USB

USB stands for Universal Serial Bus. It’s a simple, easy way to connect things to your computer: Your printer, your digital camera, a thumb drive, a hot plate to keep your cup of coffee piping hot, a fan, a reading light, or one of thousands of useful or useless devices that are available for use with your computer. One of the great advantages of USB is that it not only communicates information, but is also capable of transmitting power. It carries information and powers the device. Larger devices that have significant power requirements tend to have separate power cords, but small devices often rely on USB for their power.

You can’t buy a computer these days that doesn’t include at least a few USB ports. If you need more connections than what the computer came with, you can buy a hub, which plugs into one USB port and provides 4 or more ports. This way, you can expand a single USB port to up to 127 devices: More than enough for a typical user.

Firewire

Firewire was standardized on Mac computers long before it became popular on PCs. When it was competing with USB 1.1, it had a significant speed advantage. It quickly became the standard for connecting MiniDV Camcorders to computers because it could transmit at 400 MBps (MB per second), which was 20 times the rate for USB 1.1 and necessary for transferring video files. Like USB, Firewire can both supply power and transmit data.

USB 2.0

USB 2.0 uses the same size of connector as USB 1.1, but it increases the speed of transmission from 20 to 480 MBps, 24 times faster. This made USB competitive with Firewire, but with the added convenience of being backward compatible with all earlier USB devices.

Firewire 800

Firewire came out in a new, faster version called Firewire 800, twice as fast as the original Firewire. For a while it was the fastest available, but it didn’t maintain its lead for long.

eSATA

SATA is a way to connect your computer to its internal components. When you install a Hard Drive or a DVD drive into your computer, SATA is the name of the cable you’ll likely use to plug it in.

A new type of SATA for external devices is called eSATA, the ‘e’ standing for ‘external’. eSATA runs at 3.0 GBps. That means it is three and a half times as fast as Firewire 800. Until USB 3.0 is widely available, eSATA is the fastest way to attach an external hard drive, and it operates at the same speed as your internal devices.

Before, with other types of connections, there was an advantage to connecting a device internally, because there was a bottleneck if you used an external device. With eSATA, you can attach devices which will theoretically perform at the same speed as a device you install inside the computer. eSATA is really only an advantage for devices which need to pass a lot of information very quickly, like an external Hard Drive.

USB 3.0

USB 3.0 is a recently finalized standard which will soon be included on new devices and computers. It moves the top speed of transmission for USB from 480 MBps to 5.0 GBps, more than 10 times faster. That makes it more than 50% faster than eSATA. And, because it uses the same size of connector as older USB plugs, it will be backward compatible with all earlier 2.0 and 1.1 USB devices.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is a way to connect devices to your computer and devices to devices…wirelessly. It’s like USB, without the wires. It’s what connects your wireless headset to your phone, and that’s how most people know the technology. Originally, it was meant to replace USB, allowing you to connect your printer or camera to your computer without the hassle of plugging in wires. But, the only place it’s really taken off and become standard is with mobile phone headsets.

Laptop or Desktop

It’s very easy to add the newest connector type to a desktop computer. You can buy a card and pop it in your computer fairly easily. It’s a little trickier with a laptop. It isn’t as easy to add in what you want later on, so it’s important to pay attention to what a laptop comes with.

What are the Essential Ports on a Laptop?

USB

The absolute necessity is multiple USB ports – USB 3.0 if you can find it. USB is aptly named ‘Universal’ Serial Bus, because at this point, almost everything uses it.

Firewire

Get a Firewire port if you’re into video editing or audio recording. Older video cameras almost exclusively use Firewire, and most of the better professional audio interfaces do as well. It is worthwhile to be compatible with older cameras if you’re doing a lot of video editing. But, a Firewire port can be added through a PC card so even if you find a great deal on a laptop but it doesn’t have firewire, you can add it in later.

