SF Cable Blog - Get Expert Tips & Advice on Cables & AccessoriesIn our blog, we educate customers on the various types of cables, components and accesscories for computer, laptops and mobiles. Find More Blog
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SF Cable Blog - Get Expert Tips & Advice on Cables & AccessoriesIn our blog, we educate customers on the various types of cables, components and accesscories for computer, laptops and mobiles. Find More Blog
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The HDMI cable solved a lot of problems. It removed the need for a number of cables, making cable management a cakewalk. There are now versions of this cable, each iteration better than the last. This is where the confusion comes in.
Last week, at CES, you saw a lot of display manufacturers talk about innovations in display technology and how this year’s modular TVs are going to be everywhere. But it is not yet as simple as bringing home a TV and playing high-resolution content on it. Even if you have the right cable for it, not all content is ready for the kind of promises that these TVs are making. What are the things that you are most likely to hear this year about TVs? And how you should take it with a grain of salt. Screen resolutionQLED panels trump OLED panels. Quantum displays are here. And more companies will start making those. 4K resolution is tame now so the move towards 8K and 10K has increased. Along with that, so has the emphasis on higher refresh rates. Everyone wants to enjoy the kind of refresh rates while watching a movie as they do on their gaming monitors. So, 8K TVs with 120Hz refresh rates are something that you might end up seeing. HDROne of the features that TV manufacturers boast about, High Dynamic Range. This is what gives you bright highlights and punchier colors. The latest standard of it is HDR 10+. The idea of dynamic HDR is to give an accurate output per frame rather than decide an output range for the whole show. This is, of course, better because shows and movies have varying scenes in terms of brightness and color. Connectivity optionsThe push for wireless has increased now more than ever. But you will still need to connect a few things to your TV. There are a fair few ports that you will still need. HDMI 2.1, HDMI 2.0, USB, DisplayPort, and even RCA ports. With these ports, you will also need to make sure you have the right cables. While the HDMI version is always downward compatible, you cannot simply use older cables to get the best results. You need an HDMI 2.1 cable, as well as HDMI 2.0 cable with these ports. Sound optionsTVs will boast of Dolby Atmos. In 2020, that is not quite as fanciful as it used to be. Televisions have a tendency of sounding okay, and speaker sets have always given a better experience until now. So, it remains to see if this year’s TVs are going to attempt to one-up the speaker industry or not. But the odds are in favor of the speaker. Gimmicks to be careful aboutWith every piece of technology, there are caveats. There are TVs that are as thin as a debit card, TVs that roll out of sight, and modular TVs that you can arrange all over a wall. The question is if you actually need that. Are you ever going to use that feature once the novelty wears off? And more importantly, how long will that TV last when its structure is flexible? All consumer goods come down to price, but with technology that is this premium, it comes down to worth more than just the price. Is the price justifiable? Is the technology still developing but the marketing of living in the future done too well? If you are in the market for a television, this year is good a year as any to get one. Even more so because the HDMI 2.1 cable that came out last year succeeding the HDMI 2.0 cable, will actually be in use now. The port will be in TVs beyond just the flagship ones, and it might just be relatively cheaper. Display tech will change, the HDMI cable will live on, at least for the near future. SFCable has your cable needs covered no matter the variant of all cables under the sun. But it is important to know which one works the best with your equipment and we will help you figure that out. Source: https://www.sfcable.com/blog/new-year-new-tv-specs
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The technology hardware and equipment industry market the slimness of their product every year. They show off how the computer still manages to be thin without heating up, and how it is much more portable because of its size. But slim laptops have to make compromises. Sometimes they compromise on processor power, sometimes on the cooling mechanism, and for the last three years, they have been compromising on ports.
