75-ohm impedance even if bent or coiled tightly behind your system, so you'll get the best possible picture, with no loss in resolution. And like our S-video cable, our composite video cable uses rugged, top-quality, gold-plated connectors of our own design.

The Second Most Critical Connection

The second most critical connection is between the satellite dish and receiver. Whether you're installing it yourself, or having a pro do it, make sure that you use cables made specifically for satellite dish installation, not the regular ones used for cable TV. This will ensure that you'll get the strongest possible signal delivered from the dish to the receiver. Monster ISAT 200 and ISAT REF Digital Satellite Cables are made specifically for connection. Even years of exposure to moisture and direct sunlight won't affect the performance of these cables or their connectors. The cable is so tough, you can even bury it!

Unlike the conventional RG-6 cable used for most satellite-dish installations, ISAT maintains a consistent impedance along its entire length, with outstanding frequency response even beyond 1.5 gigahertz. ISAT also delivers more of the original signal from the dish, measurably outperforming conventional RG-6 cable.

Both DirecTV and DISH offer outstanding digital sound that's miles beyond anything you can get out of cable TV. And just as it's vitally important to use high-quality audio interconnect cables with digital sources like CD and DVD players, you should use nothing less than top-quality interconnects, such as Monster Cable, to realize the full potential of satellite TV sound. If you're a DirecTV subscriber, you may have noticed that many of the pay-per-view movies and events are being broadcast in 5.1 channel Dolby Digital. Beginning with one of the feeds of the STARZ movie channel in mid-1999, more and more regular programming airs in Dolby Digital sound as well. Use Monster interconnects to connect the audio outputs of the satellite receiver to your A/V receiver or Dolby Digital processor/preamp, including our TosLink cable for Dolby Digital on select DirecTV receivers, and you'll get the best sound your system can produce.

One-Stop Shopping-Everything You Need To Install DBS

Many DBS system owners choose to save the cost of installation fees by installing their own system. If you decide to install your own DBS system, Monster can make the process easy for you with one of our DirecTV Satellite Installation Kits, which work equally well with DISH Network hardware.

These kits include everything you need to hook up a DBS dish and receiver whether from DirecTV or DISH, including quality S-video, composite video, and audio interconnect cables, a Monster ISAT Digital Satellite Cable, and a phone cable. (Both DirecTV and DISH receivers must be connected to a phone jack to transmit billing information). We offer two kits, one with high quality cables, one with our highest-performance, lowest loss cables.

If you're installing your dish over 100 feet from your receiver or you live far north at the edge of your service's range of service, you can increase the signal strength delivered to your receiver by using a Monster Cable in-line amplifier. This amplifier also helps to beat the effects of heavy rain and snow that might otherwise prevent the signal from reaching the satellite receiver intact.

Higher end DirecTV and DISH systems have two RF outputs on the LNB, which is the small block in front of the dish that picks up the satellite signals reflected from the dish. This kind of setup lets you hook up two receivers to your satellite dish, so you can watch two different programs in two different rooms at the same time. If you have a multi-room setup like this, Monster offers separate lengths of our high quality RF cable, so you can run the lines from the satellite dish to any room of the house without worrying about signal quality- no matter how big your house is!

If you don't have a Direct Broadcast Satellite system yet, check it out. It's a truly hot system for the home theater enthusiast. And when you get your DBS system, be sure to get everything you can out of it by picking up a Monster DBS Satellite Installation Kit, cables and accessories.