HDTV Cables and Connections

As you pull your shiny new HDTV out of its (probably very large) box - and consider connecting it to your TV source, your DVD player, your home theater receiver, and all the other “stuff” in your family room or media room - you may have a moment of panic (or at least a small shiver of fear) when you consider how many different choices you have for cables and connectors. Never fear, HDTV For Dummies is here to help you. Cables are actually pretty easy when you think about them in terms of a hierarchy - some cable/connection types are (almost always) simply better than others - they give you a better picture or clearer audio. Once you know this hierarchy, you can quickly examine your connection options for any piece of equipment attached to your HDTV, choose your best option, and astound your friends. In this article, we explain analog and digital cable options for audio and video, and explain their positions within this hierarchy. We also explain how copy-protection systems may affect your options. Video Connections Look at the back of any HDTV (or any DVD player or home-theater receiver) and you see what scares many folks away from jumping in to hook up their own HDTVs and audio/video (A/V) equipment. There are just so darned many choices back there - who could possibly know which connector to use?

Well, we know. High-definition video There’s often a significant difference in the functionality and video quality of connections. Few cables can handle HDTV signals. Some DVD players have high-definition connectors. But when this article was published, none of these were HDTV DVD players. Instead, a circuit called a scaler (see Article 6) converts the standard DVD picture to work a little better on an HDTV screen. It’s a worthwhile improvement, but you probably should use all your high-definition connections for true HDTV components before you use a high-definition connection on a DVD player. Digital connections Digital video connections (such as DVI-D, HDMI and FireWire) are the best choice for often-used HDTV video connections, such as the link to your HDTV from a satellite or cable receiver. Not all HDTV devices use the same digital connections, but it’s usually worth the trouble to use digital connections when you can, even if you need an adapter for different digital connections. As the HDMI connection replaces DVI-D, you may find yourself in a situation where you need to use an inexpensive (under $50) adapter. For example, if your HDTV has an HDMI connector and your HDTV set top box or tuner uses DVI-D, you can connect your devices through one of these converters.

The first rule of HDTV connections: Use a digital video connection to connect from a source device to your HDTV, if you can. Digital connections almost always provide the best picture. Theoretically, HDMI connections can offer the best picture quality of any of the digital connections available on HDTVs, simply because these cables have so much bandwidth that they can offer uncompressed HDTV signal transmission. In the real world, however, any of these digital connections offers an exceptionally clear and sharp picture, and HDTV signals are almost always compressed for transmission or storage anyway. On some pieces of gear (typically HDTV cable set top boxes - discussed in Article 9), some of the digital connections may be disabled - the connections are physically present, but the software within the device that lets them work is turned off. So, for example, if an HDTV set-top box from your cable company has a FireWire port, you probably can’t use that FireWire port to connect a D-VHS recorder. Check with your cable company before spending money on cables and equipment that use these ports! The most common digital-video cable for HDTV is DVI-D. (DVI stands for digital video interconnect, and the extra D means it’s for digital TV.) If you’re using DVI-D connections, watch out for two problems: -  Not all DVI connectors work with HDTV. Make sure you have DVI-D cables if you use DVI-D in your HDTV system. Computers use another type of DVI connector that has a confusingly similar name: DVD-I. 

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