The interconnect (if there's a jack for it) which yields highest quality is not employed.

The cable isn't sufficient at isolating signal from other signals, or limiting signal loss through "leakage."

So here are a few basic tips you may or may not already be aware of, that will increase probability you'll extract highest quality your audio/video gear is capable of providing.

1. REPLACE ORIGINAL CABLES: Those "free" ones which come with most components may have a quality "look", (especially since manufacturers of generic interconnects started placing "gold" plugs on them), but beauty & quality is not just skin deep.

And you'll notice how shallow it really is as soon as sound becomes "fatiguing", or you get a "short" in one, or you begin experiencing degraded aural & visual quality, along with an increase in interference.

Use discretion though; it you have a $3500 HDTV-ready television, a $3.99 package of A/V cables from VIDEO-R-US should raise a flag.

Conversely, a $100 TV from Bill & Ted's Wild Appliances and $90/meter Monster S-VIDEO II cables might be a tad much.

And you don't have to replace all cables in your system at one time (which could be rather expensive!); do it as budget constraints permit. 2. USE THE INTERCONNECT TYPE YIELDING THE HIGHEST QUALITY: If your components provide output & input jack(s), use them, unless it prevents you from utilizing some particular function unique to your viewing/listening habits & hookup.

That means COMPONENT VIDEO (if available) or S-VIDEO for video, and RCA for audio. When S-Video isn't available, that means RCA for COMPOSITE VIDEO.

3. KEEP SIGNALS IN ONE FORMAT AFTER INITIAL CONVERSION: With COMPOSITE VIDEO, all color & b/w signals (3 signals total) are mixed into one signal. A "comb filter" in your video equipment must then "un-separate" them all to process picture.

With S-VIDEO, a separate color & b/w signals (2 signals total) are provided on one cable. When your video equipment receives an S-VIDEO signal, all it has to separate is color. A "comb filter" is not used when using S-VIDEO.

Saskatoon is name of one of two big cities in Saskatchewan. In this case, "big" is a relative word. But Saskatoon is big enough to have a food named after it, which puts it in same league as Hamburg (hamburgers), France (French fries) and Iceland (ice).

Saskatchewan is a small Canadian province. Small in that its population can comfortably fit onto deck of a luxury cruise liner ... except who would want to do that in middle of bone-dry Canadian prairies? In land area, Saskatchewan is actually almost as big as Texas, although most of their hats are well short of ten-gallons.

That leaves plenty of room for trees to grow. But Saskatchewan is not known for trees. It is known for its prairies. In fact, there are jokes about Saskatchewan and trees.

"How many people does it take to plant a tree in Saskatchewan?" "Are you kidding? Even God couldn't do that?"

"What do you call a tree in Saskatchewan?" "Wishful thinking."

"If you run off road in northern Saskatchewan, would you hit a tree?" "No, tree is in south."

Which brings us to saskatoon berry trees we just planted. Apparently, trees DO grow in Saskatchewan. Well, almost. I read seed package. "Grows three to 12 feet high." A three-foot tall tree? Can you really call that a tree? What if I mow right over it?