HDMI cables are the way to hook up the latest and greatest A/V gear. The High-Definition Multimedia Interface carries all the uncompressed digital signals — audio, video, data, and control — with just one HDMI cable. Bring on your DVD player, HDTV box, receiver, and digital TV … HDMI cables get the nod, as long as you have enough ports and bring enough green to foot the bill. Hitting that checkout line can be a shocker …

Hold onto your wallets, my friends.

A good HDMI cable can easily cost more than a low-end DVD player. And while you might expect to find an el cheapo composite A/V cable in the box along with the Do Not Eat silica packets, you can forget about finding a HDMI cable … these babies are precious.

Now that’s not to say that you can’t find bargain-priced HDMI cables. But get ready to scrape your jaw off the floor if you start looking at gold-plated connectors.

Needless to say, I’ve been immersed in cables and manuals over the past couple of days. I’m only worried getting everything hooked up, for the moment. The cable management chores will have to wait.

Unfortunately, our TV only has one HDMI port. Alas, I want to hook up two devices — the DirecTV HDTV receiver and the upconverting DVD player — to the TV with HDMI cables. I’m using a component cable on the DVD player for the moment, but unfortunately, the unit doesn’t want to send an upconverted signal without a HDMI cable.

Who said this stuff wasn’t going to be complicated?

6/27 Update: installed my HDMI cabling