Gadgetory

thanks for watching tech quickie click the subscribe button and enable notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any future videos so you've bought yourself a fancy new TV you've plugged in the power cord and an HDMI cable for your cable box and bam you're ready to go but hold on a minute what's this festival of multicolored connectors on the back what are those even used for I mean doesn't basically everything use HDMI these days well while HDMI has superseded a lot of older standards those other Jack's can still be quite useful so today we're going to demystify the little ports you might find on the back of your TV or your AV receiver starting out with a venerable RCA connector this thing is named for the old Radio Corporation of America who originally designed it as a simple analog connection for audio devices and actually goes all the way back to the 1940s but because of its versatility and simplicity is still surprisingly common on modern electronics on the TV or receiver you're likely to find at least a pair of them one white and one red which correspond to left and right analog stereo audio channels respectively RCA audio is so quite popular as it makes simple tasks like connecting a pair of speakers to your TV once you get sick of the tinny built-in audio rather straightforward but you may also see them grouped with a yellow jack which carries composite video this supports a standard definition analog video signal and can be found on tons of VCRs DVD players and game consoles prior to the late 2000s so while composite video has fallen off in popularity due to its limited resolution and the fact it's more susceptible to interference than modern standards it's still useful if you want to dust off the old n64 and enjoy some ocarina of time on your flatscreen which isn't to say it's the best way to enjoy your retro games if your TV happens to have one of these doodads Congrats you've got support for s-video the idea behind it was that instead of a single conductor it had two using one for brightness information and another for color now this cut down on interference and improved picture quality it was once popular on DVD players and even on some game consoles but it enjoyed only a very short time in the Sun eventually getting mostly phased out in favor of what see a again yeah so if you spot a green blue and red set of RCA jacks next to each other your device supports component video the idea here is similar to s-video except that the green cable carries brightness information while the blue and red cables both carry color signals blue and red respectively which makes a lot of sense right separating the singles out improves image quality even further and even enables high definition output component video was calming on game consoles like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 4 HD output to TVs before HDMI became super widespread and that brings us at last to the final thing you'll commonly see RCA connectors used for digital audio like Dolby 5.1 usually it'll have a label that says coaxial on it but it should not be confused with the coaxial connector for cable TV service or an FM antenna because that's a totally different kind of cable the audio coaxial cable is built to a different internal spec than run-of-the-mill RCA audio cables but in practice you can probably get away with using a garden-variety RCA cable as long as it isn't too long or you could just use this thing call it a Toslink connector for digital audio Toslink is actually an optical standard so it uses light to transfer data over a specialized cable his theories and Toslink connectors often glow on the back of your TV or receiver another audio-only standard is the familiar 3.5 millimeter jack for connecting headphones and speakers which you'll find on computers audio players and older smartphones some equipment uses the larger quarter-inch stereo connector which has the same functionality moving away from audio you may also find this d-sub VGA connector which was very common on older computer monitors but since it's an analog standard it's more prone to interference so modern pcs have largely ditched it in favor of digital standards we felt like we needed to mention it anyway though because it's still included on some TVs and many projectors in case you need to connect something like an aging laptop now of course you might bypass using all of these and just go with this thing the HDMI connector which supports both hi-def video and audio along with networking on the same cable and although digital coaxial and Toslink can only traditional surround sound like Dolby visual and DTS only HDMI supports lossless formats like Dolby true HD and DTS master audio the newest revision support high resolutions and refresh rate outputs as well as HDR for more realistic images a feature also found on HDMI specie focus competitor DisplayPort now on the subject of surround sound these are at calling on TVs themselves but if you have an AV receiver it's likely you'll find a bank of old fashioned two conductors speaker wire outputs for your speaker's this tab style is normally found on the lower end and can also be used for AM radio antennas but if you go more fancy they'll probably look a little bit more like this now there are a couple of ways to connect to these guys either by stripping the wire and screwing it into place or by picking up some of what are called banana plugs and simply plugging them in as for the point one of your however many point one audio setup standalone subwoofers usually still use RCA yeah when I said we were done with RCA I I lied sorry now the funny thing here is that RCA isn't even the only shockingly old connector you'll find on the back of a receiver this rs-232 serial port can be used both for firmware updates and hardwire remote control for folks who find infrared just not reliable enough for some reason and finally and this is true of both receivers and TVs you'll usually find some USB and Ethernet ports on modern AV equipment they can both be used for firmware updates and USB is great for everything from streaming media content to charging your game console controllers while Ethernet is for well I mean I don't think I really have to explain this but I'll do it anyway for the sake of completeness you can use it to connect to the internet so you can stream content from online apps integrate with visual assistance and browse the Internet if you're just a sucker for punishment and speaking of punishment do you constantly find yourself racing against the clock as a freelancer it's challenging but with the growth of the Internet there has never been more opportunities for the self employee to meet this need check out fresh books cloud accounting software designed for the way that you work it's the simplest and easiest way to be more productive more organized and most importantly get paid more quickly create and send professional-looking invoices in less than 30 so that all my payments 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