The slimmer the side after all, the more difficult it is to place ports. The reason for the compromise is obvious but not always justified. Manufacturers have been able to take this step because of the USB C port, which is the port to kill all ports; as we like to call it. But in the rush to switch laptops to just USB C, a new necessary gadget has come out. The USB hub. Charging capacities of laptops have increased, so, on a light day, you can choose to leave your charging cable at home. But in place of that, you have to carry around a small hub to plug in anything you need. The perfect USB hub:
Build quality of a gadget like this is important because it should last you for more than one laptop’s duration, and you will toss it around a bunch, as it has to go where your laptop goes. As far as ports go, they might want you to think that the USB C port is the only basic port you need but that’s definitely not true. You need USB A ports, HDMI, an Ethernet port and an SD card slot. These you require because the peripherals that you have to attach to a laptop have not all adopted USB C yet. And the quickest way to transfer images, for example, is through something like an SD card. The lack of multiple ports on a laptop makes it highly inconvenient to collaborate with others too. USB C power pass-through is necessary so that you can charge your laptop while using all those ports. You know, just like a normal laptop with ports functions! The future may be wireless but we are paying the price for it. The design of this tiny device can make or break how easy it is to use. If the ports are placed too closely together, it makes it difficult to plug more things in. If the ports are too far apart, it will take up too much space. It is, after all, a gadget that goes with your laptop, so you want the design of it to complement it. To narrow down on certain specifics to help you make your decision, here are a few more tips:
Source: https://www.sfcable.com/blog/brief-guide-buying-head-dongles-usb-hub/ The idea of what a computer is is in flux right now. But we are not entirely doing away with screens on them or attached to them yet. The future of computing may be ambient but right now, we are not there yet. Our computers still need monitors and those still have to be attached via cables.
The older connectors are DVI, S video and VGA. These are barely in use now unless the computer and monitor you are using are significantly old. The newer monitor cables are DisplayPort, HDMI, and USB C. The switch from analog to digital happened with the DVI cable. Now that most of the industry is doing away most of the ports on their laptops, and sticking with just the USB C port, this also changes the computer cable we tend to need. USB C is gaining popularity for being the cable to rule them all. You can use it to transfer data, as a charging cable and both at the same time at extremely fast speeds. Older cables also happen to be clunkier, and limited to single purposes, whereas the newer ones are more versatile. Let’s walk through different workstation setups and the computer cable, and hardware you can use for them: Basic Household Setup: If you need your monitor only for basic use like surfing the web, then the DisplayPort cable can do the trick. You don’t need too much speed or very high resolution. DisplayPort cable can support resolutions up to 3840 x 2160 pixels at 60 Hz refresh rate. This is more than enough for your day-to-day activities and even for watching movies up to a certain level. This resolution is also known as Ultra High Definition and you will be able to enjoy 4K movies provided your internet can stream them at this resolution. Video Editing Setup: Editing a video frame by frame requires a monitor with a faster refresh rate. And for this, you need a computer cable that can handle this higher resolution data transfer. This may be your main monitor or you can even plug in an external monitor to see the video on a separate screen from the editing timeline. You can use an HDMI cable when you want to connect your computer to a TV to watch a movie. Because HDMI cables can also carry audio, this simple one cable connection is sufficient for this purpose. With HDMI cables, you should keep in mind that the shorter the wire, the better the chances of getting crisp results. Portable Setup: Now that the battery lives of laptops are decent, no one wants to be stuck at their desk. With these high-end laptops, you will only need to carry around one computer cable: USB C. Not only can you charge the laptop with it, but also connect it to an external display for both data and power. USB C is one of the ubiquitous computer monitor cables. It has absorbed the technical qualities of DisplayPort and HDMI within its reversible and symmetrical form factor. USB C is also the port of choice on phones. Samsung is leveraging this port in its flagship line up to give a feature called Dex, which turns any monitor into an external display for your phone. You can use this for presentations, movies, or any other purpose that would require an external monitor. With the evolution in connectivity methods and computer form factors, computer cables will continue to evolve. It is important to choose the cable that is compatible with your monitor. If you use an older standard of the DisplayPort cable with an extremely high-resolution monitor that supports HDR10+, then you will not see the promised results. However, if you have a high end monitor with high refresh rate and your CPU has the compatible power, you can get a crisp 4K HDR10+ display with a USB C cable of the correct version. Before you make any purchase, make sure that every component of your setup is compatible with each other. Additionally, you should always buy hardware that can support the software that will come for the next 3-4 years at the very least. At SF Cable, we stock both legacy cables for niche requirements as well as cables of the future. For any questions regarding the compatibility of your setup, you can contact us here, and we will answer all your cable queries. Source: https://www.sfcable.com/blog/computer-cable-make-break-setup/ One of the major problems that we face nowadays is not having enough power sockets for the numerous gadgets we keep buying, the ones that apparently, we absolutely must-have. Now that smart home technology has come into the spotlight, it has not only changed our power socket needs but also our overall wiring needs.
