Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2019 October 9

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

October 9

Coaxial cable

I remember in the days of analog satellite I used to have a l "coaxial cable" that specially connected the satellite receiver and TV and served as a way to directly send the sat signal to the TV so that it would appear as a fake channel instead of having to use the AV button.

Some time ago I had digital satellite set up and I've been told I also need a "coaxial cable" to send the signal to the TV so that I can watch the free unencrypted channels with the TV off, or route signals from another dish as well. Or something like that, the free channels are important because now I can either plug the antenna cable into the TV and watch only free channels, or plug it into the receiver and see everything but only on receiver (I have to watch the local channels also via receiver).

I've duckducked coaxial cable but it seems that's something else entirely. What's the thing I need called? 95.168.116.4 (talk) 14:59, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Analog and digital are converted back and forth on various devices, so coax cable can still be part of the equation, and has the advantage that nearly every TV can accept it, even very old ones. There are other TV input options, but not every TV has those. And it sounds like you need a switch box [1], which allows you to press a button to swap which coax cable is plugged into the TV. (For some reason, TVs rarely have more than one coax input, which would allow you to use the remote to switch between them.) Another option is to use a splitter [2], so both coax cables are plugged in at once. This works if the two inputs use different channels, but expect some degradation in signal quality over using the switch box. Still, if the degradation is minimal, this might be better than having to get up to hit the button to switch inputs (but you'll likely still need to switch between cable and antenna inputs on the TV menu). SinisterLefty (talk) 16:20, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Ah, of course, the splitter. We had that on one TV. On the other one the sat reciever had two cable jacks. One had the antenna cable and the other had the cable that the guy called coaxial running from the reciever to the TV. The digital receiver also has two similar looking cable jacks, although the antenna cable only goes in one of them, so this probably needs another type of cable if it's for that at all. The other one is what got me thinking about this cable, I forgot splitters were a thing. 95.168.120.97 (talk) 22:31, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, some set-top boxes have a bypass, that allows you to pass whatever comes in (on the coax) back out to the TV without doing anything to it. If you have that, then you can feed the antenna signal into that set-top box, and use it's remote to control whether you see the antenna signal (the bypass) or let the set-top box do it's thing and unscramble the satellite signal, etc., and send that to the TV. (Of course, with modern thin TVs, the "set-top box" isn't actually on top of the TV set anymore.) SinisterLefty (talk) 02:59, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, I think the splitter is likely what I'm after. 95.168.116.28 (talk) 21:56, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

As to the switch box, you may also find it under the name "A/B switch". --76.69.116.4 (talk) 03:27, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, for a 2-way switch box, but they also make 3-way, 4-way, etc. SinisterLefty (talk) 03:50, 10 October 2019 (UTC)