Question about video electronic connectivity between DVD player and HDTV

[bull]

We finally bought an HDTV the other day and have been enjoying the ability to actually see what's going on in our movies. The step up from 20" analog to 46" HD digital is a substantial improvement to say the least. Anyway, all I had before was a yellow "video" cable going from my DVD player to the old TV and now the new TV has a spot for the yellow one plus a separate three-wire Y Pb Pr video input. However, our DVD player does not use the same designation, instead it has a Y Cb Cr video output which I assume is the same (but different). I can call Radio Shack and ask the same thing but I figured someone here might have the answer first. So is Y Pb Pr compatible with Y Cb Cr or will I let the smoke out by connecting these two input/output sources together?

Yea, I know, just buy an HD-DVD player and be done with it, right?

While I'm asking, does anyone here connect directly from a PC or laptop to their HDTV to watch Netflix, youtube, etc.? How's that working out?

[Dans 68]

We finally bought an HDTV the other day and have been enjoying the ability to actually see what's going on in our movies. The step up from 20" analog to 46" HD digital is a substantial improvement to say the least. Anyway, all I had before was a yellow "video" cable going from my DVD player to the old TV and now the new TV has a spot for the yellow one plus a separate three-wire Y Pb Pr video input. However, our DVD player does not use the same designation, instead it has a Y Cb Cr video output which I assume is the same (but different). I can call Radio Shack and ask the same thing but I figured someone here might have the answer first. So is Y Pb Pr compatible with Y Cb Cr or will I let the smoke out by connecting these two input/output sources together?

Yea, I know, just buy an HD-DVD player and be done with it, right?

While I'm asking, does anyone here connect directly from a PC or laptop to their HDTV to watch Netflix, youtube, etc.? How's that working out?

Yes to both questions. 

http://forums.cnet.com/7723-7596_102-38686.html

Dan

[bull]

Remember the good old days when you just turned the TV on and there were five channels? The most difficult thing about those days was finding a kid to turn the channel so you could scan trough all five without having to get up.

[Dans 68]

Hell, yes.    And when they made TV's with push button controls all you needed then was a long stick to not have to get off your butt. The good old days.... 

Dan

[bordin34]

Just some advice about HDMI cables when you get to that point. They are all the same. Do not buy a $100 one in the store, it will be nearly impossible to notice there difference, if there is any, over a $5 ebay cable. All an HDMI cable does is transfer data, like a USB cable, it doesnt really matter if it is gold plated or says monster. So check ebay for all your HDMI cables.

[ChgrSteve67]

Yea, I know, just buy an HD-DVD player and be done with it, right?

Close. go buy a BlueRay player for $100 and hook it up via HDMI

I have a home theater PC and it uses HDMI to connect to the TV. Sound card connects to the surround sound system. It has a BlueRay DVD drive in it so I don't need a seperate BlueRay player.

I watch more and more things of the internet these day.

-Steve

[Ponch ®]

Yea, I know, just buy an HD-DVD player and be done with it, right?

Close. go buy a BlueRay player for $100 and hook it up via HDMI



-Steve

Yeah, buying an HD DVD player is like buying a Beta VCR...the format is dead. Get a Blue Ray player. Better yet, get a Playstation 3 for an extra $100 or so and you get a blue ray player, DVD upconverter (cuz your regular DVDs are gonna look like crap on a HD TV), internet access (so you can download netflix and watch movies through it) and, of course, the gaming - all in one package.

[learical1]

Better yet, get a Playstation 3 for an extra $100 or so and you get a blue ray player, DVD upconverter (cuz your regular DVDs are gonna look like crap on a HD TV), internet access (so you can download netflix and watch movies through it) and, of course, the gaming - all in one package.

If you do that, and you have kids, you'll never watch TV on the HD again.  They will monopolize it until you kick them out of the house.

[Ponch ®]

Better yet, get a Playstation 3 for an extra $100 or so and you get a blue ray player, DVD upconverter (cuz your regular DVDs are gonna look like crap on a HD TV), internet access (so you can download netflix and watch movies through it) and, of course, the gaming - all in one package.

