HDMI cable compared to composite cable?

Question

How much better is a HDMI cable compared to the HD composite cable (the blue, green and red cables). What advantages is there truly?

Answer 1

The obvious advantage is replacing 4 or 5 cables with one (3 component, 1 or 2 audio).  The HDMI carries 100% digital video signal AND multi-channel surround audio.  With a digital source and a digital TV there is no loss of quality.  If you have a source that is digital, you don't want to convert that signal to analog if you have the ability to keep it that way.

Answer 2

HDMI offers fewer cables, better noise shielding, and a clean digital signal. Forgot to mention the HD audio. Higher data transfers and bandwidth for smother video reproduction.

For all these extras you are going have to pay a little more for the cable. But it's worth it. $10-$20 will get you a good gold plated 1.3a HDMI cable. The cables are getting better. You can't say the same about the component cables.

Answer 3

The industry is forcing you to use HDMI mainly because of its integral encryption that prevents you from copying a movie.

You can use component but all players are artificially restricted to 480p when playing back commercial discs.  The industry hates us all and we are suckers for adopting HDMI without question.

Now they're pushing HDMI audio for the same reason, to prevent audio copying.

Answer 4

Advantages will become apparent more when using HD DVD or Blu-Ray as HDMI is a much more conveniant way of getting full 1080p video and new surround formats Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master. With component you can only get 1080i and you would have to use 6 analog cables and connect to the multi channel input on the receiver to get lossless sound for a total of 9 analog cables vs 1 digital cable. As for the quality of audio/video, it is slightly better on HDMI as it is pure digital from point A to point B rather than being converted from digital to analog and then back to digital which will incur a bit of quality loss.