Component cable VS Hdmi (1 Viewer)

[stymie222]

I have a Panasonic plasma 50" that is 1080p certified.

My Older Onkyo TXSR 700 does not have HDMI inputs. I am using the optical out for audio.

Will using a bluray player with component cable cause any great loss of picture quality over HDMI ?

 

[Jason Charlton]

The component cables carry a maxium resolution of 1080i (which gets converted back to 1080p in the TV), so what you're missing is the difference between 1080p and 1080i which, depending on how close you're sitting to your TV, ranges from "nearly imperceptible" to "slightly perceptible"

Short answer - no, you're not going to have any "great loss of picture quality." Some would argue there is "some" quality degradation, but nothing to get too worried about.

IMO, you're missing out more on the audio side than the video side - the lossless audio codecs on Blu-Ray were a much greater improvement over the DVD codecs than I was expecting.

 

[stymie222]

Thanks Looks like its time to upgrade my receiver.

 

[Brian McHale]

It's worth pointing out that the lossy DD and DTS soundtracks on Blu-ray use higher bit rates than DVD. So, even though they're not quite as good as lossless, they're still a step up from DVD.

That doesn't, however, mean it's not time to upgrade your receiver...