If you do that, and you have kids, you'll never watch TV on the HD again.  They will monopolize it until you kick them out of the house.

that never occurred to me...but then again, I don't have any kids (that I know of) 

[bull]

I've heard about the upscaling on the blue ray players so I'll either get one of those someday or the gaming console. For now though I got an HDMI cable and a three-wire component cable off Ebay. I want to see how good the picture looks with this HDMI cable off my laptop before I spend another $200 or so. And although I'm not convinced the component cable will help the quality of my old DVDs much I think it's worth a shot for $6.

I hear you about paying the retail places for these cables, Bordin. It's rediculous what they charge for them. I went to three different stores yesterday to check pricing and the cheapest I could get both was $45. I paid a total of $16.89 for both with free shipping on Ebay. The HDMI cable I got has a ferrite core and gold plated connectors too.

[Brass]

Just FYI, with an XBox Live account you can stream Neftlix "watch instantly" movies through an XBox 360.  Some can be viewed in HD too if your cable or DSL connection is fast enough.  I went with a separate, stand alone blu-ray player.  (Instead of PS.)

[thedodgeboys]

Go to best buy and get a blu ray player that has Netflix built in they are less than $100 home depot has 12 foot hdmi cables for $13 and sit back and enjoy. 

[Ponch ®]

I've heard about the upscaling on the blue ray players so I'll either get one of those someday or the gaming console. For now though I got an HDMI cable and a three-wire component cable off Ebay. I want to see how good the picture looks with this HDMI cable off my laptop before I spend another $200 or so. And although I'm not convinced the component cable will help the quality of my old DVDs much I think it's worth a shot for $6.

I hear you about paying the retail places for these cables, Bordin. It's rediculous what they charge for them. I went to three different stores yesterday to check pricing and the cheapest I could get both was $45. I paid a total of $16.89 for both with free shipping on Ebay. The HDMI cable I got has a ferrite core and gold plated connectors too.

The HDMI cable will make your laptop look good if you have 720p+ vids on there, but wont do much for your dvd player (unless its an upconvert-ready player) cuz regular dvds are in 480i definition. Its gonna look all grainy and stretched out (almost like a video tape thats been recorded over several times). Having said that, an upconvert dvd player is only like $40 nowadays and it really does improve the quality of the picture. Could be a good option to tide you over if you cant/dont wanna spend the $ for a blu ray or ps3 right now.

[bull]

Had I not just spent a bunch of money on a new TV, digital camera and 20-some-odd sorted Christmas presents I'd be all over a Blue Ray but I don't really need one yet. I'm more curious how this laptop connection is going to work out with the HDMI cable than I am watching all the DVDs I've seen 25 times already. That said, I did have to check out my Aliens, Iron Man and Star Trek DVDs on the new TV. Star Trek looks good but Aliens and Iron Man look the same as they did on my 20" tube, only bigger. But this was using just the single yellow video input cable so I'm hoping the new triple componant cable will improve it somewhat. My DVD player is probably 5+ years old and those are the only two hookups it has.

[Charge It!]

www.monoprice.com  for all your cable needs

[Ponch ®]

Ok...I just read the original post again. So your DVD has the YCC output, which is probably yellow/red/white(or black),  correct? And the TV has a YPP input, and its probably blue/green/red?

If im wrong someone correct me, but I believe the YCC is different than the YPP. In YCC, the yellow cable is for video and the Red/white are for audio, whereas in YPP all three cables for video (and for audio too, but im not sure how that works).

It's possible that hooking up your DVD's YCC to the TV's YPP might work, as far as getting a video and audio signal, but it's really not going to do much for the image quality, because again, you need to look at the source (your DVD player). It's still going to be processing and sending a comparatively low quality image to the TV.

As I said earlier, the HDMI connection from your laptop to the TV should work fine for netflix, looking at pics on your TV, and so on. But with youtube and the like, it's always going to depend on the quality of the video.

[Tilar]

Remember the good old days when you just turned the TV on and there were five channels? The most difficult thing about those days was finding a kid to turn the channel so you could scan trough all five without having to get up.

[ChgrSteve67]

Remember the good old days when you just turned the TV on and there were five channels? The most difficult thing about those days was finding a kid to turn the channel so you could scan trough all five without having to get up.

I don't remember that as good old days since I was the kid that had to flip the channels for the old man.
And get yelled at for going to fast.

