In the growing world of high definition entertainment, it is important that tech-savvy consumers have access to the highest quality peripherals. One often-overlooked area is the Audio/Visual cables used to connect your entertainment devices to your television or monitor. Regardless of how expensive or cutting edge your game systems or media players may be, if they are still connected to your screen using old-fashioned analog cords, you will not be able to appreciate the true increases in quality that are possible with HD content.

HDMI cables are digital alternatives to traditional analog cords such as component or composite cables. Traditional analog cables must compress data streams being transferred to the television, resulting in loss of sound quality, and degraded image sharpness. HDMI cables by comparison use no compression whatsoever, leading to an extremely crisp high resolution image, and accurate lossless sound.

Since 2003 the HDMI has been taking over the electronics world, providing substantially improved entertainment for those who have Blu ray players, DVR's, high def cable boxes and game consoles like Playstation 3 and XBOX 360. This cable format supports the real high definition performance levels, 480p, 720p and 1080p, along with an updated HDMI cable now able to handls 40p, 1600p, and 2160p resolutions. For those who have video cameras and high level computers the HDMI is backward capable with the Digital Video Interface, DVI, enabling them to connect and put out HD quality content.

Going for the high end audio purist the Toslink cable offers a superior connection for the audio components. This is also called a Optical cable as it is a super high quality digital optical connector being offered on such things as high end CD players, DAT recorders, and MiniDisc recorders. There are also some computers like Apples Unibody Macbooks that have incorporated it as well.

These cables are very similar to the HDMI in that the connection is all digital which raises the quality for what you're recieving. Toslinks have the audio travel through a fiber optic cable which assures no loss of quality on the other end. There's no loss due to compression which is really crucial for those who do sound editing and playback because you get to hear the whole recorded sound. Both of these cables, HDMI and Toslink should be your standard if you aspire toward pure audio and video.