a/v, rgb, HDMI questions

[Soviet Conscript]

ok, i've done alot of asking around here lately on the subject of rgb, a/v ect and i appricate the vast amount of help i have gotten but many answers have led to even more questions and a certain amount of confusion. so i'm going to sum up my few remaining questions here (few remaining for now anyways). i do find technical answers intresting but then again, usually lead to even more questions so in simple terms is probibly best

1) is VGA basicly RGB? better? worse? without worrying about the monitor.

2) i've been told due to laws of color physics or whatever that a connection cannot be better then rgb but what is HDMI then? will it be better then rgb? how? or is this anouther inferior a/v connection being set upon north america?

3) this ones may be more opinion then anything but why was north america shafted on a/v? i know europe has scart which i beleive is RGB and japan had 21 pin RGB so why has north america had to endure a series of inferior quality a/v connections? even modern component athough close to RGB, isn't. are the reasons political? economical? something to do with the price and companies not beleive americans cared about the quality? a format issue?

[RARusk]

1. VGA is indeed RGB. But it is Progressive Scan RGB Analog. It is the best form of RGB but you need a computer monitor or a set that can accept a DB-15 monitor cable to use it. The DreamCast was the first console to use VGA and all but maybe 2% of the games made for it support VGA. The PS2 and GameCube have limited VGA support and require special cables to help use it. The Xbox has solid Progressive Scan support but you either need to mod a early motherboard version (to get it to output VGA straight from the source) or use a Component Video-to-RGB converter. The Xbox 360 has a VGA cable so you can use a monitor with it. The PS3 and Wii: unknown.

2. I believe that the HDMI plug is for HDTV use. HDTV is supposed to replace standard CRT sets and is the highest form of video right now. I do not know if there any HDTV-to-RGB converters for using the high end video on cheaper computer monitors.

3. I think the reason for this is because we Americans are a bunch of idiots.

[heyricochet]

HDMI is digital, VGA is analog. HDMI is DVI with audio. Its the future since everything is going digital.

[Soviet Conscript]

HDMI is digital, VGA is analog. HDMI is DVI with audio. Its the future since everything is going digital.

yes but whats the quality of the HDMI connection, vga quality?

[rxdoga]

HDMI is digital, VGA is analog. HDMI is DVI with audio. Its the future since everything is going digital.

yes but whats the quality of the HDMI connection, vga quality?

Yes, digital is superior to analog.

[Trebuken]

HDMI has a bandwidth of 5 GBps, which is double what HDTV requires. I believe DVI is 1.65 GBps which is similar to VGA.

HDMI is vastly superior to VGA, but is not utilized as much being a newcomer.

Digital signals allow the higher bandwidth.

Later,
Trebuken

[Luke]

3) - I do not believe Americans are idiots. It seems firms thought (wrongly) that most people would not want that coneection. I think SCART was a European mandate? Whereas the US govt does not seem so interested in video signals.

[Soviet Conscript]

HDMI has a bandwidth of 5 GBps, which is double what HDTV requires. I believe DVI is 1.65 GBps which is similar to VGA.

HDMI is vastly superior to VGA, but is not utilized as much being a newcomer.

Digital signals allow the higher bandwidth.


ok, but not being the most technically inclined person what does this mean for gameing?
so HDMI is better then RGB? or is HDMI anouther form of RGB? what does the ability for greater data transfere and bandwidth mean for gamers? brighter more viberant colors? i mean how much more vibrant and bright can the colors get before its just plain blinding? sorry to be so confuseing but better A/V in past always translated to crisper brighter colors and if RGB is the apex of this how is HDMI better.

so its digital, so it has greater bandwidth. so it can transfere 5 gbps of information

thats wonderful. in practical terms how does this effect my gameing experence? your telling me theres still room for crisper brighter images?

damn thats alot of question marks......



