It seems that many manufacturers are using some sort of DVI/Multi pin control cable to go between their plasma displays and the accompanying input/tuner boxes. ie Sony XBR, JVC, and Pioneer. Does anyone know if all of these cables have the same anatomy and where can one buy these cables? It would be nice to be able to get the cables separate from the Plasmas so one could pre-wire for some of these integrated units. - Thanks

Craig -
The only information I can give you is from recently installing a customer bought JVC plasma. The cable is proprietary so it had to be bought through JVC. They only made it at 10 meter lengths and it cost the customer $250 + shipping.
Hope this helps.
Mike

Yup, the Sony XBR plasmas have the media converter too. Except their 10 meter umbilical costs even more! You can always stick the media converter in the wall behind the plasma, a mad (read crazy)service nightmare, but I had to do it once. Note that if you are incapable of repairing the unit should it fail, the warranty center will require that it be accessable before they will work on it.

So far as I can tell, these things are all proprietary.

Key Digital makes 3rd party cables for Sharp and pioneer currently. They should have their Sony cable available soon. Dunno if they are working on reverse engineerng the JVC cable....

sharp and pioneer cables are the same since pioneer buys sharp's media converters

poineer makes a 30 meter cable for their 5040, 4340, 1110. Most are proprietary though. Real rash for changin later

I just want to add how stupid it is for these manufacturers to market televisions to hang on the wall and then package them with a media box/proprietary cable.

Once again, they just don't get it, do they?

But they do get it. The advantage of the cables is less wires for us to run. And easy equipment adds for the future since the sources all plug into the media box.

What we need is for a universal cable that can be prewired with and then adapted for the specific manufacturer. I would assume the DVI part is the same for all and the control cable shouldn't be anything unigue copper wise, just pin out and fitting. I wonder if any of the cable manufactures are working on a soultion?