Hello

I just bought a new Panasonic Plasma TV (my first HDTV). I also picked up a new HD Box for my Cablevision Cable. 3 cables came with the HD Box(red,green, and blue.) I hooked those up to the TV and the HD channels are coming in HD like they should.

When I bought the TV the guy advised me to pick up an HDMI cable and a surge protector. I hooked up the surge protector but I wanted to know the reason why the surge protector was so expensive. Should I use the cable in and outs that are in the surge protector or not? Whats the difference between a surge protector and a regular old extention cable. The guy said something about heating up or something but I think it was all bs.

On the back of my cable box there is no HDMI out. There is a DVI out and I know I can get a DVI to HDMI converter, but if I did, what would be the difference in the quality of the DVI to HDMI than to the 3 cables (red, green, and blue). Do I have to use both att the same time or 1 instead of the other.

I also wanted to know why the channels that are not in HD are coming half-screen (kind of like 4:3 instead of 16:9), and the channels are coming in worse quality than a big screen TV that I bought about 10 years ago thats not HD. When I zoom into the channels they are getting cut off and the quality is even worse.

I have a Panasonic TH-42PD50U Plasma TV. I would appreciate if someone helped, thnx.

Non-HD signals (assuming you are in the US) are 4:3.

3 cables (red, green and blue) aka Component Video cable: Using this cable, it's digital to analog conversion in the cable box & again analog to digital conversion in HDTV.

DVI OR HDMI connection: It's digital transfer from your cable box to HDTV and no anolog conversion, so it should be better compare to Component Video.

But, Video quality depends on other factors like Input connection to your cable box, video compression by the cable company etc.




As DragunR2 mentioned, Non-HD signals are 4.3, so you will get side bars (black bars on left and right of the picture). You will have to Zoom-in to get the full 16:9 screen for Non-HD signal, but then it's compromise with the video quality & aspect ratio (person looking fat) OR getting cropped picture.