S Video is crap?

[Zarathustra]

So I came across a reasonable set of S-Video cables at my local Electronics store recently, and proceeded to connect my PC and other devices to my Television using the S-Cable port in the back.

The difference was abysmally bad when compared to normal video cables.
Isn't it supposed to be some sort of enhanced quality?

Any idea why?

[Leftus]

Did you go into the control panel and set the options? If it's trying to force the tv into a generic resolution and color depth it's going to look like hell no matter how good a card or TV.

[Rat]

There are a lot of flavours of s-video, but yes, most of them are crap when you compare them with a DVI connection to a proper monitor.

[bokonon]

I get the impression that the OP is complaining about S-video in comparison with a standard yellow-plug cable.

I can't complain about S-video signal quality, but I'm not a videophile. I do know I bent a lot of pins on S-video cables before I figured out that I have to pay attention. At my age, paying attention means turning on the lights and (sometimes) breaking out the magnifying glass to see which way I'm supposed to turn the thing before I push it in. I much prefer yellow-plug, red/white audio cable plugs, co-axial, USB, firewire, heck, just about every other format I can think of.

Needlenose pliers to bend the pins back, and the S-video is as good as new to someone who (did I mention?) is not a videophile.

[El Greco]

S-Video is supposed to be better than composite (single RCA plug). However, there is something very wrong with S-video implementations. First, there are different S-video connectors and you may even need adaptors from S-video to S-video. Second, half of the devices I have connected with S-Video (using lots of different cables) give black & white images (and I have tried every possible solution like short-circuiting certain pins). Basically SCART and S-video are the worst connectors that man has ever conceived and implemented.

[jsiv]

Second, half of the devices I have connected with S-Video (using lots of different cables) give black & white images (and I have tried every possible solution like short-circuiting certain pins).[/q]

I have seen this too, and found that it went away if I went into the setup menu on both ends and manually set it to s-video. The way I understood it, the black and white happens because s-video and composite share pins (the s-video luma is on the composite signal pin) in both the round DIN connector and in SCART. There is no way to automatically sense it reliably, so you often end up with one side set to composite and the other to s-video resulting in only the luma being displayed.

Personally I have found that using RGB (over SCART) gives me the best picture with the equipment I have. I think the cable quality is relatively important too, with coaxial for the video signal instead of straight wire. In some cases you get what you pay for.


[quote=El Greco;3301990]Basically SCART and S-video are the worst connectors that man has ever conceived and implemented.

I suppose SCART is always going to suffer from trying to do too much, but I've honestly never really had any problems with it.

[NeilC]

Last time I tried Svideo from PC to TV the signal was poor until I also unplugged the RF connector, then it suddenly got a lot better.

However I've since changed to using the VGA socket (LCD TV) and the quality is way better than Svideo ever was.

[Beerina]

Ya, S-Video was a mild improvement over an RCA jack. It's not as good as RGB, to say nothing of VGA, much less DVI or some other modern interface.

[ThatSoundAgain]

And to think I'm still performing VJ sets using composite. I'll drop that as soon as they build an affordable and reliable A/V mixer that accepts VGA, DVI, or video over firewire / ethernet.

Set the composite up right and it looks decent. That means configuring your output right, and maybe compensating in the display / projector.

[Lothian]

I have pc to TV connected by an S video to S video lead for the picture and a 3.5 mm to RCA lead for audio fed into a scart adaptor like this that I bought for around $4.

http://www.hometheatre.net.au/img/rgb316_lg.gif

The TV has two AV channels that is goes to when a scart lead is used. The first gives a dull picture from the S video the second one (which I think has a 's' in its name) is fine. I think therefore that the TV needs to know that the signal is coming through an S video connection.