Let’s talk about connections. Most of us like to connect with new people. We enjoy the exchange of ideas, sharing joys and problems, and general companionship. These are the good connections.

It’s the electronic connections that give us problems. Today, televisions have way too many connection possibilities—those mysterious holes you see on the back of the TV when it’s away from the wall for cleaning or when you are trying to hook up a DVD player, VCR, digital cable box or some other item.

The first thing to do is learn to read hieroglyphics. You’ve seen the pictures with all of the lines snaking from one device to the next, entering unknown holes with strange initials. Usually there will be multiple choices of which hole you can use. Lines cross and loop around making the connection diagram look like a New York subway map.

Well, lets start with a basic premise. The easier the connection the easier the operation. That is, the least complicated connection to your TV will give you the easiest operation of the set. Here’s the big however: The easy connections usually give you the worst picture and sound. Keeping it simple definitely means giving up something.

Your first and most important connection is to a cable or satellite signal that goes into the hole marked antenna. This is the only simple connection. It sends both sound and picture together to your TV.

This arrangement is fine for broadcast reception. For equipment like a DVD player the sound and picture are normally connected separately to maintain quality. Thus video and audio connections were born.

After your cable or satellite is connected, we move to equipment connections. Fortunately VCRs, DVD players and even digital satellite/cable boxes have the same type of connection possibilities.

This is where most people start to get lost, so manufacturers came up with a color code system. The video connection, usually just called video on your TV or equipment will be the yellow colored hole. It provides good picture quality. New equipment often includes a cable with a yellow tip to help with this connection.

A step up from this quality level is S-video which is better picture quality. It uses a round sort of computer plug and is on all S-video VCRs and other newer equipment.

The next (yes there are more) picture connection is component video. It provides the best picture quality. Better than just a yellow cable, this type of connection separates some of the colors and winds up with three plugs (usually red, blue and green) for just the video picture (still no sound). This has been the ultimate in picture quality until the recently introduced Digital Video Interface (DVI).

This was the ultimate in picture quality (for about a half hour) but don’t look for it on your TV unless you bought it about 15 minutes ago. It requires only one cable and the plug looks like a computer plug (you know, lots of little pins in a rectangle).

Finally we get to current ultimate level in picture quality (sort of like a video game isn’t it?). HDMI or high definition multi media interface was introduced this year. It isn’t available on TV sets built in 2003 and most equipment will not have this connection for another year. And don’t even think about asking a sales person about it.

The funny thing is, this final ultimate best way ever connection puts picture and sound back together again so you have only one cable to deal with.

The problem is that all of your equipment has to be manufactured in 2004 or later. You can see the problem. If you are buying a new TV and other equipment, this is the connection to look for. It will, for the most part, be only on high-end expensive equipment for a while.

Since manufacturers went to multiple ways to do the picture, they couldn’t help themselves and did the same on sound. To make it more confusing, they use words like "optical" cable to refer to sound connections.

There are two cables for basic stereo sound (red and white holes) in the audio hook-up section of your TV and equipment. Also available are coaxial and the aforementioned optical. These are digital connections and offer the best sound. Optical is probably the best, but requires a special and costly optical fiber cable. My recommendation is to use coaxial if possible. This is an easy to get cable not too costly. But, if sound is not a real concern, go with the red and white plugs for stereo. It will still be good sound.

Boy, this stuff is complicated and boring. So why all these possibilities? The only reason is to accommodate all of that old equipment built before 2004. As you can see, manufacturers are finally getting the idea that people don’t want to spend a lifetime hooking up their stuff. So have patience, in a few years connections will be much less of a problem.

In the meantime, deciding what to watch on 500 plus channels is the next challenge.

Gay buying power, gay marriage and gay politics are all in the news lately, but what about Gay TV? Well, if you haven’t heard yet, Here TV (www.heretv.com) and LOGO TV (www.logo-tv.com) are two gay networks. Available on some satellite and cable systems, they are not yet here in the Rehoboth area on cable. You can pester your cable provider if you want and see if they listen. Info is available at the web sites.

Want to ask a question of suggest a topic? Email me at CYE@att.net and I will try to cover your issue in a future column.