Zipperhead

seriously? The color of the trees.... You have to understand that 90% (probaly much greater) people will not or be concerned with the 'color tempature of a red'. Only a 'video affenciado' like your self would be able to notice.

IEATFISH

Um, seriously yes. It all depends on the exact device, distances traveled, and whether you are using upconvert or not to name a few. The only way to tell is to test both yourself on the same hardware.

http://techknologyblog.com/2009/02/0...ich-is-better/
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7596_102...hreadID=233626

Some more:
http://www.greathometheater.com/HDMI-vs-COMPONENT.html
http://www.hdtv-source.com/articles/...mponent-video/

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Coma

"exact device": Like I said, it could be a malfunction or a bug. The output starts off worse before it even gets to the HDMI cable.

"distances traveled": This would only be relevant for Component. The longer the distance, the more degraded the quality would be. With HDMI it would be completely irrelevant to picture quality. The distance traveled would reduce bandwidth, but in this case it would simply mean the FPS would be degraded. There would be less frames per second, but not less information per frame.

"whether you are using upconvert or not": This CAN'T have any influence at all. It makes no sense. If it does somehow, then it's the same reason as the first - the device is malfunctioning and outputting worse quality video - before it even gets to the cable.

The fact this happens in practice doesn't mean that HDMI is to blame. Granted, you would want to research your device to see if this happens with it, but the OP asked a universal question - HDMI vs Component on *any* device, not a specific device.

Anyway, many of the articles you linked suggest that the DVD players upscaling is the cause. There is minuscule difference between scalers when you're going from SD to HD, because the difference is so large already.

Newsflash: The DVD players don't upscale. HDMI carries 480p/i and 576p/i just fine. The TV upscales in either case. "Upscaling" DVD players are what makes your video looks worse, not HDMI. Moreover, Component can carry 720p59.94 or 1080i29.97, so there's no reason for upscaling DVD players to *not* upscale when you output to Component, which would suggest there should be no difference.

News sites which are reliable for everything else are not reliable for video-related articles. Tons of people think they know their stuff about video, but in reality they don't. There's a lot of stuff I don't know either, but I'm usually informed about this "not knowing" thing :P Most people who write these articles believe they know what they're doing. In other words, take articles about video stuff with a gigantic mountain of salt unless it's on doom9.org.

These articles are overly long so I can't be bothered reading all of them through, but just quoting a little excerpt from one of them:
...except any TV made since about 2000 is internally digital and analog signals get converted to digital anyway.

The stuff this guy talks about happens regardless of format, but the thing is that analog has to be digitized first.

He also talks about error resilience, but err... when your CPU malfunctions and needs to be RMA'd, do you stop using a computer? If you're seeing errors (blocks), replace the cable! It's that easy. They don't malfunction often.

I see lots of misinformed tech speak but no pictures. Blah blah. At the end of the day, it all comes down to faulty implementations of HDMI. Strictly technically speaking, digital is ALWAYS better than analog. The end result may be different if you factor in human error.

Everyone notice - it "feels" different, but only a "video aficionado" like myself knows why.

A silent video with peaceful music is very different to the same silent video with music that suggests trouble. The same effect can be achieved through "subtle" differences in color. Most people don't notice, but a lot of video you see on TV/the movies doesn't have real life colors because somebody wanted to give it a different feel. This is one of the things that set apart professional productions from home video.

IEATFISH

You obviously didn't read ANY of the links I just posted. They address the exact things you just mentioned. Please read those before you post again.

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Coma

I have a tendency to post and then continue writing through edits :E

IEATFISH

Exactly, no one blamed HDMI. But the fact that HDMI is not the end-all solution is clear.

Is HDMI the right choice? It depends. You can argue that point all you want but he asked a generic question and the generic answer is NOT HDMI. The only way to tell is by testing it yourself.

I don't see how practically every article, thread, link you can find on the topic suggests that there is no end-all solution and yet you claim that they are all uninformed and you know the 'right' answer.

Sure, a digital signal through HDMI is where the industry is headed. Just like SSD and Internet based apps. Does that mean that they are the best option for anyone right now? Of course not.

So the correct answer is:

No, you should not ditch the component cable just yet. You will have test between the two types to see for yourself which on comes across clearer. Will HDMI be better? Maybe, probably, but not for sure. Good luck and as I mentioned earlier, if you don't use the HDMI cable for this application, you will most likely need it at some point in the future.

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It does mean that *HDMI* the best option. Like I said, again and again, if HDMI looks worse than Component, then the device outputting the video is broken.

In contrast to SSDs and Internet-based apps, HDMI is always better than analog, in an absolute manner.

The answer to the generic question "Which is better, HDMI or Component?" is HDMI. Always.

...and then there are side cases in which HDMI is worse because the device isn't working properly. So most of the time, in devices that function properly, HDMI is better, and then there are some in which it isn't for some random reason.

If I made a really badly written game, which happened to work better on ATI cards than NVIDIA, would you blame the NVIDIA card (HDMI) for not performing well, or the game (device) for not being optimized?

In this case, the ATI card could be the HD3450 while the NVIDIA card is a GTX 260, but because the game is written so badly the GTX 260 is getting less than 5 fps while the ATI card is getting 5-10 fps.

That means the NVIDIA card is universally and absolutely better than the HD3450, *except* in games which are very badly written and perform slightly better with ATI cards.

I still don't feel I got my point across, so I'll just say this: the main answer shouldn't be "maybe". It should be "yes, HDMI is better, but...". If I asked you about the GTX 260, you would say "yes, but..." instead of "maybe" because of that one game.

LangDu007

Thank you so much for many helpful info. I used and the component video and the picture quality is superb; I can live with that for now. I also tried the composite input and the difference was vast; I'm sure HDMI would more convenience but I'm happy with the component for now. Component die another day (=

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Shrimpykins

As far as bandwith goes component has enough to do 720p