Is Hdmi Better Than Component If You Dont Upscale ?

[buster]

I have an upscaling dvd player [pioneer 696 ] running through hdmi .

I am not overly impressed with the look of some dvd's when they are upscaled even at the lowest setting .

my question is if i get a different dvd player

that has hdmi but does not upscale am i going to get a superior picture quality that component

[DTMPWR]

Your TV or PJ may still up scale it from the component input

[betty boop]

I have an upscaling dvd player [pioneer 696 ] running through hdmi .

I am not overly impressed with the look of some dvd's when they are upscaled even at the lowest setting .

my question is if i get a different dvd player

that has hdmi but does not upscale am i going to get a superior picture quality that component

no its a bit of a fallacy that hdmi is better than component. component if implemented well which it is in most decent gear has capability to do full HD in all its glory.

[adprom1503559636]

Depending on how well the electronics are implemented in each player, component can look better than hdmi (even upscaled). Good quality component outputs will beat an average hdmi output pretty much all the time. The advantage is that HDMI is digital through to the screen, however this also depends on the hdmi input in the screen. Sometimes the displays themselves don't implement the hdmi input very well. It is also not quite as simple as directly outputting a digital video stream from the dvd to hdmi output either.

Basically try both and see which you like better. My guess would be that the 696 could well look better over component having set a lot of them up (but not really critiquing the player). HDMI done well though IMO will always beat component on a digital style display.

[Cody]

all of the specialist hi-fi stores ive been in lateley swear component is much better than HDMI.

havent done a comparison myself (dont own any component cables), but id be interested to hear from anyone that has.

[betty boop]

all of the specialist hi-fi stores ive been in lateley swear component is much better than HDMI.

havent done a comparison myself (dont own any component cables), but id be interested to hear from anyone that has.

when the denon 2910 & 3910 came out I actually bought one in the group buy and took home and hooked upto my plasma. very suprisingly component was actaully better than hdmi. hdmi had colour cast, mpeg blocking patchinees visible issues and no better on detail even trying hdmi at 1080i and all. The denon tech I spoke to said it was due to compaitiblity issues with my plasma and it was known issue.

Given component was better I decided to check out the cheaper on run out denon 2900 which I found did a gorgeous job on component. so went for it, got a lovely dvd universal player and pocketed the savings.

[OakenShield1]

I have my Marantz DVD player hooked up direct to my 50" via HDMI and through my Marantz Amp via component.

Honestly, cannot tell the difference. Both look sensational. I admit I haven't done a real detailed comparison, but first impressions last

[betty boop]

I have my Marantz DVD player hooked up direct to my 50" via HDMI and through my Marantz Amp via component.

Honestly, cannot tell the difference. Both look sensational. I admit I haven't done a real detailed comparison, but first impressions last

I'd agree anotehr player I tried the pio 969 via component and hdmi it was jsut as good, nohing much in it. Youd be happy with either.

[Cody]

when the denon 2910 & 3910 came out I actually bought one in the group buy and took home and hooked upto my plasma. very suprisingly component was actaully better than hdmi. hdmi had colour cast, mpeg blocking patchinees visible issues and no better on detail even trying hdmi at 1080i and all. The denon tech I spoke to said it was due to compaitiblity issues with my plasma and it was known issue.

Given component was better I decided to check out the cheaper on run out denon 2900 which I found did a gorgeous job on component. so went for it, got a lovely dvd universal player and pocketed the savings.

interesting, ive got the same tellie and think the video over hdmi looks great, cant imagine it looking any better. i am keen to try component tho, just to compare.

[MELso]

I run my HD-XA1 over component and my DV-696 over HDMI. In my experience, the upscaled image of the DV-696 looks very nice, and slightly nicer than the 480p/576p SD non-upscaled res. However, the HD-XA1 using component looks blisteringly good...

[Thornton Melon]

I have an upscaling dvd player [pioneer 696 ] running through hdmi .

I am not overly impressed with the look of some dvd's when they are upscaled even at the lowest setting .

my question is if i get a different dvd player

that has hdmi but does not upscale am i going to get a superior picture quality that component

I dont think upsacaling changes picture quality, only input numbers. EG 576p looks the same as 720p on my display.

Component looks exactly the same on my DVD players as HDMI, now that I have both, I cant pick the difference

HDMI may be better ,but I can't see it!

I have 2 players,one upscales and one does'nt, one has HDMI and one has component, I am going to try then against each other and try to pick the difference.

Cheers

[The_Preacher1973]

I have an upscaling dvd player [pioneer 696 ] running through hdmi .

I am not overly impressed with the look of some dvd's when they are upscaled even at the lowest setting .

my question is if i get a different dvd player

that has hdmi but does not upscale am i going to get a superior picture quality that component

There's two parts to this equation - transmission and transcoding.

Firstly, if the component connection and the digital connection are both doing what they are supposed to do, there will be no difference between the two. Regardless of whether we're talking about digital or component, they're both carrying the same information. It's just that with digital it's carrying it as a series of 0's and 1's (on/off only) whereas with component it's carrying it as a voltage. For example ,as far as "brightness" goes, 0 IRE represents 0 volts and 100 ire is 700 mili volts. (Assuming a 0 pedastal for black level like we have in PAL land. NTSC in the US use an offset of 7.5 IRE but that's a whole other kettle of confusion).

