Is there any benefit of using HDMI over DVI?

I recently bought a Mac mini. It comes with an HDMI to DVI adapter. I bought a LG monitor that has an HDMI port.

My concern is: Is there any improvement when I connect the Mac Mini to the monitor using an HDMI cable?

Currently I am connecting to the monitor's DVI port via the adapter and it is working fine. I need to know whether there's any difference in using the HDMI port directly.

The only benefit to HDMI is that you don't need a second cable for audio. HDMI essentially combines a DVI connection with audio. Actually, because of this, you can acutally get converters that go from HDMI to DVI for a few bucks.

Because it already has a DVI connection in it, the quality over the HDMI connection would be identical. The only reason you'd want to use HDMI is if you'd like to run sound through the monitor--but it's not going to improve the video quality.

That being said, there's a ton of other factors that affect "video quality". Variations in display coatings, backlights, and LCD panels can make the same "red" icon look very, very different on two different displays. However, since DVI and HDMI use the same digital link, there's effectively no signal loss, so one wouldn't look any different than the other on the same display.

HDMI shouldn't cause a difference in image quality vs DVI. However, you will have to worry about bandwidth issues. These issues really only occur if you're intending on playing computer games. Over HDMI, I found that some games I tried to play would cap the refresh rate at an abysmal 24 Hz, which translated into a lot of image tearing and headaches. However, I found that it was perfectly fine for typical desktop/office tasks and movie watching.

If that's all you're doing, then you're perfectly fine using HDMI. If you plan on gaming, though, I'd recommend keeping an eye out for performance issues. They should be readily apparent.

*Note that these issues that I described can also depend on the software you're running and the drivers you have. My experience may not directly translate to yours. Ultimately, the best way to find out is to try it yourself and see what happens.