GITweekly

Ever looked behind your TV cabinet and shuddered at the morass of plastic and wire that has accumulated there? If you’re anything like us, with a TV, DVD, VCR, TiVo, Foxtel iQ and a Sony Playstation 1/2/3 doing entertainment duty in your loungeroom, there’s a good chance you’ve assembled yourself a nightmarish mess of cabling that is the domain of the brave and time-rich only.

How did this happen? Well, it’s simple. Back in the good old days, all you needed was a single cable from your antenna to the TV. You got a black and white picture, and Bruce Gyngell welcoming you to television. Then some bright spark invented the VCR, which thankfully at the time sent all of its picture and sound down the same cable! Perfect! Admittedly, you needed two of them now, one to connect the VCR to the antenna, the other connecting the VCR to the telly. Still, it was the same plug. Then someone decided it would be better if the sound and the picture went down a different cable. We started hearing terms like ‘composite video’, and it was all downhill from there. Two cables became three, then one of them changed so we could get a better picture, but it was still one cable. S-Video, which was usually only the domain of the sun-starved, osteoporotic video editor, didn’t really catch on for the masses, but it did make the picture alot nicer. All of a sudden, DVD players started popping up, and we were told that the best picture was available via the ‘Component Video’ inputs on your, by now, wide-screen, 32 inch television. So, one video cable now became three! Let’s count them again: Audio left and right speakers, 2 cables;Component video, 3 cables. That’s a total of 5, and it’s only one box. Multiply that by 2 or 3, factor in the multitude of ways you can connect the TVs and the boxes, and all of a sudden the TV cabinet is chock full of cables and you quickly forget what is supposed to go where!

Luckily, the digital era is upon us. The big technology giants have finally seen fit to ease our pain a little, and have rolled out the do-it-all cable to connect your little boxes full of ticky tacky to each other. Yes, HDMI has arrived, and isn’t it wonderful. One cable, carrying the picture AND sound, all in high-quality, hi-fi, digital glory. 5 cables becomes one, and the picture and sound quality improves to boot!

HDMI stands for “High Definition Multimedia Interface”, but for the punters, it’s just a cable. A long piece of wire with a plug at each end. One end goes in the DVD (or Bluray) player, the other in the telly. That’s it. One cable to save them all, and in the darkness bind them!

For the brave, go visit http://www.hdmi.org/ for lots more information about HDMI and what it can offer.

For the scaredy-cats, when you go out and buy that new LCD or Plasma TV (as we know you will!! resistance is futile!), make sure you check out which of your little boxes has a ‘HDMI’ plug on it. Lay down the cash, get yourself some HDMI cables and save your sanity.