Cable interconnects types.

[Donbstard]

Hi, can anyone tell me what type of cable runs between the wall box and the hub also the wall box to the power socket? Is it just a coaxial cable or something different as the terminations look more trick to normal coax/ sky type terminations.  The reason being is the cables are all white and it looks a mess behind my all-black setup so would like to change them to black. Is there a high-end option for the cable for better connectivity? It's the Volt gigabit connection with the latest box. Thanks.

[goslow · Accepted solution]

You can't fit your own replacement black cables unfortunately. VM doesn't like customers doing this because it has the potential to cause interference on the VM network. As a result, VM's T&C's preclude customers modifying VM's equipment. VM uses a tri-shielded cable type and VM's own cables tend to be black for outside and white for inside.

If you are wanting to hide the white cables in some way, you could maybe look at sleeving the white coax with some black braided cable sleeve which you could slip over the existing white coax cable to disguise it.

[Donbstard]

Thanks for your reply and I understand VM may not like the idea of people changing things but things can be changed, they are only cables after all. So does anyone know what the cable is or even better, an upgraded cable? I'm happy to buy pre-made cables or make and terminate some myself. Are they just triple screened coax as mentioned above? No special fittings? 

[jbrennand]

See my anecdote...
_________________

A year or two ago, my neighbour was having "noise" problems on their connection and called the fault in. The investigating VM tech team just happened to knock on my door and asked to see our connections.

Long story short... their noise problem was caused by MY daughter (unbeknown to me) moving her V6 box and using some cheap tat co-ax cable she got from Amazon!!

They changed the cable in her room and hey presto, the neighbour's issue was sorted. Fortunately they didnt bill me for the Tech visit and causing disruption to the whole street - the Tech's were so relieved to locate and rectify the a "noise ingress issue" relatively quickly that they didnt report it as being down to me. (well my lass!)

Lesson learned !

[Roger_Gooner]

I won't say that the cables are special but they are made to VM's specification, so cannot be bought by you.

Another thing to consider is that a customer is unlikely to properly fit a compression connector, and a loose connector can cause a problem not only with the homeowner's system but also the neighbourhood due to noise ingress.

[goslow]

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@Donbstard wrote:

Thanks for your reply and I understand VM may not like the idea of people changing things but things can be changed, they are only cables after all. So does anyone know what the cable is or even better, an upgraded cable? I'm happy to buy pre-made cables or make and terminate some myself. Are they just triple screened coax as mentioned above? No special fittings? 

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Don't doubt for a moment that there probably is an 'equivalent' (maybe even better) spec cable to VM's somewhere out there. Many online offerings will claim to 'work with Virgin Media' but actually be not suitable at all, as per jbrennand's example.

You might connect up such a DIY arrangement and it might even work (for you) but you'll have no way of knowing what (if any) effect it is having on the rest of your neighbours' VM connections. You'll get a colour-matched set of cables for your own setup but possibly at the expense of the service to other VM customers but you'd have no way of knowing whether you were actually causing any issues or not.

[Donbstard]

Ok thanks all. I have been reading about the downfalls of using different cables and "self fit" and I'm cool with that. My problem/passion with Av is I like to upgrade all the cables and interconnects with the best I can afford hence me wanting to change the white cables but in this case it's just a visual thing. To answer my own question and end this thread I believe the cables are RG6/ RG59 triple shielded cable made by Amphenol. Thanks guys for all your input, much appreciated. 👍

[jbrennand]

If you do go that route - I would expect that the VM staff reading these posts would put a comment on your account details to the effect of saying...

"Any Tech visit - first inspect the cables for being VM supplied".