Then there was the wired remote and then came the clicker.
I loved slapping my hands together to change the channel. The look on my dads face was worth the ass wooping.

I also remember getting yelled at for always sitting to close to the console TV.
Was not till my dad got the 50 inch front projection TV was I able to sit back and enjoy.

Not the good old days but definately days to look back on and thank god its not that way anymore.

kids of today are definately spoiled.

now wher did my pong console go?

-Steve

[Dans 68]

...now where did my pong console go?

-Steve

It's in my garage. My wife never got rid of ours....

Dan

[bull]

Ok...I just read the original post again. So your DVD has the YCC output, which is probably yellow/red/white(or black),  correct? And the TV has a YPP input, and its probably blue/green/red?

Sort of. The DVD player has a female YCbCr hookup cluster (or YCC as you're saying) and the TV has a female YPbPr hookup cluster (or YPP). The colors on both the player and TV are green, blue and red so the colors match up at least. This is for the DVD player only and the only other hookup on the DVD player is the single yellow video cable, which I am using now, although there might be a separate audio connection. I bought a male, triple "component" cable that has the green, blue and red on both ends to connect these two together.

The HDMI connector on the TV is a separate deal and I'm treating it as such because my laptop has an HDMI connector too. According to the techs I talked to on the phone, HDMI connections carry audio and video signals so I should be able to use the TV as an audio/video monitor that shows whatever the laptop shows.

My original question was whether the YCbCr and YPbPr connections were compatible. Near as I can tell they are because the colors are the same and I've read and been told that YCC and YPP are the same thing but with different names. The other main question I have is how to get the most out of my current DVDs because all I have now (until my green, blue, red component cable arrives) is the single yellow video cable from the DVD player to the TV. If the new green, blue, red component cable helps improve the DVD picture I'll be happy but I'm not sure it will be much better than the single yellow video input. When I get both cables I will compare them to the yellow cable picture and to each other by using the laptop as a DVD player.

[Ponch ®]

The other main question I have is how to get the most out of my current DVDs because all I have now (until my green, blue, red component cable arrives) is the single yellow video cable from the DVD player to the TV.

Nothing much really...other than setting up the TV so it doesn't try to stretch the image to full screen. That's what kills the image quality. Youll have the two black bars on each side though.

Did you figure out if your DVD player has upconvert abilities? I'm thinking it might if it has the green/red/blue outputs. Mess with the settings...if it has some sort of resolution output option that lets you upgrade to 720p or 1080p, you're good.

[Charge It!]

Match up the colors and you will be fine. HDMI and Component(green,blue,red...) cables will give you a similar, best picture. Composite (red,white, yellow) and coax cables will get you a lesser quality picture. Alot of times the decision between composite and HDMI comes down to how many and what kind of inputs you have on the TV or reciever.

[Ponch ®]

Match up the colors and you will be fine. HDMI and Component(green,blue,red...) cables will give you a similar, best picture. Composite (red,white, yellow) and coax cables will get you a lesser quality picture. Alot of times the decision between composite and HDMI comes down to how many and what kind of inputs you have on the TV or reciever.

Yeah, I've had my cable box hooked up to the TV with both component and HDMI cables and couldn't really see much of a difference (if any).

[bull]

The other main question I have is how to get the most out of my current DVDs because all I have now (until my green, blue, red component cable arrives) is the single yellow video cable from the DVD player to the TV.

Nothing much really...other than setting up the TV so it doesn't try to stretch the image to full screen. That's what kills the image quality. Youll have the two black bars on each side though.

Did you figure out if your DVD player has upconvert abilities? I'm thinking it might if it has the green/red/blue outputs. Mess with the settings...if it has some sort of resolution output option that lets you upgrade to 720p or 1080p, you're good.

I doubt it but I don't know for sure. IIRC the DVD player is about 5-6 years old which I think predates all this HD-DVD Blue Ray stuff. But I'll try goofing around with it and see what happens when the green/blue/red component cable arrives. Sounds like it might be better though based on what you and Charge It are saying. I'm curious to see the difference, if any, between the DVD/component cable quality and the quality of the DVD play with the laptop/HDMI cable.

But mostly I just want to see how good Scully looks on the big TV while watching X-Files on Netflix.

[ODZKing]

bull,
Just bought these and they work fine.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120651901481
and
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260712134992