RGB vs. HDMI For Gaming

Human beings can convince themselves of anything if they really want to, irrespective of cold, hard data. Were we ever to encounter aliens who made decisions based entirely on empirical data, it’s the ability we have that would give them the most trouble.

The Power Of Belief

We can bring ourselves to believe that the movements of unrelated stars as they were millions of years ago (and whose light we’re just seeing today) can somehow have an influence on our personality, and whether this week is a good week for (specifically) us to make big career decisions.

We can bring ourselves to believe that a drop of some potentially healing ingredient, diluted way past the point where it ceases to exist as a coherent ingredient, can still do us some specific good.

We can even bring ourselves to believe that there’s a qualitative reason why people in the 21st century should be listening to vinyl.

And alongside these blatantly disprovable ideas, we can convince ourselves that RGB is better than HDMI.

Not one of them stands up to objective analysis, so the short answer is objectively no, RGS is not better than HDMI. But the reasons people believe it is (or could be) are interesting, complex, generally subjective and do allow a couple of loopholes in which the argument can still be played out.

What is what?

Firstly, what the heck are we talking about when we say RGB and HDMI? And why should we care?

RGB doesn’t help itself by meaning a couple of different things. First of all, it has its history in color mixing – RGB stands for Red Green Blue(!) – and has become a piece of terminology for color use and clarity on computer monitors around the world, despite being most universally popular in Europe. HDMI is an interface standard for connecting devices together, in particular computers and monitors.

That means, as has been noted all over the internet, that comparing RG and HDMI is a little like comparing oranges and Chevrolets. People are frequently at cross purposes between the results they see on the screen, and the elements that go into making what they see on the screen, and compare the color clarity with the connecting device.

That said, there are RGB cables and HDMI cables, and people are within their rights to compare the two.

Where’s the sound?

RGB cables are analog cables for transferring video from place to place (such as from your GPU to your monitor screen), but they only transfer the video portion of an experience, and require an additional cable connection to translate the audio to your monitor.

Weirdly, this may not matter as much as you might imagine, depending on your speaker system, and whether or not you’re using your monitor’s audio, or some separate add-ons to translate the audio from the computer in a higher definition than your monitor would ordinarily allow.

HDMI cables on the other hand are digital cables. The quality of video signal transmissible through HDMI cables is continually improving, with some manufacturers now producing HDMI 2.1 cables, rather than the standard HDMI 1.0 version.

And, unlike the RGB video-only cable, HDMI cables transmit both video and audio signals simultaneously, meaning they are significantly less trouble to use for the plug-and-play gamer – which is to say, most people.

Speed freaks

Even the 1.0 version HDMI transmits video at anything up to 1080p – which is a whole level higher than most RGB cables are used to handling. That has led to the assumption that RGB cables cannot handle higher speed connections, which is slightly erroneous. It’s just that they generally don’t in most people’s set-ups, so it rarely becomes a question.

As such, there are still die-hard RGB fans out there who insist that if you do use it, it can give you ‘better’ results than HDMI. There’s an element of “vinyl fan insistence” in this – it provides a different experience to the speed and clarity of HDMI, and it involves more work, more cabling, and to some extent an arcane understanding of system transference and degradation over distance.

The result is that if you do the work, know and possess the cabling, and understand all the ins and outs of transference and degradation, you might, sometimes, just possibly get a result that people would squint at meaningfully and agree was a very little better than HDMI.

But you have to do all that, and know all that, and really believe it to be so to tell much of a difference. Now of course, the gaming community is full of people who are delighted to know all this, and do all this, and are able to convince themselves of the superiority of the RGB result.

But in a way, that’s arguing for the largely theoretical superiority of a complex connection over the generalized superiority of a simple one that most people will use because on the whole it’s easier and clearer and combines video and audio signals in a single cable.

The vinyl argument

As we say, there’s a degree of the vinyl argument in there – that if you get it right, a vinyl recording can give you a “better” sound reproduction, despite a relatively old-fashioned set-up. That likewise ignores the work you have to put in, and the willingness you have to have to accept strictly illogical reasoning, to get the result spoken of, compared with the ease, popularity and absolutely good-enough quality of things like digital downloads.

It may technically be better in rare and specific circumstances, and you probably have to want it to be better to be able to measure the improvement, but the vast majority of people either won’t perceive any difference at all, or – which is much more likely – will side with the more modern technique and technology.

So, is an analog signal-carrying cable with an often limited transmission rate and no capacity to carry audio better than a high-speed, regularly evolving digital signal-carrying cable with an often higher transmission rate with audio included? Is it objectively better to need additional audio cables on the off-chance that, in the right circumstances, with the right game, you might get slightly better color clarity than the easy one-connection option?

Objectively, no. Subjectively, there are people who will forever tell you that it is.

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