by Marshal Rosenthal

When connecting HD devices to the display, your choices are either component cables (for up to 1080i) or HDMI cables (for up to 1080p). HDMI has an advantage because it’s a single cable that also transmits audio.

But HDMI can still fail to function correctly, especially if you go with a cheap cable. “Keep in mind that as great as digital is, there can still be problems—a skinny little wire can have signal issues,” says David Wiswell, group manager for product development and engineering at Panasonic Projector Systems Company. “Using digital cabling is great, especially as HDMI makes it easy for those with limited experience in wiring their TVs,” he says. “Just be aware that digital doesn’t ‘gracefully fail,’ it’s more like ‘falling off a cliff’ where it locks up because the signal has dropped under the marginal edge.”

With most displays now including HDMI, it’s hard to find a compelling reason not to use it. But this gives way to an input issue because many TVs only have one or two HDMI inputs. Short of pulling/inserting plugs every time you want to switch between your HD cable box or HD player or some other device, the solution is an HDMI switcher that accepts multiple HDMI inputs and then sends the signal out to the display. But switching requires punching the correct button on the switcher or the remote every time you want to change sources, so something along the lines of Iogear’s HDMI 2 x 1 Automatic Switch might be better, as it senses and automatically switches to whichever of its two inputs are active.