Someday, when Wi-Fi is better and everything works on long-lasting batteries, we will not have to worry about wiring. Until then however, you can read this article about why you should update the wiring of your house and how to set up a functional smart home for better connectivity. Ethernet cables evolve. With each iteration, the goal is to make it better in terms of reliability and speed. It is not simply enough to use a Cat8 cable to connect to your computer, if the wires that live in your walls are ancient. You need to update those to match the ones you connect to your devices. You can do this process yourself or hire an electrician to do it. If you choose to do this yourself, then here's how you can go about it:
Now let's dive into a smart home setup that can make use of your new advance connectivity: Start with a good mesh Wi-Fi setup. Wi-Fi dead zones are a big no for a connected home. Start with a smart home hub that has a decent screen. You can monitor and set up all the other devices with it. Add a thermostat. You can save significantly on electricity with one that can automatically set the optimal temperature for your house. Another thing that will save you electricity is smart lights. You can operate them from anywhere so you never have to think about whether you turned them off or not halfway on your road trip. The main reasons to have a truly smart and connected home is security, entertainment, energy saving, and convenience. Now that we have covered the energy saving part, let's move on to the security aspect of it: You get a smart doorbell that comes with a camera. The video captured from this camera can stream in your smart home hub and your phones as well if you want to keep a check on things remotely. Additionally, you can put a camera in your living room to monitor it, in case you have babysitters taking care of your child. If you get parcels delivered to your house, then with such doorbells, you can keep an eye on the parcel. The scope of entertainment in a connected home is vast. You can have music following you from room to room, wherever you go. A digital assistant tends to have features like playing music, and games as well as storytelling. On the convenience side, a smart home is as if your whole house comes to your aid in your everyday life. If you have digital assistant speakers set up in every room, they work as an intercom so you can broadcast when dinner is ready. With a Wi-Fi mesh system, you can set the internet limits and restrict sites as well, making it safer for your kids to be on the internet. A smart home changes the way you take care of your home, and therefore yourself. It reduces certain daily tasks with smart routines and elevates your way of living. All of this is of course, next to impossible to do on a weak or spotty internet connection. To use the technology of the future, you need the wiring of the future and that begins by having cat8 cables running inside all your keystone jacks. Source: https://www.sooperarticles.com/shopping-articles/electronics-articles/future-proof-your-house-internet-tomorrow-1756544.html Networking is the backbone of any IT infrastructure. It's one of the most interesting concepts of technology, at least for network engineers. For many people working with networking devices is interesting as millions of people rely on them. Some of them even find working inside a data center with servers and networking components interesting.
Just think about the Google data centers where thousands of queries come every day and how strong their servers have to be to process those queries and revert the results to the users in a matter of minutes. There are so many components, from small to large, included in those data centers and each one is important and interdependent. So, in this article, we've discussed two basic devices of networking which are necessary for a fiber-based solution but people forget them easily. Let's discuss why they are important and what's their use: Fiber Optic Adapter: It's a small device that connects the fiber optic patch cables to the switch. Their main function is to make sure that internet-enabled devices can communicate with each other. These adapters are the least evident yet vital devices that infrastructure managers tend to ignore it. How do they work? When working with optical fiber cables, you need to take care of the alignment of each fiber core. There are two components that help to get precise alignment, the ferrule within each connector and alignment sleeve within each adapter. Most of the connectors are based on the 2.5-millimeter ferrule. It plays a pivotal role in securing and aligning the fiber. Each of the fiber optic adapters is the alignment sleeve which brings together the ferrules of the two connectors. Let's look at the different types of adapters and their specifics: LC Standard: They are useful for connecting the LC patch cables or LC connectors. You can connect LC to LC, LC to FC, LC to SC, LC to ST, and LC to MU, etc. These adapters come in various types including simplex, duplex, quad, single-mode, multimode, UPC, APC, PC with different types of sleeves. FC Adapter: This is useful for connecting FC patch cables or FC connectors. There are various types of adapters like square, single D, and double D, and come in single-mode and multi-mode versions. These adapters have ceramic sleeves and metal housing. SC Adapter: It is useful in connecting the SC patch cables and connectors and is available in various types like single-mode, multi-mode, zirconia sleeve, simplex, and duplex versions. Ordinary SC adapters come with plastic housing or metal housing. Most of the adapters come along with ceramic sleeves or bronze sleeves which are generally multimode. ST Adapter: This is useful in connecting ST patch cables or connectors and is available in simplex, duplex, single-mode, multimode, metal and plastic-type. The most common ones are in multimode. Well, that was a whole lot of adapters. But there is one more equipment which is equally