HardwareZone's HDTV Buying Guide Essentials
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Video Inputs on an HDTV
Video Inputs on an HDTV
Here's a table of common video connections you'd find on a HDTV, the corresponding cable to use, and examples of devices that might use such connections. We suggest you think through the devices that you own currently, the type of connections they have, and envision how they'd connect to your new HDTV. You wouldn't want to realize during the setup process that there are five devices fighting for one HDMI input. As they say, a little bit of planning goes a long way.
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TV connections have come a long way from the days of composite and S-Video connections. Today, HDMI and component video are de-facto standards for feeding HD video to your HDTV, of which only HDMI is a digital connection. The picture quality that these two connections output is far superior to that of composite and S-Video. In light of that, HDMI and component video connections should certainly be present, so make sure that your HDTV has as many of them as possible for future expansion needs. A single HDMI port certainly isn't sufficient these days since you may wish to connect your TV to other consoles.
For now, using a HDMI cable is the easiest way to hook up your TV to AV receivers or set-top players. It's capable of carrying uncompressed digital video and audio signals, so at the most basic level, a single HDMI cable connected to your Blu-ray or DVD player is all you need to start enjoying movies.
Trouble is, some older AV devices do not have an HDMI port. You'll probably find a composite, S-Video or component connections with older DVD or AV systems. This makes setups a little trickier since these connections are only capable of delivering video signals, unlike HDMI which can handle both video and audio. In such cases, you'll need a separate audio connection since the video cables do not carry any audio signals. So it's just more cable clutter to manage. However, if you want to take full advantage of Blu-ray/DVD-encoded multichannel audio, you definitely need to hand off the audio signals to a compatible AV receiver capable of decoding them, and play them back using properly configured surround speakers. For even older AV devices that only have composite or S-Video connections, you should probably think about upgrading them as they're not capable of handling HD video content. Meanwhile, if you can't do without these old devices, make sure the TV you get have these inputs.
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