Advice needed on audio and video connections

[JasonC1782]

(Firstly, I'm not really sure whether this belongs in this forum as opposed to the Peripherals forum, so apologies if I've chosen the wrong one)

I received my brand new PC Specialist system today and am very pleased with it despite only having had time to set up the very basics so far.

The most impressive elements of the unit are the graphics and sound cards, but of course it's pointless having them if you don't make the most effective use of them - so on that basis, would anyone would be able to advise me on which of the many outputs on both cards I should connect to my various other devices in order to achieve the best video and audio quality for each device?

I'll describe both situations in further detail:

Video

The system has an Geforce 650Ti card which outputs HDMI, DVI-I, DVI-D and DisplayPort, which I must confess I'd never heard of before choosing the card.

It's got to connect with a monitor with D-Sub, DVI-D and HDMI inputs and a TV with D-Sub and HDMI inputs.

Now it stands to reason that I should use the HDMI connection for the TV, but should I go with a straight DVI-D connection to the monitor or some other connection?

The things I'm really wondering are - is DVI a lesser quality video input/output than either HDMI or DisplayPort and does the quality of the video decrease if you use a format conversion cable or adapter?


Audio

Similar situation to the video really; I've got the Xonar DG card with the three channel and SPDIF output and headphone and mic front panel jacks, and it needs to output to the TV - which isn't a home cinema set-up - headphones and 2.1 PC speakers.

Now on my old PC, I plugged a jack splitter into the Front output jack and ran leads to the PC and TV - but would it be worth my while using the SPDIF connection to the TV or is that really only effective in a home cinema set-up?

I've heard that the quality you get from plugging headphones into the front jack panel is not as good as you get when plugging them into the Front jack on the card - so should I use the jack splitter to serve the speakers and headphones from the front jack?


You can probably guess from the above that I don't know a great deal about this stuff to say the least so any help will be appreciated.

 

[mantadog]

DVI is exactly the same signal as HDMI, but without the audio signal that passes along with the video signal in a HDMI signal. DVI is generally the one you use for a desktop monitor when you have stand alone speakers. Generally because the signal over everything these days is a digital signal, you cant really degrade it, so unless your using broken adapters/cables and getting major artefacts on the screen the signal quality will be as good as it can be. So use whatever converters you need to, but by the sounds of it you don't need to be using converters.

On the audio front I think your honestly safe enough using the standard 3.5mm jacks to connect up to a regular speaker setup, I don't really have an ear for sound but I cant see it being a huge degradation. As far as the front ports, I suspect someone thought they would still be connected to the onboard sound... That's just wrong, the soundcard has a connector for the front panel audio built in so it gets the same signal as the rear ports.