Chances are very good that you’ll be connecting more than just HDTV and analog TV broadcasts to your new HDTV. You’ll want to watch DVDs and videotapes, play video games,and so on.

There are two bits of good news here:

• All HDTVs will be compatible with the NTSC signals that these devices put out.
• Most HDTVs will include plenty of inputs on the back (or side,or front) of the HDTV set to accommodate these devices.

The question is how you get all these inputs hooked up and connected to your HDTV. Beyond understanding the types of inputs, there’s a purely quantitative angle to this problem. In effect, you need to count the devices you’ve got (or anticipate getting) and group them together by the type of inputs they use.Then compare these numbers to the number of inputs on your HDTV. Here’s a basic list:

Digital inputs:
You’re likely to have only one of these (DVI or HDMI) on your HDTV; your HDTV tuner/cable box/satellite receiver or DVD player may use these inputs.

Component video inputs:
You probably have a couple of these on your HDTV. Your HDTV tuner, DVD player, and game console (Xbox or PlayStation) can use these.

S-video inputs:
You’ll probably have a bunch of these (but you’ll need them) on your HDTV; your DVD player, VCR, game console, digital cable box, satellite receiver, camcorder, and
even PC are just a few of the devices that can use this connection.

Composite video inputs:
You’ll also have a bunch of these; everything we mention here can use this connection method as well.

There’s also a qualitative angle at play here. the connections listed here are shown in order of rank. If you run out of inputs of a certain type(component video) and have to use the next one down the list, you lose a bit of video quality. Therefore it can be important, if you’ve got a lot of gear, to choose an HDTV with more digital, component video, or S-video connections, if at all possible.

You can get by with fewer inputs on the HDTV if you use a home theater receiver that provides high-definition video-switching functionality. Basically, you can route everything into the back of your receiver, and then use just a couple of cables to connect the receiver to your HDTV. This is a great way deal with running out of the proper kind of inputs on your HDTV.

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