This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 5:23 pm and is filed under HDMI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
Amongst the many heated arguments that play out daily in chat rooms, on showroom floors, and around the water-cooler over what high-definition format is best, none is so riddled with misinformation as the argument between followers of the HDMI cable and those faithful to component. Visit any forum frequented by lovers of video, and the scenario is likely to be the same: these videophiles over here know HDMI is best, and those over there know they are wrong.
When an argument such as this is split down the middle, it can be difficult to make heads or tails of, especially when blind opinion looks quite a bit like its older, wiser cousin fact. Experience tells us that juries are usually hung for a reason: sometimes, there just isn’t a black and white answer to the question at hand. If you ask the wise, temperate video expert for his two cents on the subject, its very likely that he’ll say, “Which is better? Well, I know you don’t want to hear this, but that all depends.”
If you want to know whether HDMI or component cable is better, you’ll have to look to a variety of factors, foremost of which are the source and output devices — the television and DVD, say — of the signal you’re transmitting. There may be some differences between the image quality transmitted by an HDMI and an analog component cable, but the nature of these differences are not inherent in the cable type and will depend on your television and DVD player.
The HDMI and component cables themselves are actually very similar in design and function. Both HDMI and component cables split data being transferred into 3 color component parts: red, blue, and yellow. The fundamental difference between the two is the form of the data they transfer. HDMI cables deliver the data signal digitally, while component cables deliver the data in analog. That is, component cables send the signal as a series of voltages, rather than a digital bitstream.
Followers of HDMI assert that component cables suffer data loss — thus delivering a poorer image — because they must convert digital data from your DVD into analog before they send it to your HD television, where the data is converted back to digital. While this is arguable, many experts are willing to admit that in many cases the data loss could be negligible. Additionally, the distance component cables will run in the typical home is probably not enough to give one reason to expect that there would be any loss at all.
Supporters of HDMI are quick to argue that HMDI cables deliver digital data from a DVD to a digitally capable television without ever converting the data to analog. What is left out of this equation is the fact that high-definition televisions have a native resolution — say, 1080i — and that the television usually must up-scale or downscale, depending on the resolution of the data being conveyed. This process can also degrade the picture quality on your television, but the degradation is — as with component cables — likely to be negligible. It is also heavily dependant on the DVD player you use, the television you watch, and the data running through your cables. There is no way to guarantee that digital-to-digital transfer will result in better signal quality.
Many experts argue that though component cables are quite robust — and have great control over impedance — HDMI cables suffer when run over significant distances. Up to a certain length, the HDMI cable will transfer the signal without problem. But due to poor control over impedance, a signal run through a long HMDI cable may bounce off the display end of the cable, resulting in interference of the signal. When the length is too great, the television will fail to render an image.
There just isn’t any easy way to predict the results you’ll have with HDMI or component cables. As high-definition technologies evolve and the options become more varied, some video enthusiasts choose one cable over the other for an obscure, sometimes simple reason. Some choose HDMI because component cannot transfer 1280p signals or because HDMI cables are so easy to connect. Others choose component because the cables come with the television they purchase. If you still have a difficult cable choice to make, the best thing you can do is to forget what you’ve heard, get out there and experiment.