High quality video cable can reduce noise and artifacts while enhancing picture detail, contrast, and most important, color saturation. A properly calibrated TV that uses high quality cable will be able to produce color that rivals anything you'll ever see in a movie theater.
Whether you choose coaxial, composite RCA jacks, S-Video, or component connections, the connection type you use greatly depends on what connections your equipment can support.
Upcoming and less common video connection include DVI and Firewire interfaces that are usually found on HDTVs.
Coaxial Cable
Of all the different cable types, coaxial has been around the longest. Coaxial
connections are found on every TV and VCR. The cheapest TVs still only offer a
coax connection. Cable companies still use it today and it is most likely how
you'll connect an antenna.
Coaxial cable's advantages are that it combines both video and audio within one connection while maintaining most of its quality over very long runs. This makes it easy to wire every room in your home for an antenna or cable TV connection. This is also the only video cable that carries the audio signal as well.
Unfortunately coax cable's advantages are also it's most major disadvantages, making this cable one of the most terrible connections you can use to connect your gear. Pushing the audio and video signal through one cable allows the pieces of data to interfere with each other, resulting in a lesser picture and imperfect sound when compared to better connections.
The only reason you should have to use coax cable is for a cable TV service, or for wiring your home with cable TV service. You'll need the coax to run to the cable/satellite box, but after that stage it's better to use a better quality video connection to transfer the decoded signal to your home theater. It's best that you not use this connection for anything else in your system. DVD players do not support a coaxial connection so you'll have to choose among the other types of connections to hook one up.
Generally, using a high quality cable for your coaxial connection is pretty minimal. The main thing to look for is easier-to-use screwing heads. Almost anyone who has had the unfortunate chance of using cheap coaxial cable knows what a pain some of these types of connections can be to actually connect. Cheap coax's screwing heads are often difficult to twist and some don't even twist at all. This makes connections difficult if not downright unruly, especially in hard-to-reach places. Higher quality coax almost always uses better screw head connectors that twist easy and free. In the end, you'll be thankful you got better cable for the sole reason that you didn't need to wreak havoc on your fingers installing the cable.
What type of coaxial cable?
Don't spend a fortune since you can't really control the quality of the cable
that comes into your home from the cable company. That's up to you cable TV provider.
You can however, control it after that point. It has to get from the cable box
to your TV in some way. If your cable box, satellite, or VCR has any other type
of video connection such as RCA Composite or S-Video for an output to the TV,
use those connections instead. If not, head to Radio Shack and get a coaxial cable
that has decent, easy to twist connections. This is usually their gold color connections
with thick black wire which can run from $15-$50 depending on the length of the
cable.
Composite RCA jacks
Composite RCA jacks have been around for a little over 20 years, and offer a definite
improvement in video and audio quality over coaxial cable. Using a high quality
RCA cable for video can dramatically reduce dot crawl (that little outline of
dots that surrounds objects) while improving color accuracy and saturation.
RCA jacks use separate connections for audio and video providing a dedicated video connection. This separation ensures there is no interference between the audio and video signal.
While a high quality RCA cable can reduce dot crawl, it can't remove it altogether. Separating the video signal even further, as with S-Video and Component, results in a dramatically better picture over a standard RCA type connection.
Look to spend between $20-$70 dollars per cable for your RCA composite connection.
S-Video
An S-Video connection provides a very high quality picture. It uses separate wires
within one cable to handle the the different color and luminance signals that
create a video signal. This separation prevents the video information from interfering
with each other and creates an ultra clean picture. S-Video empowers a properly
calibrated TV to rival the picture quality of film. This is truly an amazing connection,
but it does have it's limitations.
With S-Video it is more important than ever to use a high quality cable. The image quality of S-Video degrades greatly from cable to cable and over long distances. Cheap S-Video cable can actually produce a not-so-great picture. That doesn't mean you have to break the bank on S-Video cable, but it is worth your while to spend at least $60 for a 6-foot cable run. The solid picture performance will be well worth your while.
Component
Component connections came out for consumers hand-in-hand with the DVD format
and offers only a minutely better picture over S-Video. The main advantage component
video offers is the ability to handle the high definition signals of HDTV and
progressive scan DVD players.
Component video combines S-Video and RCA Composite technology together. Instead of using separate wires within a single cable to carry the different parts of the video signal (like S-Video), component cable uses three separate RCA Composite cables to carry each part.
Since the cable used for component connections is exactly the same as the Composite cable, the advantages of using high quality cable a roughly the same. You will get better picture detail and color control through the use of better cable. The major cost disadvantage is that a single high quality RCA video cable costs around $30-$60 for each cable. Multiply by 3 and you can see that one component connection can easily cost over $100. The good news is that the cable prices have comedown tremendously. You can now find good component cables at $90 for all three cables.
Which connection should you use?
This is a very simple answer. You definitely want to use S-Video or a component
video connection. Most middle of the road TVs will at least have an S-Video connection.
Choosing whether to go with S-Video or Component is just as easy. Component connections only offer a minor improvement over an S-Video connection yet costs over twice as much for the cable. Go with the S-Video connection unless you plan on using a high definition source such as a progressive scan DVD player or HDTV. It'll cost less and produce the same detailed, crystal clear picture.
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