A "for Beginners" on cables

In the world of High Definition TVs there is an important concept to grasp, and that is cables. When it comes to cables there are many that come to mind, but for the purposes of this article, I will give a brief overview of all of the cables and in-depth information when in comes to the more relevant cables.

The first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of cables is the coaxial cable, and that is an accurate preconceived notion.

This dinosaur of the entertainment world supplies a crisp signal compatible with or without converter boxes. The line that comes out of the wall and plugs into a cable box or the back of the TV will give you reception and allow you to watch broadcast television. Currently all converter boxes be they cable or satellite get connected to a source via coaxial cable.

When you connect to a converter box with hDVR (Digital Video Recording) capabilities, there will be 2 coaxial cables although that happens mostly with satellite converter boxes as opposed to land-line cable. The reason for this is because it helps to eliminate signal degradation and to allow the recording of 2 programs at the same time.


The RCA cable carries a signal across it that plugs into a colored slot. RCA cable can carry both Audio and Video information.

Composite video is a collection of 3 RCA cables color coded as Red, White, and Yellow which combined pass up to 480P of video (one channel) and stereo audio (Left and right audio channels). The RCA cable’s zenith came and left with the original DVD player. Today you can do much better.



Solely for video which are color coded Red Green and Blue.
Component can be combined with 2 RCA cables for left and right audio channels for stereo sound. Depending on your setup, additional RCA cables can be used to add more speaker channels for surround sound (right rear, left rear, right front, left front, and center channels with the addition of a subwoofer for a dedicated bass channel).



HDMI, which stands for High Definition Multimedia Interface is the limousine of high definition cables. And for the purposes of this article, I will concentrate on the version that is integral to any high-end home theater, version 1.3.

HDMI carries high definition video up to 1080P as well as 7.1 channels of uncompressed audio on one cable. Additionally it has HDCP handshaking, which is crucial when connecting high definition devices to each other (such as a Blu Ray player to a High Def TV or a Cable box to an audio/video receiver). HDCP stands for High Definition Copyright Protection and it is basically a signal imbedded in the HDMI communication that ensures that both devices are communicating properly and that you are not illegally copying high definition content. HDMI comes in variable lengths and can cost a pretty penny depending on which brand name cable you are using. Obviously a premium cable such as one by Monster will cost anywhere between 70 and 100 dollars for a 6 foot length of cable, whereas different brand names will usually go for less. I have seen typical 6 foot lengths of HDMI cable sell for just over 10 dollars, and that cable did everything that a premium name cable would do except it simply cost less. It is important to note that when it comes to cable brand names you do not have to be forced into buying one and paying for a premium name.

Some of the additional features of HDMI may not be readily apparent, but when fully explored it is actually quite impressive features to have. HDMI is a bi-directional cable, which means that devices communicate by sending and receiving data over the HDMI cable. Because of this, an HDMI cable can determine weather or not to actually turn a device off. An example of this is as follows: Say you are watching a Blu ray disc in your home theater, and you have decided that you would like to eject the disc and turn all of the devices off. Because you used HDMI cables to connect all of your high definition equipment (TV, Blu Ray Player and Audio receiver (I did say home theater, after all)) after you have ejected the disc, and closed the tray, all you have to do it simply turn off your television and your audio receiver and blu ray player will turn off as well. And before you ask, yes, this does work with the sleep timer (I tested it on my equipment.) Additionally, as of 2008 there are companies that will further exploit the bi-directional communication of the HDMI cable. Fir example, this model-year’s Pioneer Elite Blu ray player and 2 models of audio receivers have this feature: using the quartz timing clock in the Blu ray player, the audio receiver will maintain continuous sync-sound through the bi-directional HDMI cable and never allow the video to fall out of sync with audio ever. That happened to me on several occasions with my old DVD player. In conclusion, we have gone from one cable, to three cables to 5 or more cables, just to return to the simplicity of one cable again. I know that there are some people in the A/V world that do not like HDMI and will never convert their cables over to it. I disagree, I like HDMI, and I think that HDMI is the embodiment of simplicity being the ultimate sophistication.