S-Video vs Vanilla Video

[Dan East]

[Diego Cueva]

[Dan East]

[Moose or Chuck]

[Dan East]

[Dick Gozinya]

Dan:<br><br>S-Video Simply put, The Colors don't bleed into eachother.<br><br>It's Not exactly RGB/SCART, but it kills standard vanilla connections.<br><br>999<br><br>

[SonicSilicon]

Plus you get more resolution. On composite (the RCA connector) you can get about 540 vertical lines [i.e. horizontal resolution] (forgive me if I'm getting this wrong, my NTSC knowledge is a bit hazy.) On Y/C (S-Video) you get around 720. Sometimes you'll also get an increase in horizontal lines [,vertical resolution,] but usually that's more dependant on the source of the video.<br><br>As stated before, the main purpose is to prevent color bleed / smearing. That's when you get "flanges" or "fingers" of color where it doesn't belong, most often red. S-Video also decreases the ammount of dot-crawl (a "marching-ants"-like effect) around edges of sharp contrast in color or brightness. Lastly it increases color accuracy (as color is defines as how far a hue is away from green either clockwise or conter-clockwise on a color wheel.)<br><br>I have to say tat I persoanlly couldn't stand watching plain old composite video if Y/C (Luminance/Chrominance) is available. As Moose said, it isn't VGA, or even composite video. It is, however, substantionally cheaper than most other higher quality video cabling. Just yesterday I was poking around Electronic Boutique's brink-n-mortar store at the mall and saw a S-Video and RCA Stereo breakout cable for the Playstations (yes, it works on all of them) for just $10 (it was made by Interact.) (Great, now I'm really tempted to buy a PSone...)

[SonicSilicon]

D'oh! On the hortizontal resolution (vertical lines) that's for the lines visible. Actual resolutions would be 640 for composite and 800 for Y/C. What you don't see gets lost behind the bezel (case.) This was an old compensation when the yokes on the picture tube would get weaker over time and shrink the image.

[Dan East]

Okay, I've got my new TV fired up, and there definitely is a huge difference with the S-Video! It is most noticable on static images, like the program guide of my DSS. If I switch back and forth between S-Video and Line I can really see the improvement. The DSS and DVD really make the VHS look like total crap. I'm to the point that I can't stand to watch anything that's not digital. <br>Now my next problem. The TV only has one S-Video input. However I want to at least hook up my DVD and DSS with S-Video, with the possible addition of game consoles, my laptop, etc. I assume there are S-Video A/B switches? Any recommendations? My VCR doesn't support S-Video, so I can't use it for a switchbox.<br><br>Dan East

[SonicSilicon]

The cheapest way out of the switching problem is to get a S-Video coupler (female-female connector.) Attach it to a cable that runs to the back of the television and just hook up whatever you want to use at the moment to the other side.<br><br>Of course that's a pain to use, but I've never used a switchbox, and barely know what to look for in specifications. I'll try asking my dad, but he seems to detest the things.

[Moose or Chuck]

I'll ask my daddy too