Audio And Video Cables - What Do You Need?

Modern life is full of electronics, and most homes have more than one kind of high tech audio and video equipment. To connect components which work with audio and video, such as a TV with a DVD player, you will need audio and video cables.

There are number of different kinds of connectors, so you should first see which sockets your equipment has and which connections it supports.

Cables have male and female endings to them. The male ones have a nib or protrusion which fits into the female, hollow socket. In most cases, your equipment will have female sockets and you will need male cables. Cables can have one plug at each end or combine different types and sizes of plugs both at the same end and at the opposite end, so you need to know what your connecting from and what you are connecting to.

The most commonly used audio cables are called RCA cables. You can buy combined cables, for stereo audio, which would be two plugs at each end, one to supply the left speaker and one to supply the right speaker. A similar video cable has one plug at each end. There are also cables which combine audio and video communication between units. You can find Y cables which split to carry stereo audio, combined with a video cable, all in one

If, as in our example, you are connecting your TV with a DVD player, on both the TV and the DVD player you will see sockets with these matching colors into which the cable can be plugged. If there is only one set of these sockets, you only have that option, but in many high tech units, there can now be two or more sets of sockets with the same color combinations, so you can connect more peripherals, such as a video camera. Notice the writing by these sockets, since in these cases, they are identified for these different uses. Once you know which sockets you will use, insert the colored terminations of your audio and video cable at both ends, making sure to match the colors on the socket with the colors of the cable terminations, and matching sockets marked IN on the TV with sockets marked OUT on the DVD player. Once this is done, the two components are connected, and transmission of data can occur.

Another very common audio connector plug is the 3.5 millimeter male plug. This is the plug you normally see at the end of modern headsets. This plug or jack connects to and from equipment such as CD players and iPods, and this audio cable can be used to listen to the music in your iPod through external speakers, by plugging into where the headset jack would go.

Audio and video cable prices vary, by type, by length of the cable, and by the quality and kind of the materials used. You can even buy audio and video cables which are gold plated, for improved conductivity.