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Industry Opinion: Cables and Connectors - What Next? (1/9/2007)

By Yasmin Hashmi, HiddenWires

Yes, wireless can ease the pain, but there is no getting away from the fact that cables and connectors are the glue that hold our industry together. With consumption of media and data ever increasing, and demand for ever higher data rates and image/sound quality, it is essential that installers have access to the best products to get the job done more quickly, while ensuring that the infrastructure is as future-proof as possible.

In order to gauge what the current trends in cables and connectors are, we asked a number of leading suppliers and installers what technology is currently being used, and what developments can we expect in the next year. Here are their replies:

Kevin Swanton, Sales Director, Asheridge Communications

Having been involved in the cables and connectors arena for over ten years, we have seen more and more installers move away from the time-consuming and expensive method of using soldering irons to terminate cables on site, to no-solder solutions such as hex crimp connectors and compression connectors. The hex crimp has a very good cable retention capability as well as providing the same electrical performance as compression connectors, but if the installer prefers a compression type of connection, it is best to look for a one-piece design.

Where RF signals are involved, most installers are using the RCA/phono and the good old F connector. One-piece F connectors with an integrated centre pin benefit from a high return loss figure, which means that the RF signal reflection is kept to a minimum, thus improving signal performance.

The use of the RCA/phono connector is currently increasing due to the rise in the number of component video installations for DVD, as well as the more demanding Sky HD and HD DVD and Blu-ray DVD players. However, while it is still much easier to run component cables as opposed to trying to hide HDMI cables in walls and ceilings, this may change as more content becomes encrypted with HDCP and there is less availability on the component outputs of set top boxes. Indeed in the US, a number of operators have deliberately started to down-res the set top box component outputs so that the quality is not worth copying!

Another useful connector that has been recently brought to the UK is the EZ RJ45 connector. This connector makes putting RJ45 connectors onto Cat5e and Cat6 cables as easy as putting F connectors onto coax cable. The cable is stripped, unpaired, straightened, cut and then fed into the connector and through the connector housing. Pairs and colours can now be checked and adjusted, and then finally the connector is crimped and the cable is cut at the same time. This connector has really started to make the lives of anybody installing Cat5e and Cat6 cable far simpler and more profitable.

Jeremy Aston, Founder, Reality Logic

The past 12 months have seen a lot of consolidation on digital connectors as far as AV is concerned. A year ago we were installing a range of cable/connector types such as SCART, S-Video and HDMI/DVI to cope with the existing and future hardware requirements, whereas now the screens all have digital connections and generally we are just using digital cables. We have also seen Cat5-based distribution technologies really take hold, so that now it is much easier to specify a distribution infrastructure that does not have to hedge technical bets so much.

It seems the next advances will be made in the area of running multiple services over less cable. Fibre and so-called Cat8 and Cat7 are options already, but there is a premium to be paid and a need to have more manufacturer independence before moving out of the early adopter phase and being able to compete with Cat5-based solutions on a cost/benefit analysis.

Of course, you only have to look at the back of any rack to see that coax is not dead for all those interconnects. From an installer perspective, speed and reliability are key, which for us, has meant using cable and compression kits from the established suppliers known for the quality. We have however, started a system of push-fit and screw connectors that are very quick to terminate with pretty much 100% accuracy.

John Graham, VP of Marketing, Entropic Communications

The biggest trend impacting the industry is the growing consumer demand to have high-definition content from DVRs, audio devices, PCs, and broadband available anytime and anywhere throughout the home. With this major new application of sharing video to all the home's displays, many product developers and service providers have realised that the missing-link is the availability of a ubiquitous, highly-reliable and high-throughput home network. Best-effort IP networks are fine for data functions around the home, but the market requires a high-performance managed network for home entertainment services.

While consumers will accept lower quality or degraded video viewing on mobile and hand-held devices, even occasional glitching, blocking or 'buffering - please wait', they will not tolerate these for standard home entertainment video devices such as TVs, DVRs, STBs, and media centres. The missing link for the connected home is coaxial cable - a relatively ubiquitous, highly-reliable and high-throughput system that can serve as the backbone of the home entertainment network. Coaxial cable can carry a wide variety of traffic, and support the necessary quality of service functions to allow operators to deliver premium consumer experiences to every room in the home.