So as you can see, if all the 1's and 0's of the digital connection are getting through correctly and all of the voltage differences are being decoded correctly, there will be no difference. Both cables are passing "digital" information, they're just doing it in a different manner. Where this changes is when the signals aren;t getting through correctly. With a digital connection, it "fails". You'll get a blank screen, green screen or sparklies. You know there's a problem with your cable/signal. Thus with digital, you've either got a clear picture or no picture at all.

It's not so simple with the analogue signal. If it strats to degrade, you will simply get ghosting, loss of detail and all the other things we have come to know and love about analogue TV transmission. Once again once a signal is this bad, it'sretty obvious, but it might be only slightly off thus causing you to think that the digital signal is clearer than the analogue. In short, it's possible to get slight degradation of PQ with component, whereas with digital it either works or it doesn't.

In summary, an analogue signal can match a digital signal if all's going well. It will however never be a better signal than digital. It can't be. (Unles of course the digital has failed in the manner described above and is not producing a picture at all).

So are all these people claiming that component is better than HDMI ful of it? No. Because there's the other part of the process to take into account: transcoding.

Video information on a DVD (mpeg2) is encoded using a colour space of 4:2:0. In order for most display devices to display a picture this needs to be transcoded into RGB (4:4:4).

Now if you use the comoponent connection, this will transmit the data as unaltered 4:2:0. Your display will then transcode the information to RGB (4:4:4) ready for display.

If however you're using HDMI, your player will probably default to RGB to transmit the information. Therefore your player will be transcoding the information before sending it to you player.

So if the player is not doing as good a job of transcoding as your display, then the component picture will look better.

Now you may have noticed a "component" option under the HDMI menu of your DVD player as well, and think that if you use that then you'll get the best of both worlds - digital transmission and the transcoding being done in your display. Well, not necessarily. If you use 480P/576P then you should be OK. If you "upscale" however, it can all turn to puss.

When your display transcodes a signal from component 4:2:0 colour space to RGB, it has to apply a matrix. But the matrix that it uses for SD material is different to the one it uses for HD material. So if you've taken SD material and simply upscaled it, then the display will think it's receiving HD encoded material and employ the HD matrix to transcode the signal. This will result in a degradation of picture quality. In order for this to work, the DVD player must transocde the material as well as scale it. Not all players do this.

So as you can see, there's no simple answer as to whether HDMI is better than component. It will depend on whether the transcoder in your display is better than the one in your DVD player as well as whether or not your component cable and connections are any good. As in anything, your mileage may vary and you owe it to yourself to see which connection works best with your equipment.

Anyway, it's been great to see that this thread hasn't gone along the lines of "HDMI is better because it offers a pure digital connection between the source and the display" because as you can see, there's nothing "pure" about it. It's got to be transcoded somewhere and it's the quality of this transcoding process that's going to have the biggest effect on PQ (assuming your cables and connections are OK).

[betty boop]

interesting, ive got the same tellie and think the video over hdmi looks great, cant imagine it looking any better. i am keen to try component tho, just to compare.

that was with my previous hitachi DG. Your pio player might be jsut as good with hdmi or component as I found with the 969 DG or being a later model perhaps better. Well worth a try to compare to find out.

[kiwimeat]

I have a lovely Denon DVD-2930.

Usually it feeds HDMI and Component (as well as 5.1 analog) to my AVR and then from AVR to screen via HDMI. I have also tested it direct to my Fujitsu P50XHA40US using both HDMI and Component.

Most of the time, there is virtually no detectable difference between Component and HDMI, direct or not, and even with HDMI upscaling, and if there is, there really is very little in it.

What I can say is that my Denon DVD-2930 over both HDMI and Component delivers a far superior image to my previous Sony NSP-50 and Toshiba 2109 DVD players. And if the video is superior, well the audio improvement is stunning.

To the OP, I think you may be expecting too much of your not-quite entry level DVD player. I think you could probably buy 6 or so Pioneer 696's for the cost of my 2930 but I wouldn't swap.

[cwt]

Now if you use the comoponent connection, this will transmit the data as unaltered 4:2:0. Your display will then transcode the information to RGB (4:4:4) ready for display.

If however you're using HDMI, your player will probably default to RGB to transmit the information. Therefore your player will be transcoding the information before sending it to you player.

So if the player is not doing as good a job of transcoding as your display, then the component picture will look better.

Now you may have noticed a "component" option under the HDMI menu of your DVD player as well, and think that if you use that then you'll get the best of both worlds - digital transmission and the transcoding being done in your display. Well, not necessarily. If you use 480P/576P then you should be OK. If you "upscale" however, it can all turn to puss.

When your display transcodes a signal from component 4:2:0 colour space to RGB, it has to apply a matrix. But the matrix that it uses for SD material is different to the one it uses for HD material. So if you've taken SD material and simply upscaled it, then the display will think it's receiving HD encoded material and employ the HD matrix to transcode the signal. This will result in a degradation of picture quality. In order for this to work, the DVD player must transocde the material as well as scale it. Not all players do this.

Thanks for the info Preacher;My pioneer 989 has settings for full range RGB;regular RGB;component 12bit and regular 8 bit component.I'me using component leads at the moment but I'le know what to expect when I switch to hdmi.Do you know of any display device that has 12 bit processing?My pearl would be lucky to have 10 bit I think

[spoco2]

Not to harp on about my test but I did test this very thing... here is the set of comparison shots.

I find that on this particular setup o' mine, the HDMI looks better even when not upscaled.

Your millage may vary of course.

[SDL]

I have both and can't notice any difference at all.