<><><> PC to Plasma HDTV, VGA or HDMI? <><><>

subaru41

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Feb 6, 2006
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Hello,

I just bought a new Panasonic TC-P50G10 1080p Plasma and it has a vga, and hdmi port on the side. I wanted to hook up my laptop and sometimes my gaming pc to the plasma. Both which have dvi connections and both can display 1920 x 1080 resolutions off of the video cards.
My question is – Is it better to buy a dvi to hdmi cable and hook the pc to the hdmi port, rather than run a hdmi to vga port? Is the PC port on the TV made specifically for the PC and work better than running a pc through the hdmi port?

I am assuming it would be better to run dvi to hdmi because it is digital and not analog, and hdmi and dvi are the exact same, except hdmi has audio. But I don’t if know if there is reasons why you would be better off running the pc to the vga port.

Thanks for your input.
 

Catsrules

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Yes, you are correct, HDMI is a lot better then VGA. The digital single will look shaper then the analog single. I couldn't stand my VGA port on my 22" LCD after I was using DVI. But I am only 1-2 feet away from the screen. So it might not be as noticeable if you were farther away.

But if you pick DVI to HDMI you might need to change you setting on you TV, to tell it that you are running a computer in the HDMI port, other wise it the edges will go off the screen. I am not really sure why it does this but that is what it did on both of my flat screens TV (one was a Pioneer plasma and the other was a Sony LCD.)
 

subaru41

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One thing I forgot to mention. On the side of the TV. there is a HDMI port, vga port below it with a painted grey line to a rca port(audio in) below.

My question is will the audio rca port work with the HDMI port?, or is the rca port designated for VGA input on the TV only?

I might have to call Panasonic on this one. But I was just wondering if anyone came across this.
 

fazers_on_stun

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You have the manual, or can download it from Panasonic's website, right? On my Pioneer Kuro, I have 2 HDMI ports with separate analog audio inputs, so I run a DVI-HDMI cable from my lappy to the TV for the video, and an RCA stereo cable with a mini stereo plug on one end and RCA on the other for the audio. It's OK for now but I'm planning on a HTPC build soon and will be replacing the lappy with it. And of course a separate 7.1 audio system for Blu-Ray playback.

If you have a SPDIF digital audio output on your lappy, you can also buy an expensive DVI+SPDIF - HDMI converter (over $200 IIRC) and combine both digital video & audio signals to use with a regular HDMI cable to the TV. Not worth it IMO. All you're going to get out of the TV is Dolby Surround (kinda bogus audio processing). If you really want decent audio you'll need an external 5.1 or 7.1 audio system.

The Pioneer also has an RGB analog video input, but I never used it - best to stick with all-digital signal path (VGA aka RGB is analog, so your video card converts a digital signal to analog, transmits it to the TV, which then reconverts it back to digital). Plus HDCP issues can arise on Blu-Ray without the use of a HDMI 1.3 compliant cable anyway. I dunno about Displayport since I don't have that capability yet.

As for the picture sizing, you will need to set your TV input to 'dot-for-dot' (no scaling), and maybe the overscan setting as well in order to exactly fill the screen.