Just when I thought composite AV cables aka banana pins were here to stay, I started spotting cool kids in the neighborhood using HDMI cables to connect their peripheral devices to their TVs.
Now banana pins ran their race. We could hook up literary anything to the TV; from DVD players, game consoles to decoders and anything in-between. But banana pins are simply too clumsy. You have to put the 3 pins in the right way. If you misplaced the Video pin into the audio jack, then you wouldn’t see anything on your screen.
Enter HDMI cables. It’s just one cable, not 3 protruding pins like composite AV. HDMI cables which look like your USB cable carry audio and video signals in one.
The latest decoders support HDMI ports. DSTV’s explora decoder for instance comes with an HDMI port and so do Startimes latest decoders. GoTV decoders unfortunately don’t yet have HDMI ports. In some cases you’ll find a coder with both HDMI and composite AV ports.
Now your TV must also have an HDMI port if you’re going to connect your decoder to the TV via HDMI. If you still have the old CRT TVs (the ones with Kabina), chances are that you they don’t have HDMI slot. But the new LED/LCD digital flat screen TV sets come with one or more HDMI slots. But you can get composite AV to HDMI connectors from your electronics shop for the conversion.
Connecting your decoder to your flat screen TV via HDMI is pretty straight forward. Just inspect the terminals and connect the cable to the port the right way. If you slip it the other way, chances are that the cable won’t fit into the port.
So there you go; how to connect your decoder to your TV via HDMI. If you have any questions, or if you have any experiences of your own, please let us know in the comments.