Transmission of compressed digital data is a compromise between data rate and signal robustness. In a relatively benign transmission medium such as cable, an efficient modulation technique, such as 64QAM, can be used to optimize the information rate and, therefore, the channel capacity. This paper discusses the results of 64QAM transmission testing. Bit error rates are measured and correlated with channel impairments. The effects of error correction and adaptive equalization are investigated.