DVI to Component Converter

DVI to component converter can be one of excellent options if you want to connect your laptop to some old-fashioned flat-panel TV or big-screen CRT TV only with component video interface. For most home entertainment users, computer is still their main preferred option. Due to laptop has the powerful multimedia decoding function, it is the perfect match to LCD TV if you want to watch high definition movies and play game on big screen online. Therefore, to achieve the successful connection between them, DVI component converter, DVI to component cable, or DVI to component video adapter is required.

DVI to component for laptop and LCD TV connection

Generally there are five different kinds of ports for LCD TVs, including VGA, S-Video, DVI, component and HDMI. And video interfaces for laptop include VGA, DVI, HDMI and S-Video. According to the different situation, you have to take different matched cables or adapters to hook them up.

If your flat-panel TV comes with only component video port, ideally you can use the component video cable to transmit the high-definition video. Unfortunately most laptops do not come with component video interface. In this case, a DVI component adapter or DVI component cable is needed to deliver the video output. This kind of adapter has DVI connector on one end and component connector on the other end.

Connection with DVI to component adapter

When you want to hook them up, you need to connect the DVI end to the DVI port of your laptop first, and then connect the other end to the three wires of the component video cable, and finally plug the cable to the component port of the LCD TV. During wiring, please note that the Y, Pb and Pr are labeled with green, blue and red respectively in order to tell them apart. Please don’t mix them up. Otherwise, the picture would lead to color cast, or even worse it can not display the picture correctly at all.

When all is done, you can give it a try now. However, you might just find out that it works in some computers but fails in a lot of others. Naturally you might put the blame on the quality of the adapter or cable used. No doubt you would change a new one and connect it to TV and debug for many times. However, the only result is that it still gets you nowhere and no signal input. So, what is the reason for that?

Benefits of DVI to component converter

To figure out this problem, some useful knowledge about video transmission is required. The DVI interface belongs to digital signal while component interface belongs to analog signal. Actually, in order to make DVI more compatible to other interfaces like VGA, there are 4 pins in DVI connector is exclusively designed to respond to the transmission of analog signals. These pins locate in one side of the connector, which looks like a cross.

However, not all video card manufacturers design the corresponding circuits with a component-out function via the DVI-I out. Currently the fact is that nearly all DVI component cables only fetch this part of analog signal instead of converting the digital signal into analog signal. So if your laptop lack of this part of built-in circuits for analog signal, this kind of simple passive cable won’t work at all. If you still want to achieve this function, what you need is a DVI to component converter.

Why DVI component converter is better?

Compared to DVI component adapter or cable, DVI to component video converter is much easier to handle. It converts the digital signal to analog one instead of just extracting the analog part. And you don’t need to care about whether or not the component-out function via the DVI-I out is available to your laptop. From this perspective, DVI to component converter is better than the other two mentioned options.