important but hardly noticed: Fiber Optic Patch Cables. They are known as fiber jumper cables or fiber patch cords. They terminate with fiber optic connectors on both ends. It has two applications; computer workstation to the outlet or optical cross-connection distribution. You can use them for indoor application only and divide on the bases of different fiber cable mode, cable structure, connector types, connector polishing types, and cable sizes. Let's look at the different types of fiber optic patch cables: Single Mode Fiber: This type of fiber is so small that only light rays at a zero-degree incident angle pass with less amount of loss. It has a core diameter of 8 to 10 μm. They use 9/125-micron bulk single-mode fiber cable and single-mode fiber optic connectors at both the ends. Multimode Fiber Patch Cables: Fibers having more than one mode are multimode fibers. There are two types: step-index multimode and graded multimode fiber. Step-index multimode fibers are useful in imaging and illumination whereas graded fibers are useful for data communication and network carrying signals to moderate distances, typically it can pass data for few kilometers. 10 gig Multimode Fiber Optic Cable: It uses 50/125-micron fiber and optimized an 850nm Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSEL). It is backward compatible with existing network equipment and provides three times more bandwidth of traditional multimode fibers. Final Word: The fiber optic cable and fiber optic patch cord are the most crucial and useful components of network designing. Hence, while designing the network make sure to choose the right kind according to your requirement. Source: bit.ly/insights-into-fiber-optic-adapter-patch-cord As the form factor of a computer evolves, it changes the way a user interacts with it. From large hardware components that housed minimal and basic things, we now have hardware that houses components for rocket science between a couple of sheets of glass and metal.
With this evolution in the form factor, the space for I/O ports has also changed, effectively changing the connection standards. What earlier used to be separate ports for video and audio, now only needs one. However, minimizing form factors is not without compromise. Portability means being able to handle your work and get entertainment irrespective of where you are. You can create presentations on a train and watch movies while camping. However, there are some places where you will need a large screen. When you have to move around and get things done, a small computer is more than enough, but when you are at the office and have to present a report or pitch an idea, a large screen can get your message across much better. After all, a laptop or tablet is good for one person's view, but when more people need to see what's on the screen, a large display is more effective. No matter what size your laptop or tablet is, it should have one port that comes in handy when you want to plug into a large display. Smaller sizes of gadgets have given way to smaller I/O ports and therefore connectors. One of these is a Mini DisplayPort cable, which is essentially a smaller sized connector of a DP cable. DisplayPort standard is quite popular. It came in before HDMI and was one of the first experiences of having a video and audio cable in one. You can find the mini DisplayPort on current laptops and tablets instead of an HDMI port because of its smaller size. If they are office-focused laptops, they definitely need something to present work-related things on a bigger screen for meetings and such. Let's walk through some use cases of a DP cable: Work meetings: For freelancers or even in-house employees, your computers help you get your work done. But work generally is not something that only you do and the process ends. More often than not, it is a collaborative process that has presentations, feedback and more. For this, your laptop will need to be efficient but that will not be enough. To add convenience, you will need to have I/O ports that are compatible and ubiquitous. Not everyone has the latest gadgets in their offices all the time, but that should not hinder work. A Mini DisplayPort cable is one of the handiest tools to have in your arsenal in such situations. You can simply plug one in a conference room display monitor, and run your meeting smoothly. While a visual presentation is not the tool that carries your meeting, but if it were to not work because of a technical issue of not having the right cable, it can certainly affect the mindset of everyone attending the meeting. Movie night: All of us watch movies on our tiny computers with our headphones plugged in, in the middle of the night, even though we have huge TV screens right in the living room! But when we want to have a family movie night or a sleepover with friends, then it becomes difficult to share that average laptop screen with so many people. Again, this is where a DP cable or a mini DisplayPort cable can save the day. Just plug your laptop into your TV, gather around with some popcorn, and let the large screen give you some movie magic. Not having such a simple plug and play solution would make a relaxing experience a hassle and something that you end up avoiding rather an anticipating. Wrap up: Wireless setups are great, but they are not always as simple and frictionless as using cables. Cables are also easier for everyone to use, irrespective of their technical knowhow. These two ports are on gadgets that are both old and new. And these cables are also easily available from any online or offline electronics store. Source: https://www.sooperarticles.com/shopping-articles/electronics-articles/mini-displayport-cable-best-work-meetings-movie-nights-1756332.html Battery science is still developing. We do not have devices that can last long on a single charge or ones that require no charge at all. We need to charge everything, and all consumer gadgets are fighting each other in the market by showing off battery specs.
