Your First High Def Television Setup – Part 3

Your First High Def Television Setup – Part 3 – hooking everything up

by Philip Chien

So how do you hook up your high def components?

Now that you’ve purchased the HDTV, taken it out of the box and not dropped it on the floor – how do you hook it up?

Every setup is different, these are just guidelines.

The most important rule is to use the best type of connection for each hookup – not the cost of the cable, but the type of signal it carries.

Over-the-air broadcasts and cable come into your house as an R-F (radio frequency) signal using an “F” connector. You may see the terms coax and 75 ohm. This is generally the lowest quality signal and should only be used when necessary (from the wall outlet to your cable box or to the VCRs and television set’s R-F inputs).

The next step up is composite video and audio connectors. These are almost always RCA phono connectors on consumer quality electronics and on almost all current units are color-coded – yellow for video, red for right audio, and white for left audio. These are perfectly adequate connectors for standard definition video signals.

An incremental step up is S-Video (often called S-VHS) where the composite video cable with a yellow RCA connector is replaced with a mini DIN-4 black colored connector. S-video separates the black and white composite video signal and color burst frequency and gives marginally better quality than composite video cables. It’s commonly available on camcorders and also used on Super VHS VCRs.

Component video is the minimum connectors you should use for high def signals. Normally they use RCA phono connectors and have five separate cables – red, blue, and green for the Pr, Pb, and Y components of the video signal and white and red cables for the left and right audio signals. Just make sure you don’t mix up the two red colored lines. You are not required to follow the color codes though. If you don’t have RCA phono cables with red, green, and blue color codes it’s perfectly okay to use the extra white, red, and yellow cables you’ve got in your junk box but it’s up to you to determine that you’ve got the correct cables going to the correct jacks. Component video will give you full high def video quality, but it does not support the High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) digital rights copy protection scheme. With HDCP Hollywood is assured that you can’t tap into the signal between your cable box or DVD player and HDTV to make illegal copies of their movies. In most cases if HDCP believes it’s been compromised or hooked up to equipment which doesn’t meet the HDCP encryption standards the signal will fall back to standard television resolution.

DVI (Digital Visual Interface) connectors come in multiple flavors, digital and analog and combined digital and analog signals. If your computer has a DVI connector it’s probably digital. Any DVI connector on a cable box or HDTV will certainly be analog, but it’s possible that it may also support digital signals. DVI only supports video so you’ll need an additional set of audio cables. DVI supports HDCP. It’s likely that DVI connectors will become obsolete because their capabilities are superceded by -

HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) is the high end for the digital video connectors, combining all of the component video signals and also audio into one cable. The good news is you only need a single cable from your cable box or high def DVD player to your television set if they’ve got HDMI connectors. HDMI fully supports HDCP.

Retail stores sell HDMI cables for as much as $99 and discount stores sell HDMI cables for $39 to $69, but you can purchase HDMI cables online for as little as $1.50! The difference between the $99 cable and $1.50 cable? Well the $99 cable has prettier packaging, a tougher outer jacket, and a bunch of advertising hype. If you have a dog that likes to chew through electronics cables and you leave your $99 HDMI cable within reach it will take the dog longer to damage it than the $1.50 cable. But that dog has to be really hungry to chew through enough cables before the $99 cable becomes cost effective! HDMI is a digital signal – either it works or it doesn’t. All of the extra shielding on the $99 cable won’t make any difference in signal quality. Most, if not all, of the extremely low cost HDMI compatible cables have not been certified by the HDMI organization, but they do work. Certainly there are cases where you may need a higher quality HDMI cable, for very long distances or for future super-high resolution HDTVs. But for ordinary setups I’m very satisfied with my discount HDMI cables.

An HDTV will typically have one R-F jack, one or more sets of yellow, red, and white composite video connectors, and any of the following: five color coded jacks for component video plus audio, a DVI connector plus two RCA jacks for audio, and an HDMI connector. If your HDTV can be used as a computer monitor it will also have a standard 15-pin VGA connector. The HDTV may have multiple sets of jacks for any of the above connectors. As a general rule more jacks is more flexibility for different setups, especially if you get additional components in the future.

Some HDTVs also have output jacks, permitting the HDTV to pass through audio and/or video signals.

Early High Def monitors (HD ready TVs) didn’t have built-in digital tuners and could not receive over-the-air high def signals on their own. In most cases they had standard definition tuners which would permit you to watch ordinary quality programming but you had to use a high def cable or satellite receiver to view high def programs. Stand-alone HD tuners are available. You only need them if you’ve got a HDTV without a digital tuner and want to receive over-the-air broadcasts.

My particular current setup (not typical) uses five sets of inputs. The R-F jack on the TV is hooked up to an output of a cable splitter, which also feeds the digital cable box and various VCRs. The composite video jack on HDTV is connected to a VCR’s output. A set of component video cables is hooked up to my ReplayTV DVR. One HDMI jack is connected to the cable digital box, another HDMI is hooked up to an upconverting DVD player. This particular HDTV also has a digital audio out jack, which is connected to my home theater system.

In each case I’m using the best jacks for my particular components. The digital cable box has three sets of outputs – component video, DVI, and composite video. The cable company gave me a set of component video cables but I decided to use a DVI to HDMI cable plus audio cables instead.

I’ve also hooked up a set of cables from the composite video jacks on the cable box to the input jacks of a combination DVD-VHS recorder. This permits me to make VHS or standard resolution recordings of anything out of the digital cable box (normal analog channels, digital channels, and normal resolution versions of the HD signals). It cannot record high def signals but it’s the best, which can be done with normal consumer equipment.

Certainly your setup doesn’t have to be as complicated. If all you want to do is connect your HDTV to your cable box all you need is a single set of cables (either five cables for component video and audio or a DVI to HDMI cable). A simple HDMI to HDMI cable will hook up a upconverting DVD player or Blu-ray DVD player to your HDTV.

On my setup I’ve connected a digital audio cable from the HDTV’s output to my home theater system. The advantage of this approach is any of my programming (cable, VHS tapes, DVDs, etc.) can used the enhanced audio the home theater system provides. The disadvantage is the television set has to be turned on whenever I want to use the home theater system with any electronics which sends its audio through the television. An alternative is to connect all of your audio sources through the home theater box, if it has enough inputs to handle everything you own.

Hooking up your HDTV system in the most optimum method for your setup can be daunting if you’ve got a lot of separate electronics and want the most flexibility, but it’s worth the effort if you want the best results. But for most setups it’s far less complicated than what I’ve described here. If you don’t have the electronics know-how then find a friend, or ask the technical person at a high end video store for assistance.

Links

Part 1 – the HDTV set
Part 2 – DVD players and recorders
Part 3 – hooking everything up

HDMI cables
Blu-Ray DVD players
upconverting DVD players

About the author

Philip Chien has used VCRs since the early Betamax and VHS units in the 1970s and has put together what he calls, "A pretty awesome HDTV home theater system for the price."

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