Originally Posted by rdhw

Since they are both 3-signal systems, in principle they should give the same quality of colour signal. RGB has the three primary colours Red, Green, Blue as separate signals; Component has Y, Pb, Pr as separate signals, where Y is the monochrome luminance level, Pb is the difference between Y and Blue, Pr is the difference between Y and Red, and the Green signal is reconstituted from what is left of Y after Pb and Pr have been subtracted.

TV colour signals are professionally recorded, and distributed in Component form. For digital TV and DVDs, the video signal is digitally encoded in Component form. The signal is only re-mixed to RGB for the final hop to the consumer device, and then mostly only in Europe, where the SCART socket was defined to use RGB. In North America, RGB is unheard of, and all consumer connections are in Component (YPbPr) form.

As I said, since they are both 3-signal systems, in ideal conditions they should both give the same quality of colour TV signal. The big difference between them is that the Standards documents for analogue HDTV (576p, 720i/p, 1080i/p) were written only in the context of Component transmission, so only Component connections will carry HDTV. Any RGB connection is likely to work only in standard definition 576i format, because the analogue HDTV format was not defined over RGB connections.

Standard Component connections (YPbPr) are analogue signals, as are RGB, and so do not enforce Digital Rights Management.

As we move towards digital HDTV, it is likely that the HDMI connector (carrying digital video and digital audio) will become more dominant. The HDMI connections are capable of enforcing DRM (i.e. allowing a consurmer to view but not to copy).

HDTV source devices with HDMI output connectors might then "enforce" DRM on analogue outputs simply by downsampling to 576i for analogue outputs, putting the HDTV signal only on HDMI. This will leave the analogue Component output no better than an RGB output is now.

It is reported that the first generation of Sky HD boxes will supply HDTV on both analogue Component output and digital HDMI outputs. This will not last long, and one can imagine that Sky will make a transition to HDMI-only to protect the rights of their HDTV programme sources.

So if you are looking now for an "HDTV-ready" TV, the real test is to look for HDMI-inputs, as the Component inputs are likely to have a limited lifetime of usability for HDTV purposes.

Originally Posted by SMHarman

So Component is a SVideo, SVHS signal (the 4(or is it 6) pin cable) I use to connect my camcorder to the TV?
RGB is as you say a different approach of achieving the same thing.