But the true power still lies in the power cable. The better it is, the faster your device will charge without heating up. This brings to light the power cables that gadgets use and the reason behind it. While there are various types of power cords, North America generally relies on the company: National Electrical Manufacturers Association or NEMA. When it comes to power cables, there is no other name more popular. This power cable is standard across the continent. The thing to know mainly about the NEMA power cord is that it comes in two variants: ungrounded and grounded. The grounded one has a grounding pin in addition to two flat pins and the ungrounded one just has two flat pins. Appliances that require more voltage use the grounded cord and ones that require less voltage use the ungrounded cord. Let’s walk through a typical household and see the variations we find in the power cords: Laptops Laptops have the NEMA power cord in two parts. The power supply part has an adapter for AC-DC conversion. Alternative Current flows through power cords but since laptops cannot handle that much voltage, despite it being stable, the adapter converts it to Direct Current that is at a lower voltage. This adapter detaches from the main power cord and has the laptop’s charging pin at the end. A laptop being a battery-operated device means that its battery can recharge at low voltage. Kitchen Appliances One of the biggest kitchen appliances is the refrigerator. It requires high voltage and therefore it needs to use the earthing connection via the grounded NEMA power cord. This protects the user and the device from high voltage. Similarly, a microwave also requires a grounded power cord. Other smaller kitchen appliances like a toaster, blender, etc. function on low voltage and therefore only need ungrounded power cords. Entertainment Setup A typical entertainment setup has a TV, soundbar, gaming console, and a streaming box. These gadgets require less voltage. Some of these devices have a cable directly built in, and some don’t. These are items that we use over the course of at least five years and therefore it is crucial that their power cords are top notch and don’t malfunction easily. Smart Home Appliances It is the era of the connected home. Not only will you find devices that are smart and have fancy sensors, but also power plugs themselves are smart. If you plug a smart plug into your wall outlet and then plug in any normal appliance, like a lamp or a music player or a toaster, then you can control that device without using physical switches. If you plug in a lamp, then you can also automate it to turn on every evening at sunset by itself. Similarly, you can automate a lot of devices, like your coffee machine for mornings, or your Christmas lights for every night in December. Smart plugs take traditional gadgets or appliances and add intelligence to them. Across the continent, you can safely plug in a device with the NEMA power cord since all wall sockets are compatible with it. They are also the standard one that all gadget use. Before plugging in anything, it is always safer to check what voltage your device can handle and plug it into a matching wall socket. This prevents a risk of electricity overload and hazards due to it. Some wall sockets are also USB ports but not everything runs on USB power. Hence, the NEMA power cord is most certainly here to stay. While they cannot carry data and electricity both, they are essential for power supply. Most devices don’t need data to run anyway. Devices that require data or use data transfer are also plug and play, therefore they need the dual function. But apart from those, a power cable is enough to use as a power supply. Wrapping Up: Power supply is changing for many devices in this emerging smart IoT world. But nothing is about to start running on power supply over the air. The NEMA cord is here to stay. And you should definitely know all about them. At SF Cable, we stock a variety of these for whatever purpose you need them. Get in touch with us for more information regarding the nuances of power cables and guidance for selecting one. Source: https://www.sfcable.com/blog/power-cables-here-stay-why/ |
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