Do you think the HDMI cables looks better? A friends experience and from what I read the component cables look better but I’ve not seen for myself.
HDMI versus Component: It depends - on your software, sources and your displays.
Good connections is of course important. My main concern with HDMI is I don't like the weak physical interface design. How can anyone chage $100 when you have that kind of connector? I much prefer the RCA connectors.
considerations:
- There is no error correction with HDMI - when signal is lost in connections it is lost for good.
- HDMI can support 1080p (1920x1080, non-interlaced) for displays that can output 1080p.
- Component is capable of 1080p, but I don't think many displays are set up to work that way, and Blue Ray and I think HD-DVD requires HDMI to do 1080p (for HDCP) as part of the spec. So protected movie content will still be limited to 1080i over component when 1080p content is protected by tokens.
- Apparently the Westinghouse LVM-42w2 is specified as accepting 1080p over component!
- There is currently no broadcast of 1080p content
- some displays allow 1080p via VGA, which you can do with the 360
- eventually games will do 1080p but not many now?
It helps to remember some key ideas when comparing the 2 types of cabling:
- analog does not allow for signal-chain copy protection. The MPAA/RIAA types want to get rid of component.
- real world impementations for digital signals do not always live up to theory
- Microsoft has indicated that HDMI will never be necessary for games or HD-DVD movies using the external HD-DVD player
- implementation of copy-protected content may take a while - the studios have to begin with the tokens and the hardware base has to be in place.
