Home Theater Connection Types (Page 2 of 2)

Although uncommon in the rest of the world, SCART is the de-facto standard for connecting standard definition audio and video devices together in Europe. Also known as EIA Multiport or EIA Interface in the United States, it has largely failed to catch on in the Americas. All European TV sets have at least one SCART connection and almost all satellite boxes have at least one. The connection's limitation is only up to DVD-quality, so it does not make sense to connect any equipment which can deliver higher quality with a SCART (EIA) connection.

Again, SCART is found on almost all TVs in Europe, and it is no surprise that it can display TELETEXT.

The “Separate Video” or “Super Video” is an analog connection capable of carrying DVD quality output at maximum. The video signal is carried separately: luminance and color. There are mainly two different types of S-Video connections: 4-pin and 7-pin. There are cables/converters for converting a 4-pin to 7-pin, but I highly discourage using such connectors because most probably you will end up with garbled and/or black and white output.

S-Video delivers image quality similar to SCART connections, and therefore I recommend using this connection type when image quality is not so important, like connecting standard definition video to a non-high definition TV.

Component Video does not carry audio signals and therefore is mainly used with separate audio connections. Basically, in this connection type the video signal is separated into red, blue, and green video components and sent independently to the display device – monitor or TV. Since the signal is split into independent parts and there is no chance of mixing the signals together, there is theoretically no limit to the color depth and the resolution of the video signal being carried. However, component video requires a high bandwith because each segment also carries the entire black and white component, and the market movement is currently toward HDMI for home theater and DVI for computers. That said, so far consumer grade TVs support a maximum of 1920 x 1080 resolutions (Full HD), except for some prototypes seen in the Far East, but if component video equipment supports it, you can watch video at any resolution that your TV supports.

RCA is a very common connection that can be found on TVs, receivers and other audio and video equipment. You can easily recognize the connection by the yellow, red and white jacks, where the yellow cable carries the video signal, the red cable the right speaker, and the white cable the mono or left speaker. This connection is good for connecting DVD equipment to a receiver/TV or connecting a stereo audio equipment to a receiver/amplifier. The audio signals are carried in digital form and the three cables can be used separately. For example, with a three-jack RCA cable, you can use only the yellow one to connect your DVD to your receiver/TV or the red/white to connect your CD player to an amplifier/receiver leaving the other jacks disconnected.

And just a note, the video section (the yellow cable), when used individually, is called “Composite Video.”

YPbPr connection is in the family of component video types. Other than its intended use, it is the same with the RCA connection and the video cables can be used interchangably. However the yellow video cable should be plugged into the green sockets. I do not recommend using the RCA audio cables for YPbPr connection because of the sometimes-different resistance values (75 Ohms to be precise).

This connection is sometimes called as "yipper" connection due to the difficulty in pronounciation.

Coaxial connections are mainly found in radio receivers with antennas and cable television. The advantage of this connection is that it is free from any electromagnetic interference. It is perhaps the oldest connection available, since it was patented in 1880 in the United Kingdom. The first transatlantic coaxial cable was laid in 1958. The connection is possibly installed in every television set currently produced.

The Video Graphics Array (VGA) connection was developed by IBM in 1987 and is present in almost all monitors today. The VGA connection can be found on video graphics cards on desktop computers, laptop computers, and LCD/Plasma TVs, making it one of the widely available connections. If you are thinking about a VGA connection, be sure to check out the number of pins and rows on both of the equipment - your TV, monitor, laptop or whatever you want to connect. Although most common VGA connection is the three-row VGA with 15 pins, there are some very rare connections with 2-rows.

The VGA connection is superseded with the Digital Video Interface (DVI) connection.

As we have seen so far, there are a lot of connections available for the home theater system components: TVs, receivers, DVD players, Blu-ray equipment, computers, etc. We need to know adbout them basically to make informed purchase decisions and have better and higher quality outputs.