| By Noel Lee
Most home-theater experts say that the
farthest you should run an S-video cable is about 10 feet. And for the most
part, they're right. When designing S-video cables, too many manufacturers
concentrate on making the cable as thin and inexpensive as possible. Thus, they
compromise the quality of the cable, and obviously poor picture quality results.
S-video cables carry the color and brightness
(chrominance and luminance) parts of the video signal separately. To carry these
signals, S-video cable has to consist of two separate cables in one jacket. Most
manufacturers try to cram two miniature cables into the same size jacket you'd
normally use for one. This process tends to change the impedance of the cable,
resulting in signal loss and a bad picture.
Video cables are supposed to have a consistent
75-ohm impedance through the connectors and the cable. When you alter this, as
far too many video cables do, you get a loss in signal strength, especially at
higher frequencies. The color signal in the video we watch in the U.S. and
Canada at a very high bandwidth, 3.58 megahertz, so it suffers more from signal
loss than the brightness signal, most of which occupies much lower frequencies.
The result can be a severe decrease in color when you run mediocre S-video cable
at lengths of 15 feet or longer. In some cases, you get almost no color at all!
For the average living room, that's no good. Many
people keep all their video gear in a rack, do the video switching with an A/V
receiver or a Dolby Digital/DTS preamp/processor, and run one long cable across
the room to a big-screen TV. That usually means a run of at least 25 feet. It's
even worse if you have ceiling mounted front projector, which often requires a
cable run of 50 feet.
But long runs of S-video cable are not a problem
with Monster Cable. As far back as the 1996 Winter Consumer Electronics Show, we
demonstrated that our S-video cables can carry signals as far as any homeowner
could every need. Whether we used our affordable Monster Video® 2, our
mid-priced Monster Video® 3, or our top-of-the-line M series Silver Video®
S-video cable, the color looked as good as if the cable were only a few feet
long.
Why do Monster S-video cables so greatly
outperform our competitors' cables? Because we don't compromise. We use the same
high quality manufacturing techniques and standards for our S-video cable as we
do for our composite and component video cables. We maintain a consistent 75-ohm
impedance throughout the cable through the use of an injected dielectric that
preserves the impedance even when you bend the cable. We bond our cable shields
to the dielectrics, so that they won't separate. (With other cables, the shield
often separates from the dielectric, moving further from the center conductor
and changing the impedance of the cable.) And we use a double shield-braid and
foil-to minimize interference at all frequencies of the video spectrum. We
manufacture S-video cable in standard lengths, and if you need an extra-long
cable, we'll custom-build it for you.
So don't worry if you need to run long lengths of
S-video cable. As long as you stick to Monster Cable, your S-video signals will
arrive at your TV set picture-perfect. | 