I do not believe Americans are idiots. It seems firms thought (wrongly) that most people would not want that coneection. I think SCART was a European mandate? Whereas the US govt does not seem so interested in video signals.


intresting, i wish the same thing would of happened here. do you beleive north americans were forced to go through a series of evolutions in connections over the years as a way for manufactures to make more money on people wanting to upgrade there connections or that the higher quality connections like rgb were more expensive and manufatures only slowly realized there was a demand for better connections?

[Trebuken]

OK let me try to explain my impression of HDMI. HDMI replaces component video and component audio which replaced other formats including RGB. Component audio uses at least 5 cables (inputs for Right, Left, 2 Rear, and Center channel speakers) in addition to the three (RGB) on the component cable. That means the one HDMI cable replaces the eight inputs previously need by a High Definition audio and video standard. One cable vs. eight. Now thats why the increased bandwidth. You can get a similar picture over component as HDMI, but HD-DVD does not use the full capacity of the HDMI cable.

The increases allow for more data to flow; this allows for the more vibrant colors, higher resolutions, and eliminates various graphical glitches that can appear on lesser connections which often use greater data compression to get everything transmitted.

Vibrant colors require more storage. Image clarity and lower compression require a larger bandwidth (transmission capacity). The increasing size and complexity of games benefits from this, I think the PS3 will see better reults than the 360...we'll see.

I'm not sure that's any clearer, but I tried...

Later,
Trebuken

[Avatard]

You pretty much hit the nail on the head there. But personally I don't see a big difference with HDMI over component. A little brighter, yes, but no differences in resolution.

I hook up cable for a living and the vast majority use component. Lots of people have HDMI connectors on their HD sets and don't even request a digital box with a HDMI connection.

I'm amazed at how many people have HD sets with HD channels available but don't use connections that support HD.

[Trebuken]

It seems the current High Definition standard can be be sent over a component cable with no data loss. HDMI is a bit future proof, and simpler by combining audio. HD-DVD for example looks identical over either connection in most cases (or so I understand from reading other forums).

Later,
Trebuken

[Ze_ro]

I think the main advantages of HDMI are 1) It includes both the video and the audio signal in one compact connector, which no other North American standard does, and 2) It's digital. The reason using a digital signal is better is that it's more resistent to interference. In theory, if you have a 50ft long VGA cable and a 50ft long HDMI cable, the HDMI connection will likely look a bit better just due to the noise immunity. Will you actually notice the difference in a regular setup? Probably not.

Another "feature" of HDMI that is an advantage to the content providers (but generally a bad thing for us users) is content control. A fancy HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player can send an encrypted video signal that will be decrypted within the television so that you have no hope of intercepting it and recording it onto a DVD or a computer hard drive or whatever.

SCART is a little more complicated that has been portrayed here... A SCART cable usually carries many different signals simultaneously, one of which CAN be RGB. Unfortunately, you have no real way of knowing whether the picture you're seeing is being sent in RGB or composite (presumably, you'd be able to tell from the quality, but there are other issues that can affect picture quality, so it might not be as obvious as that). Using a SCART connector to carry S-Video or component video is also not part of the standard, so there's no guarantee that the TV you're hooking up to will actually make use of those signals (It may seem pointless to have component video on a SCART cable when RGB is already there, but some manufacturers have actually done this (The PS2 has an option for this in the menus)).

Don't get me wrong, SCART is nice, and is certainly far better than the crappy rf/composite/s-video mess we've had here in North America for so long, but it's far from the "messiah of video standards that America was stupid to ignore" that many people portray it as.

--Zero

[boatofcar]

There are a lot of people here that know a lot about video signals...don't you think it's time DP added a knowledge base article on the subject we can direct these types of questions to? I think it would be great to have all this information in the same place.

[Blanka789]

There are a lot of people here that know a lot about video signals...don't you think it's time DP added a knowledge base article on the subject we can direct these types of questions to? I think it would be great to have all this information in the same place.

Agreed.