HDMI vs Component vs VGA vs DVI vs DisplayPort

"The nice thing about Digital (HDMI and DVI) is that it is noise tolerant.

On an analog line, to get a perfect picture the voltage at the receiver would need to match the voltage at the sender. Noise can get in there and distort the signal.

On a digital line, the receiver simply needs to determine if the signal is a 1 or a 0 (high voltage or low voltage).

Because of the noise tolerance in a digital signal, you can buy cheap cable and it will work just as well as the expensive stuff (don't listen to the ""Pros"" that try and sell you the expensive stuff). You can also run the signal over a long distance without introducing a lot of noise."

"Don't forget that HDMI and DVI support HDCP, or high definition content protection. It's a kind of DRM that prevents you from playing your HD content at full resolution. When buying these cables, be sure that they support the HDCP. Then again, you can always go with the analog hole...

Also, remember that DVI single link and double link differ in the amount of information that they can carry. DVI single link can carry a resolution of up to 1920x1200, whereas double link can do up to 2560x1600, if my memory serves me correctly. The differences can be seen below:

About the whole digital vs analog thing, here's an anecdote to explain. My monitor once had this nasty pinkish/purplish tone over the entire image, which turned out to be a result of the VGA (analog) cable behind it not being secured properly. A digital cable like HDMI or DVI would be able to bypass this problem, because the 1s and 0s are either there or not, perfectly or not. There can be no semi-working purple mode."

"It's largely an issue of what your input and output devices support. For example, I have a dual-DVI video card, and an HDMI HDTV (via receiver), and DVI-capable monitor. So I have a DVI->HDMI cable for the TV and DVI to the monitor.

HDMI, as it can pass audio, lets you consolidate cable clutter if your PC has HDMI-capable sound output. Laptops with HDMI out generally support this, for example.

VGA is simply not included in a lot of recent devices. My TV does have a VGA input, but I use HDMI from the receiver for sound output reasons."

"yes HDMI and DVI is digital and VGA/Component is analog.

If connecting a PC to a LCD monitor (or TV) via an analog cable, the picture information will get converted from digital(PC) to analog(cable(s)) and back again to digital(LCD). Conversion adds noise (depends how good the A/D and D/A converters are, gfx-card (D/A) and lcd screen (A/D)). Had one avoided the conversions (using DVI or HDMI) there would have been no unneeded A/D / D/A conversions, and the signals would never left digital form (which is very unsensitive to noise).

More noise in the analog signals get picture more blurred.
And the digial signals makes a very sharp picture."

Also, remember that many DVI ports also carry an analogue copy of the screen image in some of the extra pins. This is why DVI->VGA adaptors work - they simply carry these pins (that a DVI device would ignore) to a VGA style connector.