"ROANIN" wrote:

What is the difference between HDMI and Component Video?

If you are watching a DVD the program material (audio and video) are recorded as
a series of 1/0 bits on the DVD. In the US, pre-HD TV was analog, so at some
point those 1/0 bits had to be converted to analog to form lines and levels.
Older analog TVs had three color guns - red, green and blue, so the 1/0 bits
were separated into three analog streams. That's what component video is.

Since no digital to analog conversion is perfect, there is always a little
quality loss. Really good conversions had almost imperceptible loss, poor
conversions had more.

Digital TV changed all that. A video frame consists of picture elements known as
pixels. Each pixel is represented by a collection of bits. The bits for each
pixel define the color and intensity of that pixel. Those bits can be taken from
the DVD and displayed with no analog conversion needed. Since bits can represent
both audio and vidio information, it's no long necessary to have separate cables
for each. The interface for connecting a digital device to a digital display is
HDMI.

For most consumers, the difference between a good component video and a digital
signal is undetectible. However, Hollywood was not keen on having perfect
digital copies of their content floating around the world, so they insisted that
the interface between the DVD and HD TV be encrypted. In order to get the
decryption keys, DVD and TV manufacturers had to agree to certain design
standards that would theoretically protect the data from being copied.