Component cable picture problem

i'm new here and this may be an easy/silly question to solve. but it's driving me absolutely insane!

i recently got a prima hdtv. i had been using the red,white,yellow cables to hook up my pioneer dvd player and had no problems. however, i found out using component cables (red,green,blue) gives you a better picture quality. indeed they do. but here's the problem......

when watching a dvd with the component cables (ypbpr setting), whenever a scene in the movie makes the screen go completely white (ie an explosion) my picture cuts out for about 7 seconds and it says no signal. why is this happening??? i've checked all my connections and settings and everything seems right. do i need a new dvd player (mine is about 5 years old) or simply some different cables?

any help would be MUCH appreciated as it's driving me insane!

by integrity do you mean quality? they're "nexxtech evolution series cables". 90cm (3'). the guy said they were good quality. but can you ever really trust salesmen? lol. are there better quality cables i should be looking for? someone else suggested it could be my dvd player since it's almost 10 years old.