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 debate about digital and analog is hardly new. Digital methods and gadgets are more convenient whereas analog methods are more authentic and less lossy. This debate is especially yappier when it comes to audio.
Audiophiles will tell you that there is no better way to listen to music than vinyl records and tech enthusiasts will tell you the convenience of wireless headphones is unparalleled. The industry is paying homage to retro tech nowadays by bringing back certain design elements and a general discourse about it. This has led to analog getting some attention that was missing for the last few years as the industry was moving fast and breaking things. The missing headphone jack from phones stands out in stark contrast to the Walkman’s 40th anniversary. Vloggers have made the idea of having a vinyl record player romantic, and exercising with music streaming from your watch to wireless earphones, practical. Visual media consumption has changed and with it, the ways of consuming it. Televisions have better display technology but don’t always have great audio output. This is where you can experiment with speakers. Even today, RCA ports, the gold standard from yesteryears are available on TVs for you to have an analog component in your home theatre system. When buying a new TV, you need to pay attention to the possibilities of audio enhancement you can have with it, as the inbuilt speakers are hardly ever good. You can go with, HDMI or RCA, digital or analog. Let’s explore both of them: HDMI High Definition Multimedia Interface is the standard all OEMs use for their TVs. It uses a single port and therefore a single HDMI cable to get both audio and video to the display from an external streaming box or device. There is also a special type of HDMI standard that comes with an audio return channel, called HDMI ARC. This allows the audio to go to an external speaker, which gives you a wide room to experiment with what speakers or soundbars you could use with it. Additionally, having one cable makes it easier to manage the cable clutter that can happen. Televisions also provide more than one HDMI port, so you always have more ports available to plug something else into. You can choose to connect one streaming box with an HDMI cable and a soundbar into an HDMI ARC port. It’s the obvious solution for someone who wants a no-hassle setup to get their favorite TV shows and movies to the biggest screen in their house. You don’t need to be an expert to connect something with this cable. Its beauty lies in its simplicity. RCA On the analog side, there are RCA cables for audio and video. RCA cable is not a single port, single cable solution. Audio uses two cables and ports and video uses one RCA cable. Audio can either use just one, or add a second one for stereo sound. This setup is useful especially when you want to keep using your older speaker with a newer television. The speaker will have RCA ports built in which you can leverage. The only thing that changes in your setup is your display when you use RCA cables. It can add more years to your speakers that otherwise would have gone to waste with this upgrade of your TV. Not only does this cable extend the life of your speakers, but they are also easily available and don’t have varying standards. HDMI has standards, so you have to make sure to get the right one to get the results that your TV promises. HDMI + RCA - The Ideal Setup The choice of how you outfit your television is up to you and it isn’t quite as binary as digital and analog if you don’t want it to be. You can use both at the same time. Plug in the streaming device with an HDMI cable for an immersive display and external speakers via RCA cables for surround sound. You can get more than just the main and stereo sound with RCA, which you should take advantage of. Both of these cables are simple to find and easy enough to use. You should check which ports you have on your TV and what standards they support. Then, you can order the required length of wire. The shorter the cable, the fewer issues it will face when passing a signal. SF Cable stocks cables for all your multimedia needs. Just pick the variant you need and you are good to go for a top-notch movie experience. Source: https://www.sfcable.com/blog/hdmi-rca-make-ideal-entertainment-setup/
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There was a time when the internet was a fascinating concept. Literally, it meant interconnected network and that was all. Before the possibilities of the interconnected network were explored and eventually expanded, you got one cable: the Ethernet cable that plugged into your massive desktop computer. And to do so, you had to unplug off all other communication to your house.
Fortunately, things changed, computers got smaller and portable and so did the internet. Let’s get a deeper insight into the history of the internet and how our way of living has changed because of it: Dial Up Connection: The beginning of the internet was complicated. If you had a landline connection in your house, you had to use the same cable to plug into your computer to get on the internet. The caveats were plenty: disconnection in the landline and therefore defunct; expensive internet data, not to mention the whole thing was slow! However, what this internet brought was a completely different way of communication. Online communities were born and it gave rise to the internet culture. People met in chat rooms, developed relationships, and networked with like-minded people. Eventually, the internet sophisticated and this gave rise to newer technology. As the demand for better connectivity grew, Ethernet cables began evolving. Its comprised materials also changed. Modem-Router Connection: Once the internet established a place in houses, the attempt was to make it simpler, better and more accessible to as many people as possible. This change came alongside the miniaturization of computers. They became more portable in the form of laptops which became more accessible by the general public. People started knowing how to plug in an Ethernet cable to get on the internet. This meant that people also started putting things on the internet like music, movies, books, information of all kinds, etc. This brought a disruption in not only the technology but also in a variety of other industries. Doing homework for kids was easier, communicating with someone across the globe was far cheaper and seamless than before. Most of all, this was not limited to offices and didn’t require a deep understanding of technology. It was for the average consumer. WIFI: The next shift came with the invention of the Wireless network. Once laptops became popular, it was unpopular to sit in a place just to