As Bill said, RG6 is the right cable to use for everything. If you have RG59 prewired in your rig you can use that and likely get away with it. But anything you add should be RG6. Youcan buy the ends and crimper at HD or Lowes. Or, you can buy the twist on RG6 ends. Which I do not recommend. It is far better to crimp if you can. And it is not necessary to get quad shielded cable or connectors.

Based on my research I thought RG6 was the way to go just wanted to confirm.

The cable TV and satellite external entry points on my coach are at the very rear of the coach. I have no signal by the time it gets to the front of the coach on both cables, ohm's out just fine but no TV. When I run a cable externally up to the front TV everything works just fine. Since the problem affects both cables there must be a connection point somewhere along the run The electrical prints show no splitter or j-box on the entire run from back to front.

After many hours of looking I think I going about abandon the original runs and make a new external enrty point towards the front of the coach and run the RG6 like you guys have suggested.

3Gstore_Matt wrote:

---

As others have said RG6 is pretty much the standard for most cable/satellite installations. I've never tested RG59 with a TV system so I can't comment on the difference in picture quality though.

---

I’ll do the testing for you. J  If the signal through any coax is “digital” (we’re talking RF here, not analog video) then it’s kind of like a cell phone.  It’s either perfect, or it breaks up / isn;t there.

 

There is no picture “degradation” as such.  It’s either there, and perfect, or it isn’t (or breaking up.)  That’s one reason why you want to install the proper cable and proper connectors.  It’s pretty much either works, or it doesn’t and trouble shooting is a problem for most people not familiar with RF or base band digital video.  (Analog was / is a whole other conversation.)

 

There you go without getting into too much techo speak.

 

Bill

Bill Adams wrote:

---

The signal traveling through the coax is not digital and therefore not subject to the all or nothing test. The signal strength will simply become less and less as the run gets longer. We have used the RG-59 inside 1000's of RV's for many years without issue. I suspect that even at 100' with RG-59 you would be hard pressed to notice any substantial difference in signal quality with a good piece of cable. However, RG-6 would still be the choice as it provides better quality over a long time period so there would be no reason to use the other.

---

Bill, Matt’s post was about “picture quality.”  So I gave a TV-101 answer as to the picture quality, like resolution, of the picture.  I noted the signal was “RF.”  But yes, the RF signal is carrying a digitally encoded stream - like ATSC @ 1939 MB/s.  So varring RF levels, including multipath / impedance reflections, etc. make the RF and decoding react as pretty much as a "digital signal"

 

I agree with you that you can run 1000 feet of 59 and have it work.  But that wasn’t the question as I understood it.

 

Anyway, doesn’t matter.

 

Cheers

 

Bill

 

I have never found any need of any kind for quad-shield coax in an RV installation (hundreds of feet in a home plus the electrical plus the phones plus the Ethernet, plus, plus, might be different). YMMV, but I would not spend the extra money in an RV.
As to my previous post, I stand behind the fact that they will be no substantial signal strength difference between a run of RG-59 and RG-6 at 100'. Therefore, if there is no signal difference there will also be no difference in the final end product. I still would not install RG-59 should RG-6 be available but if the coach already had good working RG-59 I would not remove it in favor of RG-6.

Cool! Let us know how the project turns out.

While not needed, anytime Jack says I am on target it's like getting an extra star on the chart in grade school!
Thanks Jack!