So confused!?

Question

I went to Comcast to get my HD cable box today. When they gave it to me, they said "hey we don't have any HDMI cables right now, so I'm gonna give you the component wires, and you can come back in a couple days and get it." I go home hook it up with out these so-called "HDMI cables" and it appears to work fine, HD channels and all. My question is, why do I need these HDMI cables and what do they do that's different than these "component wires"???

Answer 1

A few differences.  HDMI cables carry a digital signal instead of an analog one for component.  You get 100% accurate picture quality with HDMI.  HDMI also has copy protection built in.  Also if I'm not mistaken, HDMI carries both audio and video.

Answer 2

In some rare cases - the HDMI signal will have less artifacts / look better than the same signal with component cables.

This has nothing to do with the cable, but with the TV.

If you feed analog (component) signals to a HDTV, it has to convert things to digital for display.  Converting Digital->Digital is easy. Converting Analog->Digital .. is a lot harder to do and it takes expensive electronics to do it well.

HDMI cables tend to be cheaper than component cables and carry audio.

Answer 3

Both component and HDMI will support HD channels.

HDMI is preferred as it will support 1080p video and surround sound with a single cable, as opposed to the multiple cables that component uses.

However, HDMI may not be required, depending on your TV and setup.

For the TV channels themselves, most HD channels are only using 720p and only a very few are using 1080i.

Going forward, HDMI will be the preferred cabling for all of your A/V devices, but for now, either HDMI or component video will suffice for your needs.

Answer 4

Generally, the component wires and HDMI cable will give you the same quality picture.  The nice thing about the HDMI cable is that it is only one cable instead of 5 wires.  The future looks to be going towards HDMI, so I would definately go back and get your cable, if it was free and keep it around.  The cable is worth about $10, if you shop around.