PC Card

PC Card is short for PCMCIA card, which is jokingly referred to as “People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronymns”. It was a way to plug in modems and other devices back in the day which has now largely become irrelevant, but laptop makers still build them in. They’re only good for about two things: Adding in ports like Firewire that didn’t come with your machine and adding in wireless adapters.

They do a good job of those two things, though, because the cards can plug entirely inside your computer, making them very easy to just leave inside and not bother with. When you have a USB device, you need to unplug it and put it away before you pop your computer into your laptop bag or risk damaging the plug as it gets jostled around inside the bag. PC Cards just stay put, no muss, no fuss. They are often useful to have, but they’re a standard option on virtually every laptop, so advising you to make sure you have one is like advising you to make sure your laptop comes with a keyboard.

eSATA

Get eSATA if you want to use an external Hard Drive or other high-speed device, although if your computer comes with USB 3.0, then eSATA becomes redundant, and you should only get one if you want your computer to be able to interface with absolutely anything that it might have to. There’s nothing worse than being on a deadline or in a presentation and a file you absolutely need is on a device you can’t access. But, very few devices are eSATA-only. Most that have eSATA also offer USB as an option.

HDMI

An HDMI port is becoming somewhat standard on laptops these days. This type of port is solely for connecting your laptop to a Big Screen TV, but it’s a handy thing to have. Especially if your laptop comes with a Blu-ray drive, because then it can double as a component in your home entertainment system.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is nice to have in case you want to connect a keyboard or a mouse to your computer wirelessly, but this technology hasn’t replaced USB as it was originally hoped it would. I wouldn’t go out of my way to include Bluetooth, especially when you can just buy an adapter to plug into a USB port for $10-20.

Standard Definition

A Movie DVD contains compressed video at what we refer to as Standard Definition, 480 lines of resolution. DVDs introduced progressive video, which was an improvement over older interlaced signals. Instead of alternating odd and even lines, progressive video presents every line every time. This results in a smoother picture than older television systems were capable of producing.

High Definition

Television has now moved beyond the limits of standard definition. 720p and 1080p dramatically increase the number of pixels displayed on a screen. Screens can display better images, but the medium that distributes the stuff you want to watch lags behind. DVDs are stuck at Standard Definition.

This isn’t the first time that there has been a lag between the ability of a TV to display a better picture and the lack of a medium to store video. VHS (Video Home System), the most popular form of VCR (Video Cassette Recorder)  could only display 240 lines of resolution. I was recently attending a seminar delivered over the course of several weeks, and each week we watched a DVD. There was a problem with the group who had lent the DVDs, and they needed them back. The organizer managed to borrow an alternate copy, but it was a set of VHS tapes. I was amazed at what a difference it made to go back to the old format. Faces were fuzzy and indistinct. I never had a problem with VHS 15 years ago, but once you get accustomed to something better you realize the difference and going back is painful.

The Contenders Vie for the Crown

DVD has not yet been succeeded by another format. HD-DVD and Blu-ray were two new formats that were meant to replace the DVD. One is now defunct, and the other is struggling to gain traction. There is speculation it will never become popular enough to truly replace DVDs. One reason why Blu-ray struggles is that DVDs are really, really inexpensive. This is partly because those who sell DVDs see the end of the line and are rushing to make all the money they can before the gravy train ends. This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because they’re the same people who want to Blu-ray to take off. Making DVDs dirt cheap changes people’s expectations of what a movie should cost, so the movie industry is shooting itself in the foot.

Fortunately, the people behind Blu-ray have announced plans to lower costs for the new format in the near future to kick-start the transition. Let’s hope that happens.

The Conversion Experience

Upconverting DVD players are the other reason Blu-ray hasn’t taken off. Older DVD players didn’t always look all that great on the new high-resolution screens. This is because the screens are so precise. To illustrate, let’s assume that you have a bar with 4 lights on it. The lights flash according to a pattern. If you want to display that same pattern on a bar that has 8 lights, it’s easy because you just double the pattern, and wherever light number 1 was flashing, both 1 and 2 now flash. Wherever light number 2 was flashing, both 3 and 4 flash, and so on. The pattern translates easily, because it’s just double. But, what if there are only 6 lights? Now, you can’t just double the pattern, you need to make choices about which lights will flash when to best represent the original pattern, but you’ll never get a pattern that identically represents the original pattern because the math doesn’t divide evenly.

