HD TV Tuners: Educate Me, Please

[scorrpio]

Also look at optical outputs, my reciver has 4 optical input/outputs and 1 digital coax input. My TV and my DVD player have coax digital outputs so if I really want to listen to digital audio for some channels I have to manually switch the plug. It seems optical sound connectors are what everyone is going to now.

http://www.amazon.com/DAYTON-DAC-CO-...&s=electronics

This one is $20, but I've seen them as low as 15. I had same issue - only 2 coax inputs on the receiver I got (and this was 1 more than about every other receiver I considered had), and I needed to connect DVD, Cable box and PC - all of them offering coax only for digital. I ended up connecting cable through this converter. Still, yeah, optical out is better to have these days.

[25]

Nice find, I will have to look into that, thanks.

[LCHIEN]

http://www.amazon.com/DAYTON-DAC-CO-...&s=electronics

This one is $20, but I've seen them as low as 15. I had same issue - only 2 coax inputs on the receiver I got (and this was 1 more than about every other receiver I considered had), and I needed to connect DVD, Cable box and PC - all of them offering coax only for digital. I ended up connecting cable through this converter. Still, yeah, optical out is better to have these days.

Digital coax vs optical audio - As an EE who's working with optical data stuff at work for the last 20 years, and a HiFi buff for 36-some years, I don't think there's any advantage to the typical user for optical.

1) digital coax is just RCA-RCA phone jacks, any video capable cable will do fine just as good as an optical cable and much cheaper.
2) one optical advantage is isolation - not much use for typcial home
system
3) another optical advantage is long distance - like km's - again not much use at typical 6-10 feet for home audio/theater
4) another optical adv is wide bandwidth - as I said, before, digital coax cable for video data is plenty fast for digital audio.

On my HT system, I had the choice of optical, I just could not justify spending the extra for the optical cable. I think its just a marketing gimmick.

[scorrpio]

By 'better to have optical these days' I do not mean advantages optical might have. I mean the tendency of receiver makers to favor the optical. My current receiver: 5 optical inputs vs 2 coax, and that seems to be the way most A/V receivers are. At least in sub-$1000 range. Because of this, it seems prudent to look for components with optical output.

[HarmsWay]

Yeah I agree with both of you that the real life benefits of coax outway the potential benefits of optical, but this is another example of a market decision we'll probably have to go along with. My AV receiver will take either one (albeit less coax inputs) but source I own with digital audio (apart from an ancient unused PCM machine) uses coax. All use optical.

I'd say two more advantages of coax cables are: 1. I can make excellent quality cables exactly the length I need, 2. The cables - especially the connectors - are more robust.

Bob