HDMI
Introduced in 2003, High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is the 19-pin digital connector standard most people tend to favor now. This connector and cable supports any uncompressed video format and carries eight channels of audio. It also can carry Ethernet and a CEC connection which is how your Samsung TV can remote control your Samsung Blu-ray through the HDMI cable. Magic eh? Other names are Aquos Link, Viera Link, Easylink and Bravia Sync.
Most of us have the Type A Category 1 connector that we use for our home theater equipment.
HDMI cables made currently under the 1.3 and 1.4 spec fall under Category 1, which is Standard Speed and Category 2 which is High-Speed. Category 1 cable is fine for most uses but if you are going 3D, cinema 4K, 2160 or 1080p then you want the Category 2.
Cable length is generally limited to 16 feet (Category 1) but with a higher quality cable (Category 2) you can go to almost 50 feet.
Also there were specs released with versions 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 the cables are only different in bit rate. With version 1.4, 3D support was added. It gets hard to weed through the advertised specs (which they are not supposed to advertise anyway) so just get cables that are 1.3 or 1.4 when you buy.
HDMI also uses the same signal as DVI so no signal conversion is necessary. You just need a simple DVI-HDMI adapter but you lose the audio. This works well, however not all device support HDCP so you may have issues. Check with your manuals for further information on your source device.
DisplayPort
Ah DisplayPort, the cause of this sermon. Introduced by VESA in 2006, DisplayPort is the 20-pin “other” option for video connections. DisplayPort is support by mostly computer and monitor companies so I do think you will be seeing any DisplayPort TVs soon. In fact, DisplayPort was designed to replace both VGA and DVI. Supposedly, Intel, AMD, Dell etc. are all going to phase out DVI and VGA by 2015 and just use DisplayPort and HDMI.
StarTech.com has a great selection of DisplayPort cables.
DisplayPort supports video and 8 channels of uncompressed audio and transmits in micro data packets. This means the protocol has room for growth for future versions. The DisplayPort signal is NOT compatible with DVI or HDMI which was the topic of the last few BYOB episodes. Dual-link DVI is supported through an active adapter which converts the signal.
Just to put DisplayPort to bed let’s just say that the people at AMD figured out that DVI was not going to work with easily with three or more monitors so they went with DisplayPort. To keep it simple, the Eyefinity 3 cards usually have four ports, two DVI, one HDMI and a DisplayPort. You could run two monitors on one of these cards with either the two DVIs or a DVI and an HDMI. However, if you want to run THREE monitors the third one must be the DisplayPort stream. The reason for this is complicated and forces me to talk about clocks which will cause my head to explode. Since I do not want to do a sermon on cranial explosions I will forgo the clock sermon and just say that a DVI connection requires one clock where a DisplayPort can share many connections with one clock.
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