does s-video give better quality than composite?

[utopian201]

since the s-video connection splits the signal through 4 wires, while composite shares them over 2 wires

what image differences are there when using s-video and composite outputs from a graphics card?

[Tiggerz]

You sure thats two wires and not three.

The three wire setup is best since each of the colors has its own channel, the other formats tend to suffer from color bleeding.

[Deviant]

Yeah Tiggerz, he's talking composite RCA lead 2 wires.

Yes as Tiggerz has bacically said, S-Video will be better. The bleeding of the colours is actually interference, and distorts the colours somewhat.

[utopian201]

oh ok cool thnx
is the difference noticable?

[Deviant]

Originally posted by utopian201
oh ok cool thnx
is the difference noticable?

Yes, quite noticable.

[whetu]

not to mention that that svideo gives 400 lines as apposed to composites 200 :rolleyes: and yes the three connector setup is generally regarded as superior to svhs

[Tiggerz]

and no - you can't cut one of the rca wires in half :)

[mird-OC]

the story behind s-video and composite is actually very long winded.

back in the day when TV was first introduced we had a black and white signal, which was quite high-res and simple to transmit. then along came colour TV, and since B&W TVs were so previlent it was realised that they would need to create a backwards compatible transmission that would carry the rest of the colour information. for backwards compatibility they came up a method of extracting the brightness information (luma) for B&W TVs, plus colour information (chroma). they instantly hit another barrier in which the amount of bandwidth required to tranmit both signals would've required too much bandwidth, and consequently be in violation of the RF broadcast standards.

so after much clunking of heads they decided to create a "composite" signal composed of both luma and chroma, which basically "hid" the colour information within the B&W signal. the biggest trade-off with this method was halving the vertical resolution to accomodate the colour signal. way back then it didn't really matter as the equipment could barely accurately reproduce that resolution anyway. so it kinda became the defacto in video transimission, via air and cable.

but as time went on the technology evolved and it was fast realised that the new equipment could quite happily take advantage of that extra resolution and definition. on the professional side they created "component" (which was essentially RGB), but it wasn't compatible with consumer level equipment. so some bright spark thought "well in a normal TV the luma and chroma signals are mixed for transmission, then unmixed for playback. can't we just seperate the two signals and avoid the mixing and unmixing?" - and then s-video was born.

since all that mixing and unmixing was done using analogue signals there was not only a loss of resolution, there was quite a significant degredation of both signals by the time they came out the other end (due to bleeding etc).

s-video still isn't as good as RGB, due to the way chroma is comprised (compared to RGB, luma is basically G, and chroma essentially contains the R and B signals, but to save space it only stores every second R and B value), but it's a whole lot better than composite.

[Deviant]

wow Mird, you knowledge beast you.

[utopian201]

hehe wow you know your stuff

[dustyslapper]

Well done Mird - I have to explain this every other day it seems when I'm at work. Don't forget SCART and the level of compatibility it offers - SCART is all things to the right TV.

Also the quality you see on your TV screen has a lot to do with the quality of the components that get it there. So a composite rca picture on one particular TV can look very nice, or nicer, when compared to the s-video input. It comes down to things like how good your cables are and if the manufacturer skimped on the s-video components etc.