Sony's AV Component Cable Set for the PlayStation 3

For an early birthday present, my wife surprised me with a Sony PlayStation 3 80 GB bundle with Metal Gear Solid 4. Apparently, it’s really hard to find right now, but she got it off Circuit City’s website. I hooked it up using the included RCA cables and it looked pretty crappy, so I knew I needed to find a better way to connect this to my TV.

I do not have a big widescreen television, at least not yet, buy my 36” Samsung TV does support 480p and 1080i HDTV modes. My TV also comes with two Component connections and one HDMI connection. When I started checking prices on the different types of PS3 cables, I found these component ones for @ 20 bucks, whereas the HDMI ones were more like 60-80 dollars. I had to do a little research before deciding that all I really needed for now was this Sony PlayStation 3 AV Component Set.

When it comes to these cables, you really have to shop around. The console manufacturer’s brand is usually the most reliable, but you have to watch out for cheap knock-offs that underperform. You also have to watch out for the overly expensive ‘gold plated’ stuff that does not perform any better than the manufacturer’s brand, even though it costs twice as much. My local Circuit City had this particular set of component cables for just $19.99, so I decided to get them.

When connecting anything to your TV, you have a variety of ways to do it. The most basic is a coaxial cable, which has the worst picture quality. Only slightly better than that are RCA cables, which are the basic yellow, red, and white cables that come standard with most video game systems, including the PS3. Better than RCA cables are S-Video, and better than that are component cables. The component cables, like this one, do a better job of separating the color signals so that you get a more accurate, sharper picture.

I could have spent the extra money and gotten the HDMI cable, but I would not have seen much, if any, of a performance increase. The reason why is simply because my TV isn’t good enough to properly utilize the HDMI interface. It has the connection and there would probably be some slight differences, but for me it wasn’t enough to spend three times as much on cable. For that much money, I’d rather have another game to play. Before you go buying the most expensive cable off the shelf, make sure it’ll actually make a difference on your TV. If your TV supports 1080p HDTV, then yeah you probably should get the HDMI.

As soon as I connected my PS3 using these component cables, the improvement in picture quality was very noticeable. Before, the text was kind of blurry and hard to read, and the game graphics weren’t nearly as sharp with the standard RCA cables. With these components, the text is sharp and clean, and some games delivered noticeably better looking graphics. The reason is because RCA cables can only deliver a 480i signal, whereas the components will support 480p, 720p, or 1080i. I found the PS3 menu text to be almost too small in 1080i, but at least it is pretty clear. I blame that on my TV and not the cables, though. I don’t have any Blu-Ray movies to test, but I’m sure they will look a lot better than with the RCA cables.

If you have a Sony PlayStation 3 and are connecting it to your TV using the standard RCA cables, you’re really wasting a lot of the machine’s potential. Unless you just have an old TV that can’t do any better than an RCA connection, you’re better off buying a higher quality set of cables. If your TV supports component connections, you can’t go wrong with this set from Sony. It also includes stereo audio cables, so it’s all you need to get better performance out of the PS3. I think Sony ought to just include these cables with the PlayStation 3.