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Component Video Cable vs. S-Video - Another Newbie (1 Viewer)

Dave Weisbord

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Sep 12, 2001
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12
Another newbie question. I recently purchased a Toshiba 2700 DVD player and have it attached to an older Mitsubishi TV. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this "old" TV has an S-video jack, so I went out right away and bought an S-video cable thinking that was supposed to be superior. So now I am hearing that "component" video is better. Should I go back to using the Colorstream component cable that came with the Toshiba, buy a new component cable, stick with the S-video cable, or does it really matter.
Thanks,
Dave
 

Ted Lee

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Joined
May 8, 2001
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are you sure your "old" tv has component inputs? if you're surprised it even has s-video, then i'm not sure it would have component.
make sure you know which cables are which:
  1. composite: one cable for the video (yello) and two for the audio (red & white)
  2. s-video: funky looking din-style plug
  3. component: three cables for the video (can't remember the color scheme)[/list=a]
    s-video is better than composite, component is better than both. run the highest one you can.
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Bob McElfresh

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May 22, 1999
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David: Home Theater magazine did a comparison of all three types of connection to a "reference" 50" RPTV. They came up with these values for how much better each one is:
Composite (single video cable): Baseline
SVideo: 20% better than Composite
Component: (3 video cables) 25% better than Composite
They noted that a smaller display would not show as great an improvement, and a larger display would show more.
Hope this helps.
 

NickSo

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Nick So
Think about it this way...
The composite cable, you can see there is like one cable coming from the plug, which basically shows that ALL the video information is passed by one single wire...
The Svideo cable you can usually see has 2 seperate cables coming from the plug. It carries the video in TWO seperate wires, the video information is split by Color and Brightness (or black and white).
The Component cables are three seperate cables with three seperate jacks. It carries the video through THREE cables, one for red, one for blue, and one for green.
The more seperation there is ususally, the better the image as the colors arent 'mixed up' with one another... Its kinda like thinking the video information as clay, or playdough. You have red, green and blue playdough. Squishing it through one composite 'tube' will mix them all up, but you can still tell the difference... But if you passed the three colors of playdough through three seperate component 'tubes', the dough at the end is clearly seperated. This is why RF connections are so poor.. They put both video AND audio into one cable...
Component is the best among the three types of video connections. Just rephrasing what was said, the larger the TV you have, the more apparent the visual improvement is.
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Allan Jayne

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Nov 1, 1998
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Save the Colorstream cable for a (future) TV with component video inputs.
Keep the S-video connection to the TV. This is so much better than composite (green plugs of colorstream cable to yellow jacks) because:
(1) S-video skips the comb filter int he TV which can never separate "the red, green, and blue Play Doh" as well as not mixing it in the first place, and
(2) The DVD player makes its composite output from its S-video, and that construction process (commingling the Play-Doh) is probably well inferior in terms of chroma resolution to even the composite video spec'ed out in 1954.
More video hints: http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm
[Edited last by Allan Jayne on October 12, 2001 at 08:01 AM]
 

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