News and Reviews....

    Cable In REVERSE !!!  April  2004

 By Robert Lieto

In a never ending quest to find the best material, the best manner and the one sure way to assure that future systems could be adapted to use the new holy grail of structured wiring, one company thinks it has the answer.

Entropic Communications has introduced a set of chips called c.Link-270, that they say allows video, data, voice and all manner of digital entertainment to travel inside the existing Coax, (Cable) in homes across America, without effecting cable or satellite programming. Entropic has figured out a way to handle the cheapo splitters so that users can send and receive digital content throughout the home over existing coax - regardless of how many or what kind of splitters are already attached to a cable network (up to 16 nodes).

The key with Entropics's technology is that they enable room to room communication inside the home by going backwards through the splitters which are really directional couplers designed to prevent signal flow from room to room or device to device inside the home.

The company exploits the mostly unused spectrum above 860 Mhz to deliver digital content across the network. Thus, the customer can have Ethernet, 1394 and multiple MPEG streams traversing freely across the cable without disrupting legacy analog or digital services.

Comment .....  While cable is probably the most widely used material for signal in most homes, it would still have to have some integrity to be a contender. You may have RG-59 in your home which is plagued with signal loss over long runs, or you might have RG-6 which is much better at long runs, but the occasional staple which could have compressed their core will reduce bandwidth regardless of cable type is always a probability. Having the emphasis placed on cable now that we can take move advantage of its qualities does not allow us to go back to the time when they were put in place and not treated with the respect they are so afforded today.

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