Component Cables
A Component video cable is an analogue cable that transmits a picture to the television through 3 different channels. They do not carry any audio (although its not uncommon for some custom component cables, like the Xbox 360 component cable to send this seperatly). Each channel sends a different part of the picture to the television where it is synch'd up and displayed on the screen. It is the highest quality analogue cable you can get.
You will often seen RGB component and YPbPr. Both are types of component however, but they use different methods to display the image (a not so common variant uses RGB and synch on green, which basically uses the green channel/cable portion to carry the synch signal). You will usually find the component socket on the TV has been color coded to match the indicators on the cable you are using - this avoids any confusion about what should go where!
Component connectors can either be BNC, llike old co-ax computer network cable or sky TV cables, or RCA connectors which are like headphone sockets.
The settings on many DVD players and TVs may need to be set to indicate the type of input/output being used, and if set wrong the image may not be properly displayed. Progressive scan, for example, is often not enabled by default, even when component video output is selected.