Ken Weller, COO, Tenvera

With the bandwidth requirements of wholesale distributed HDTV in the home very nearly upon us, copper-based infrastructures are no longer a valid solution for any type of future requirement. Fibre optics have been the obvious answer for some time, and given the limitations of Multimode cable (comprising mutliple strands of glass fibre that suffer signal distortion over longer runs), Singlemode cable (comprising a single strand of glass fibre and with a higher transmission rate and up to 50 times more distance than Multimode) is the most sensible choice. Commoditisation of fibre solutions now mean there are no excuses for not providing the infrastructure for this, at the very least, as a future upgrade path in the home.

Today, a Singlemode fibre backbone with industry-standard SC/APC fibre connectors is as safe a bet as you can get when your customer asks you for that dreaded 'future proofing' infrastructure option.

Bob Hart, Consultant, Bryant Broadcast and Data Communications

At the camera end, Bryant is producing copious quantities of SMPTE 311M hybrid fibre optic camera cables for the latest HD fibre cameras. These generally use LEMO 3K.93C SMPTE 304M hybrid connectors and Furukawa Premium optical cables. This seems to be the best combination to give a reasonable service life, because the 'mixture' of copper and fibre within a cable that is fairly regularly going to be run over, compressed, put under tension and generally abused, asks a lot of the beast. There are some real horror stories about the longevity of US- and even European-made versions of this cable!

At the other end of the signal path, in the world of digital displays and connected devices, the most frequent question seems to relate to transmission lengths for HDMI cables. The most common usage seems to be 2 - 3m, but custom installers obviously want to run longer lengths if they can. The trouble is that it's not just the quality of the cable and connectors that impacts this, it is also the 'chip' in the TV or projector. We're working on an upmarket HDMI cable design, but even then, we can't guarantee much beyond 10-15m unless the receiving kit has been tested with the cable.

Ben Jamison, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, VizionWare

Over the next couple of years, HDMI is poised to become the dominant interconnect standard in all sorts of consumer devices. With the strong migration towards high-definition video and audio content delivery in both the consumer and commercial segments of the industry, HDMI, DVI, and DisplayPort digital interconnects will replace traditional component analogue cabling implementations in many of today's installations.

Andy Giles, European Media Monster, Monster Cable

Monster firmly believes that HDMI points the way to the future of quality cables and connectors. However, it has to make the grade and reach the standards it promises. High-definition as we know it today, is advancing rapidly, and will pale in comparison with the video of tomorrow. Soon, you will hear new buzzwords like 'deep colour', higher refresh rates, and higher resolution displays. Driven by advances in computer, display, and source technologies that will enable consumers to achieve a more lifelike video experience, HDMI has updated its versions to reflect an increase in data capability. Hence some of the confusion over HDMI cables.

There have been five versions of HDMI since its inception in 2002. The latest version provides for a superhighway of data for products that will come in the near future. Evolving technologies in video displays (1080p, 1440p and beyond), new sources such as Blu-ray disc, HD DVD and Playstation 3, and content such as the latest in HD movies in 1080p, and 10-bit/12-bit and greater colour depth, all need more advanced cable technologies.

HDMI offers a connection that provides the most incredible audio and video experience that the consumer electronics industry has ever known. With every advance, HDMI delivers even sharper, more vivid images, with brighter and deeper colours, and with the highest-quality surround sound available. The 'one-cable' solution that makes it easier for consumers to hook up their products - that is the 'Beauty'.

The 'Beast' is that HDMI engenders more confusion than any other connector type with many different cable and component standards, interoperability problems, and false information about its quality and performance. For example, the most recent HDMI standard, HDMI 1.3 category 2 specification, lays the groundwork for technologies in components yet to come, such as deep colour beyond what is available today, higher refresh rates for smooth video, higher resolution to 1080p and beyond, and greater pixel density as displays get larger. Poor picture quality can range from dropped pixels, snow, and streaks across the screen, to total picture drop out.

Moreover, many electronics and cables do not perform to the standard, so many combinations of cables and components do not work. Additionally, cable performance, especially over long runs, have degraded picture quality. The shame is that custom home installation systems wonÕt gain the benefit of HDMI unless this message is written large!

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