[kwlug-disc] OT:Cable Splitters/Rogers

[Andrew Kohlsmith (mailing lists account)]

> I was amazed too because like unsolicited, I thought this is digital, and it is an all or nothing thing. But I saw it in front of my eyes: some channels will degrade because of a marginal connections, while others will be fine. On the same cable, cable box, and TV.

High speed digital is very much analog. There’s a *lot* of error correcting, data spreading and other tricks that digital lets you play that get you a watchable signal LONG after a “pure analog” transmission would have been useless.

Even the PCIe/SATA/USB3 connections in your PC have some pretty funky abilities to degrade while still maintaining connectivity. When you finally see the issues come up in dmesg or as system errors it’s already gotten to the point where it’s pretty bad.  Kind of like hard drives… when they finally start showing you errors, it’s because there have already been so many errors that their remap areas are full and it can’t hide them from you anymore.

-A.