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Component better than HDMI to DVI?

1496 Views 11 Replies 10 Participants Last post by  bbroach
I just had my HR20 installed last night. Does anyone know why the color and clarity of my component input is so much better than my HDMI to DVI input?
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I have both going. Big screen (Sony SXRD) in my theatre room is component to component through my receiver and works perfectly. Smaller Sony HD tube is downstairs and it's HDMI to DVI and I don't have any problems with it. Might be you have a bad cable or connection????
Most likley the color/contrast/brightness is calibrated differently for the different inputs. On my Samsung with the inputs calibrated the DVI looks better than the component inputs using the same source.
Some TVs have separate settings for each input. Check your TV settings to see if they are the same for both the component and DVI inputs.
I tried both on mine. HDMI is a lot better than component video.
I swapped out the DVI input with an HDMI on my Panasonic Industrial Plasma and the picture changed a bit. Two more picture adjustments came up in the settings menu that were not there before as well. Picture and Color. Also, I have Letter Box on channels that did not have them before, nor do I think they should.
badit11 said:
Does anyone know why the color and clarity of my component input is so much better than my HDMI to DVI input?
There are lots of potential reasons. You should check your settings as others have posted, and maybe try another HDMI cable. But, it may be that your TV simply processes component signals better than it processes HDMI.

Not to promote this company (which I haven't dealt with), but here are links to a couple of articles that I found interesting:
http://bluejeanscable.com/articles/dvihdmicomponent.htm
http://bluejeanscable.com/articles/whats-the-matter-with-hdmi.htm

They slam HDMI pretty hard.
thanks for your help guys. My only DVI options are for brightness/contrast while my component options are brightness/contrast/color/tint/sharpness/phase. I wish my DVI had more options.
It isn't a universal truth that DVI/HDMI is the best connection for High Def. One factor largely overlooked in discussions of connectivity vs. PQ is that there can be significant differences in the characteristics of the signal paths through the various inputs of a given HD display. I've used only the VGA input to send HD to my Hitachi PDP for a couple of years now, because it yields the best image by far of all the channels into that panel. If you examine the schematic, it doesn't take long to see why - the VGA input passes through less signal processing circuitry than the component or DVI inputs. The result (in the case of the eight bit 42HDT55) is that a high quality source connection to the VGA input delivers the best clarity, with much more detail than the other inputs, and no processing artifacts. A lesser source is, at least, made no worse by digital meddling or a degraded noise floor.

I use a component switch box driving a component/VGA transcoder so that I can utilize the best input for all my HD sources. I don't mind at all that, other than black level, white level, and color temp, there are no picture adjustment controls available. The only thing I need to adjust for differences in source material is black level.

It is likely that one type of input will be better than the others for connecting your display - but you can't just asssume which one it will be. It's worth discussing this issue with the ISF tech when you have your display calibrated.

regards, billb....
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I've used both, and they both look about the same on my set (an ISF calibrated RP CRT).
I'm using HDMI now because it is along run and on cable beats 3!
Some sets will convert the input from DVI or HDMI to analog, and then back to digital, so if you own one of these sets, it is quite likely that the component inputs will yield a better picture.

An example of this is the Sony 3LCD sets. The newest sony LCOS sets like the XXA2000 sets have a 100% digital image path, as do Samsung DLPs. I don't know about the others.

I think that early on, the easiest thing for manufacturers to do when they first added a DVI input to their sets was to just add the DVI connector, and convert the digital signal to analog so it could be piped in just like the component inputs without additional re-design. This gave them the ability to advertise a DVI port, but actually introduced more signal processing and conversion than just using the component inputs.

I believe that HDMI and DVI truely will look better if your set has a 100% digital image path.
bigviking said:
I believe that HDMI and DVI truely will look better if your set has a 100% digital image path.
I don't agree that this is always true; the quality of processing applied to the digital signal path is also a consideration, as I explained in my previous post.

regards, billb....
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