Comment by ja27 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ja27 | Hacker News Reader

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The shell of coax (and what's in the space between it and the center conductor) also affects the impedance of the cable or antenna system. It's generally not that critical for a receiving antenna.

Sticking up almost any wire more than a few wavelengths long will collect a reasonable amount of a strong signal. A truly resonant antenna for the frequency you're interested is a lot better, but not that helpful for general HDTV viewing where the frequencies range all over VHF and UHF.

One of the amazing things I've learned from years of ham radio is how many unseen and unpredictable things affect radio signals. You can move your antenna twelve inches to the left and lose a signal completely, especially inside a structure. Or an airplane flying overhead can reflect enough "multipath" signal to wreck your TV viewing for 30 seconds. Of course your own body blocks a lot of signal and is capacitively coupled to the antenna system as you adjust it. So if you're playing with an HDTV antenna and are too young to remember the fun of constantly adjusting TV rabbit ears, just keep tweaking until you get a good signal.

"...too young to remember the fun of constantly adjusting TV rabbit ears..."

Too young, ha! I use rabbit ears on my HDTV (no cable, just netflix + locals is enough for me) and laugh when I go to Best Buy and see "state of the art high definition" antennas for anywhere from $20 to $100. The same laugh hits me when I go down the gold plated monster cable isle, but that's a different story.

I used to think Monster cables were a complete joke too until a musician friend pointed out that they have a lifetime warranty and very generous terms of exchange. One can essentially walk into any music store in the country and swap out the splinched cables for new ones, no questions asked.

It's an interesting pricing model, and the $20-$60 cables more than paid for themselves after a single tour. Probably not appropriate for casual use though.

Or you could go to Monoprice and order a baker's dozen for the same price or less.

You're not a big fan of packing light, are you?

What you said may be true, but their main justification for the cost is the supposed supreme quality over cheaper cables that has been disproven time and again, and some of their cables cost much much more than $60. That's not to mention their litigation practices. They are truly a horrible company.

This is like buying an expensive car for the lifetime warranty. I could buy a 300k supercar, or I could buy 20 economy cars and rent out all but 1.

Like with the cables, neither makes sense. I could just buy one cheap cable from a reputable brand and probably not need another for 30 years.

And if I do? I'll just buy another. Because they're cheap and work perfectly.

A place not to do this is with R/C helicopters. Best to buy them from Brookstone with the 1-year no-questions-asked warranty -- you WILL destroy them and you can go through your 3-6 choppers for the price of one.

That's a case where there's real immediate risk of something breaking, so paying more for the warranty is justifiable.

And I know what I'm doing next time I'm at the mall.

Nice tip. I've always wanted to get one of the R/C helicopters and was always planning on getting it from one of the aisle mall shops - but this advice is helpful.

I used to think Monster cables were a complete joke too until a musician friend pointed out that they have a lifetime warranty and very generous terms of exchange. One can essentially walk into any music store in the country and swap out the splinched cables for new ones, no questions asked.

Is he doing it right? Should the cables fail after every show? Shouldn't he just get better cables?

Chaotic environment; hookup and unhooking frequently stresses connectors; people trip over them.

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