Optical Cable???

Josefine Weekey: There is nothing particularly "high-quality" about optical fiber cables. The same signals can be carried by coax wire cables with no difference. Many receivers have both coax and optical digital inputs, but many cable boxes and HDTV tuners have only optical outputs. You can get a converter to go from one to the other without any degradation. This is because the signals are digital, and they either get through perfectly or not at all. The only advantage to using optical cable over coax is if you are in an extremely noisy electrical environment (near heavy-duty motors, for example) and the coax shielding is not enough to prevent the signal from being corrupted....Show more

Carter Dewater: It goes between your receiver and cable box for a uncompressed digital signal. This can also be accomplished with a regular single digital cable. Either way it allows you to recieve the digital signals inculding DTS. Really the point is it has the bandwidth to ! have the digital signal ran through it. You get a cyrstal clear sound where each speaker will have its own sounds as it was recorded.

Cornelius Thornborrow: Optical cable is able to send DTS 5.1 surround sound from the source (Cable box, DVD player) to your receiver. You will need to use this cable to play Digital Theater Sound DTS. Just using Left and Right RCA cables will just allow stereo sound.