Just found this sitting in my Drafts folder. Here goes anyway.


Ruud Broens wrote:

Elsewhere in this thread, you recommend coax for longer (30 ft.) stretches,
that is inconsistent with A and B, Arny :-)

Optical's a problem for longer runs because of the optical loss caused by the
cheap fibre not being optically 100% transparent. Not to do with signal
'degradation', just attenuation.

With respect to welldefined edges, optical is clearly superior - even the
plastic 850 nm home variety - to coax.

I don't think so. The edges are 'rounded off' by the opto coupler response
bandwidth. The early Toslink devices had only around 6 MHz to begin with IIRC
which made them only just suitable. They seem to have improved recently though.

Graham