Quote:
I've purchased several new system components for my home theater in the past few days. I've purchased the new Denon 2807 A/V receiver and a new HDTV LCD TV - Sony Bravia. These will be hooked up to a Comcast Digital cable box supporting HD as well as my REL subwoofer and Vienna Acousitcs speakers. My question is about the use of HDMI cables vs component. The store manager is telling me that I don't need to use HDMI cables to connect the Denon, TV, and Cable box that instead it's better to use component. This seems to fly in the face of all of the hype about HDMI though. Isn't HDMI better than component?

Since you have a digital fixed-pixel displayer (LCD), you will probably optimize your video performance with HDMI. Component is analog and, by analogy to audio signal processing, there's no advantage to doing a D/A (to get component output) followed by an A/D (in your LCD processor). Keep it digital.

This is not to deny that one can get excellent, almost identical performance from component. For example, with non-upsampled DVD, I don't see any difference between component and HDMI on my setup. With HD-digital cable, I do.

Kal