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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 multi-colored connectors on the back what are those
even used for I mean those are basically everything use HDMI these days well
while HDMI has superseded a lot of older
standards those other Jacks 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 it 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 RC audio is still 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 the 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 is still useful if you want to dust off the old N64 and
enjoy some Ocarina of Time on your flat screen which isn't to say it's the best
way to enjoy your retro games if your TV happens to have one of these dude as
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
are 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 RCA 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 reds respectively which makes a lot of
sense right separating the signals out improves image quality even further and
even enables high definition output component video was common on game
consoles like the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 for 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 running 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 called a toslink
connector for digital audio toslink is actually an optical standard so it uses
light to transfer data over a specialized cable hence the reason
tosslet 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 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
dsub 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 high def video and audio along with
networking on the same cable and although digital coaxial and toslink can
only carry traditional surround sound like Dolby Digital and DTS only HDMI
supports lossless floor mats 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's PC Focus competitor
DisplayPort now on the subject of surround sound these aren't common on
TVs themselves but if you have an AV receiver it's likely you'll find a Bank
of old-fashioned two conductor speaker wire outputs for your speakers 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 0.1 of your however
many 0.1 audio setup Standalone subwoofers usually still use RCA yeah
when I said we were done with RCA I um 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 digital assistants and
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