One of the great ironies of Digital television is that it is so precise, it shows up flaws. Older, analog TVs could fudge an image and come out looking OK. It is important that that you feed a Digital TV a properly formatted signal so that it displays correctly. The better the TV the better a good signal will look and the worse a bad signal will look. It cuts both ways.

An upconverter improves the way your existing DVD collection looks on your big screen TV. An upconverter doesn’t improve the resolution, it still works from 480 lines of resolution because that’s all that’s available on a DVD, but it takes the original image and stretches it smoothly over the larger space, fudging the numbers to keep things looking smooth, despite the fact that the numbers don’t translate evenly.

To understand the difference, imagine a balloon with words written on it. Before the balloon is blown up, the words are small and clear and you can read them. An old DVD player playing on a big screen TV is kind of like stretching the balloon with your hands to try and make it bigger. The image will be uneven. An upscaler or upconverter stretches the image smoothly, like blowing up the balloon. The even pressure causes each part of the image to be smoothly stretched as the balloon increases in size. It’s still the same image, starting small and stretched big. Nothing new has been added. High definition is like printing in a large font on a piece of paper. There’s no need to stretch the paper image, it’s already as large as the words on the balloon when the balloon is blown up, and it’s going to be a clearer and sharper than the stretched balloon. Even if the balloon has been stetched smoothly by blowing it up, there’s only so much ink to spread out, and it won’t be as crisp and clear as the printed page, but will still be better than stretching by hand.

In addition to smoothly stretching the image, an upconverter can output video via an HDMI cable, which is a digital cable. Older DVD Players are only able to output analog video. This means that the digital signal from the DVD gets converted to analog for the cable, then when it reaches a digital television, it gets converted back into digital. The conversion process to and from analog reduces the quality of the video signal. By using a digital cable, an upconverting DVD player maintains the digital quality of the picture from start to finish, resulting in a better picture, as long as your TV can accept HDMI.

So, an upconverting DVD player provides a smoother, clearer image on a big screen TV by stretching the image smoothly and delivering it to the TV in a digital format.

Digital

HDMI cables are the best option available for connecting your TV to Disc players, cable boxes, satellite receivers or gaming systems. HDMI stands for High Definition Multimedia Interface. An HDMI cable will carry a 1080p signal and 5.1 surround sound audio together on a single cable, without losing any audio or video quality because the cable is digital.

Digital audio cables transfer audio (not video)  in a digital format. If you have a home theatre system (external speakers), it is best to run a digital audio cable from the television to the stereo system.

Component

Component cables are the second-best option if HDMI is unavailable. These cables are a bundle of five wires that have RCA plugs on the end. RCA plugs are the type that you might use to connect parts of a stereo system together that plug into the little red and white donut-shaped holes on the back of your CD player. The five wires in a component cable are divided into three for video (Red, Green and Blue) and two for audio (usually Red and White). The video wires transfer red, green and blue video signals separately and the audio wires transfer left and right audio. Because the video colours are kept separate, or in components, they produce better images than composite cables, which mix (compose) all three colours into a single signal passed over a single wire.

Composite

Composite is a word used to describe a variety of cables. Coaxial cable is the old style of television cable with the screw-in end that you attached to the back of your TV on the threaded silver post that stuck out the back. RCA cables that had three wires (Red, White and Yellow) passed audio on the red and white wires, while all the video passed through the yellow wire. S-Video had a round plug with four wires positioned inside. All of these cables are called composite, because they combine the three colours into a single wire. They should be avoided if at all possible, because they do not produce as good a picture as the newer styles of cable.