HDMI vs YPbPr

What provides better picture quality?

  • HDMI

    Votes: 23 95.8%

  • YPbPr Component HD Wire

    Votes: 1 4.2%
  • Total voters
    24
Machate-man

Machate-man

2,191
United States
San Francisco,
machate-man
dowby
I currently am running my Xbox 360 on a YPbPr, or a 5-wire HD component output plug. Output, as predicted, was 720p upscaled to 1080p. The HDMI seems to provide the same resolution, but slightly better. Is my mind playing tricks on me or is HDMI actually better?
 
I use both on a 20" led HDTV and I can truely say that the hdmi is better in quality. The hdmi provides more light to the picture and makes the screen very crisp in color.
 
Having just made the comparison on my own set, I can say that HDMI is better. Period.

The resolution is the same, but the component picture had little noise artifacts, jumpy pixels, things like that. Being analog, it was susceptible to dot crawl on some edges, and color fields were not entirely uniform, all giving just a tiny "fuzziness" to the picture.

The HDMI picture was rock steady and as sharp as a tack.

Component would be more sensitive to cable quality than HDMI, I think, although the reason I did this was trying to track down the cause of frame drops from my cable box. Apparently just handling all the connection fixed it, as the condition was gone by the time I'd switched to analog and back to digital, but yesterday morning I was seeing random frame drops from my cable box to the TV, even in programs recorded on the DVR, and when I rewound a section that showed frame drops, they might not be there any more, or they'd be in different spots. That made it the output of the cable box or the input of the TV, which sent me on my quest through the signal path.

Never found the cause for sure, although it's gone now, but I know for absultely sure that HDMI is more superior to component than I would have expected.
 
In theory, they are identical.

However, all analog signals are far more sensitive to interference than digital ones, so unless you have Monster cables or something HDMI is very likely going to look better.
 
Toronado
In theory, they are identical.

However, all analog signals are far more sensitive to interference than digital ones, so unless you have Monster cables or something HDMI is very likely going to look better.
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I have Rocketfish Xbox Component HD cables, but those have artifacts, as you said:grumpy:

HDMI has minimal artifacts, but they are still present. Perhaps I just need to clean them...
 
Like Toronado said, HDMI has a better picture quality because it is digital and is less susceptible to interference while YPbPr is analogue suffers from interference more. If you had a heavily shielded YPbPr cable then the quality would be similar to a low quality HDMI cable.
 
Toronado
In theory, they are identical.

However, all analog signals are far more sensitive to interference than digital ones, so unless you have Monster cables or something HDMI is very likely going to look better.
Click to expand...

Especially if you have Monster cables HDMI will look better.

Monster cables are one of the biggest shams in the technology industry.
 
Casio
Especially if you have Monster cables HDMI will look better.

Monster cables are one of the biggest shams in the technology industry.
Click to expand...

He is right. A 5$ HDMI cable will be as good as a 100$ one.
 
bevo
He is right. A 5$ HDMI cable will be as good as a 100$ one.
Click to expand...

That's not entirely true because there can be differences in the bandwidth and overall quality. You also need to consider things like cable length and type (if HDMI 1.3 or 1.4 which is needed for 3D for example), a 10 meter cable for 5$ might not be able to produce the same quality as a 10 meter cable for 20$. Paying over 30 bucks for a longer cable is stupid indeed though.

@Topic: HDMI wins hands down.
 
I use YPbPr for one of my systems and the colors look really saturated. That's not the TV, everything else looks fine. Everything else is HDMI and it looks way better.
 
Toronado
Which is why I was referring to the Component cables being the expensive ones...
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Still doesn't matter, you can run any 75ohm cable with RCA ends and it'll make no difference, especially with the < 2ft runs most people have between screen and console. On short runs a lot of people wouldn't be able to tell the difference with a 50ohm cable.
 

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