use it. Wi-Fi made moving around with a laptop, while still using the internet, possible. You still had to connect your modem or router to the internet line in the house via an Ethernet cable, but at least you were free to move around. Since anything wired has better connectivity than wireless, this required improvements to the cables in use. The wiring in the houses had to be with better, newer Ethernet cables, like the cat4, cat5, cat5e cable, and cat 6a cable. The latest one was enough for all industries to leverage the internet. Now that the basics are covered and we are moving towards constant connectivity, streaming high-resolution movies and games, and cloud architecture, the demands of the average user’s internet have shifted again. The wiring in the houses needs to be with cat 7 cable or cat 8 ethernet cable, and you also need to use that on your routers and modems. Even if your house doesn’t need this advanced speed, if you are rewiring the house, it is better to future proof it. Mesh WIFI: The next best thing to happen to consumer accessible internet, since Wi-Fi was mesh network Wi-Fi. Its main use is to eliminate Wi-Fi dead zones that can happen in a house. The bigger your house, the more difficult it is to get decent Wi-Fi coverage in all parts of it. With the mesh Wi-Fi system connected to a cat 7 cable or a cat 8 ethernet cable, you can experience seamless internet connectivity in all areas of your house. Not only that, but your device will also be handed off from one node or zone to another as you move through the house. If you use the internet only on your phones and laptops, you can make do with cat5e cable and cat 6a cable, but if you want to turn your home into a smart home that has multiple IoT devices that need to run on fast internet, you should splurge for the more expensive, top tire Ethernet cables. Last Words The coming enhancement of the internet is 5G connectivity. It promises almost no lag and negligible ping time in the cloud-computing era that we currently live in. But it is still a couple of years out. So, if you want to get the best internet experience right now, you can do so by upgrading your cables, and devices. When it comes to consumer technology there is always a balance you need to find: use what’s most comfortable for you while also making sure that the device you are buying is future proof for at least more than a couple of years. 5G connectivity will change the internet and once again, the way we use it. For the foreseeable future, Ethernet cables are here to stay and therefore we’ve stocked them at SF Cable. Browse from our wide selection, and contact us if you need more information about which cable is right for your use. Source: https://www.sfcable.com/blog/brief-history-internet/ Millennials know that Wi-Fi is superior no matter what you say. In 2019, you can play console-level games without a single cable, or even an actual physical console. You can put up a video of activity now while doing that activity, without a huge workstation setup.
We want to have seamless smart home routines and over the air software updates for our cars. We also don’t like it when our video buffers or when we experience friction in our media exchange. To make sure Wi-Fi is consistent, fast and available everywhere, a completely new industry has sprung up of Wi-Fi nodes. They help eliminate Wi-Fi dead zones. We tend to do forget sometimes that Wi-Fi does not just exist, it’s available in the air. It comes from the router we have hidden in our closet or shoved behind the cabinet. At the end of that router, there is an Ethernet cable. One that you do have to occasionally replace. The nature of this Ethernet cable depends on whether your internet needs are for your home or office. While there are multiple iterations of this cable, two of them are the most popular: Cat5e cable and Cat6a cable. The main difference between them is the speed and reliability of the internet connection. This is not to say that either is bad. Cat5e cable is perfect for household uses, whereas the Cat6a cable is perfect for office-related use. Let us walk through a general home and office use case scenario: Home Internet Use: Homes vary in sizes, but if you take a standard three-bedroom house, it is likely that just one router is not going to do the trick. This is where Wi-Fi nodes come in. You can use one Cat5e cable for the main router to connect to your modem, and then add the nodes simply with their power plugs around the house. This will create a mesh Wi-Fi network in your house, making connectivity that much better in all corners of the house. Say goodbye to buffering! In a home, internet usage is generally that of entertainment or education. With a reliable connection, that is a result of this cable and the mesh network, your Wi-Fi can be better. This means you can stream movies without buffering at high resolutions, play games online seamlessly as well as take online classes and attend webinars. For Office Internet Usage: Now if the office only had two, three or even five devices that needed to connect to the internet, the obvious choice would be Wi-Fi. But if that is not the case, and you need to get internet access to more devices, then go with wired connections. Offices require seamless internet as their work depends on it. You should go with the Cat6a cable as it works at a bandwidth of 250 MHz. You need to have an Ethernet cable per computer. But computers are not the only thing that requires an Ethernet cable in an office. Depending on the kind of company, it might have to maintain servers. This is where the use of the Cat6a cable really comes in handy. The speed it gives can give instantaneous connection for over 10 people at the same time. The difference in such Ethernet cables is not that one is superior to the other, but that their uses are generally different. There is no harm if you use these cables interchangeably, but it might affect the productivity of the office a little bit. The advantage of such a wired connection is that they are speedier, and the obstacles that apply to Wi-Fi, don’t apply here. These obstacles include the placement of the router, walls, trees, and other objects. Wired connections don’t have such issues. As opposed to wired connections, when you want to go with Wi-Fi, you should take care of the wiring of the router. And these cables are top of the line right now and will be for the coming wave of extensive internet usage over the next couple of years. At SF Cable, we have Ethernet cables in all varieties, and CAT6a and CAT5e are some of the most popular amongst all. You can get them in a variety of colors and lengths. Source: https://www.sfcable.com/blog/wired-wireless-choose-connection-type |
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