Optical cable help

chili

chili

chili

Associate
Joined
19 Mar 2011
Posts
816
I have a Sennheiser RS175 wireless headpohne unit which i use all the time for tv, my ears are not as good as they used to be, joys of working in a loud steel industry b4 health and safety made ear defenders compulsory, my wife has ears like a dog, she can hear everything and of course my normal volume tv is too loud for her hence the rs175.

So recently i have wall mounted my tv and the supplied optical cable is now far too short and i need to buy a longer replacement. the supplied optical is as thin as a lead out of a pencil. When i search for optical cables i am supplied with link to Toslink cables which are in varying thicknesses ie 4mm 6mm etc.

So my question:- is a toslink the same as a basic optical cable or do i need to find a real skinny optical cable? would a toslink work same as an optical?

many thanks
 
While Toslink / SPDIF is an optical cable, it is not the same as fibre-optic cable. I have a 5m Toslink cable feeding my Astro A50 and it works just fine. The river place sells them up to 10m and they cost a tenner. My fibre-optic video cables cost me vastly more.
 
Quartz said:
While Toslink / SPDIF is an optical cable, it is not the same as fibre-optic cable. I have a 5m Toslink cable feeding my Astro A50 and it works just fine. The river place sells them up to 10m and they cost a tenner. My fibre-optic video cables cost me vastly more.
Click to expand...
You've got me intrigued, what fibre do you mean as all toslinks work the same. I've not come across fibre for video, does it predate hdmi or something?
 
The word TOSlink tells us about the type of signal travelling through the cable. The word Optical tells us about the cable; that it's used to transmit light.

The words are used interchangeably because in the consumer AV industry optical is always TOSlink. It's a bit like Hoover and Dyson are both used when people are talking about any vacuum cleaner.

The thin leads are a development due to the increased use of optical for commercial networking. They're fine too use just the same as the thicker ones.
 
Quartz said:
Bandwidth & economy. Toslink is a low-bandwidth (125 Mbps to 1 Gbps) link; Displayport 1.4 requires 38.4 Gbps. And that price was the price the market - I - was willing to bear. The cables have dropped £100 in price.
Click to expand...
Sorry i think we've got crossed wires here:p. I meant why didnt you use a normal DP cable, why use a (presumably) more expensive fibre/DP cable?
 
I did wonder. Also lol at the advertising 4k at 144hz, I'm not sure there's a PC that can actually do that. I think there's only a couple of monitors that do, and they're easily 4 figures.
 
theone8181 said:
I did wonder. Also lol at the advertising 4k at 144hz, I'm not sure there's a PC that can actually do that.
Click to expand...

Mine can. Well, 120 Hz, because I only use one DP cable. Borderlands 2 easily gets 120 fps in many places.

I think there's only a couple of monitors that do, and they're easily 4 figures.
Click to expand...

The Acer Nitro 4k is £900.

And don't forget the 1440p UW monitors at the end of a long cable too.
 
Quartz said:
Mine can. Well, 120 Hz, because I only use one DP cable. Borderlands 2 easily gets 120 fps in many places.



The Acer Nitro 4k is £900.

And don't forget the 1440p UW monitors at the end of a long cable too.
Click to expand...
They've dropped quite a bit then, i was thinking of a demanding game. i.e. can it run crysis:p. I don't think you'd get anything running the frostbite engine at that high a framerate for example.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom