Okayy. well, they look almost identical. but the names are different, so there has to be a difference... even google doesn't know:confused:

can anyone shed some light on the matter? and the better of the two, how do they compare to HDMI?

thanks for anything in advance

Well, from what I know (which isn't a lot):

Stereo - means 2 channels of audio

Component - a part. Usually you get red, blue, green, etc, cables for surround sound and then a video cable.

Component is analogue. HDMI is digital and better apparently. Don't ask me why it's better. I guess one reason is you only need to plug 1 cable in for HDMI, compared to the 6 odd components.

What situation are you using it for and what equipment do you have?

The jury is out on whether digital sound is better than analog. It is more accurate--no static or dead spots. But it is less precise--a step function simulating a curve.

Purists claim that analog is better for symphonic music and I don't see a consensus of technicians challenging that claim very enthusiastically. It has a wider range of volume. And the high harmonics, which are obviously the tones that will suffer the most imprecision from digital simulation, are more important.

Digital is fine for rock and roll. Not because rock fans don't care but because the music lacks the particular characteristics that are hard to simulate digitally.

Stereo A/V cables (I'm guessing you mean RCA) have a yellow, red and a white jack. Yellow carries all video signal, and red and white each carry a channel of the stereo audio. Component video cables carry video only (the red, green and blue colours refer to the portion of the colour spectrum they carry), and usually need to have a set of red and white RCA audio cables accompanying them (or an optical cable if you want Digital sound).

HDMI is digital audio and video in a single cable. Both component video and HDMI are capable to 1080 lines of resolution, so you won't notice a huge difference in picture quality, and may not even notice at all unless you were to put them side-by-side.

Ahh, thanks for everyones help.. i'm not actually hooking anything up.. someone asked me and i didn't know. ha.

Component video cables carry video only (the red, green and blue colours refer to the portion of the colour spectrum they carry), and usually need to have a set of red and white RCA audio cables accompanying them (or an optical cable if you want Digital sound)

Ah, I see. Interesting :)