hdmi and dvi are digital connections whereas component, s-video, and composite are all analog connections. hdmi and dvi are exactly the same except hdmi can carray and audio signal aswell. the digital connections provide a picture that is not compressed at all. to get 1080 on an analog signal it must be compress somewhat. composite doesn't transmit the whole color spectrum. it only transmits two colors and the brightness and the third color is derived from that. 66comet
Huh!?!?!?
Analog signals aren't compressed at all! They can't be. HDMI has nothing to do with compression. The advantage of HDMI and DVI is that They match the language spoken by digital displays like LCDs, Plasmas and DLPs. Since the displays understand the language being transmited to them all they have to do is display it. Analog signals Work on a totally different principle and rely on frequency modulation to properly display content. They do not talk in Digital 1s and 0s. They work best with analog Television, such as CRTs because CRTs require frequency modulation to steer the electron gun that draws the picture. Analog signals on a digital display must run through a DAC (Digital/Analog Converter) which turns these frequencies into 1s and 0s that the display understands. This can introduce artifacts into the picture and can also soften image lines due to the inherent inaccuracy of analog signals and inaccurate DAC translation. The better the signal and theDAC is the the Better analog signals will look on a Digital display.
analog signal differences
composite - a single cable that transmits color, luminance, chroma, and video timing all in 1 cable.
Component - a 3 cable video transmision that transmits , Red color information in 1 cable, Blue color information in another cable, and lumanance and video timing on another cable. The final color information is derived from the difference between both red and blue and the lumanance of the 3 cables.
VGA - seperates all analog vido information into 15 different pins. The most accurate Analog signal transmission.
Digital signals
There are many different digital configurations within The DVI standard Some also include VGAanalog signal transmission.
Essentially HDMI and DVI are the same signal in different form factors. You can a simple DVI-D to HDMI cable to switch between form factors.
Digital signals are sharper on digital displays. In real world comparison between analog and Digital signals on Digital displays there really isn't much of a difference between the two. HDMI is a bit better but Component and VGA are no slouches either. You'll never hear someone say that Component and VGA look like crap, because they don't.
I would recommened HDMI but because of the overly intrusive HDCP that is incorporated into the signal transmission it can be a real pain to deal with, especially in the computer world. I don't like what they have done to the standard and really recommend that consumers stand up for there rights and not let the content providers get away with what they are trying to do.
The only drawback to using component with the PS3 is that you lose the upconverting capabilities of DVDs. Content providers don't allow analog transmission of upconverted DVDs even though they allow 720p/1080i playback of Bluray and HDDVD over component. Ask yourself, "Does that make any sense?"
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