#9 - Composite vs S-Video
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- Опубликовано: 23 июл 2023
- In this video I get districted by the apparently remedial topic of comparing composite to S-Video. It actually turned out to be a rather interesting endeavor so I knocked up a quick video about it.
I ended up testing both PAL and NTSC and found the results were quite different.
I have seen hundreds of videos from 8-bit channels regarding S-Video, and Composite, and upgrades, and saw diagrams, heck, I am an engineer myself. And I knew that it is better, and I knew why, but I have never seen it displayed and demonstrated this clearly! Thank you!
great video, even as a kid I rushed to find an S-Video cable for my playstation 2 and none of my friends could understand why mine looked so much better than theirs. I had tons of engineer family members to teach me early
My old analogue TV setup was basically a Grundig Sky digibox outputting S-Video to a Panasonic S-VHS VCR (with TBC), and then over to the TV's S-Video input. Recordings made on that setup were phenomenal!
Naturally, all general day-to-day TV viewing was over RGB SCART, but no way to record a direct RGB feed until the arrival of DVD recorders. Most probably went with Sky+ by then!
Wow, that was fascinating! Those scope grabs really illustrated whats happening. Thank you for sharing your knowledge :)
I switched to S-video for my Nintendo 64, and for text and color it really makes a difference!
Same. In my retro console set up only the N64 uses S-video whereas all the others use RGB and I have to admit that the N64 looks just fine. To get it looking any better would require significant modification of the console itself.
It's interesting to see the comb filter in the TV either cancelling out the signal of neighboring lines or falling back to a trap filter in NTSC along the seams between the zone plates. It does do a decent job with PAL given how much harder it is to implement a good adaptive comb filter. It does make me wonder what the BBC's PAL Transform Decoder would do if presented with the "Zone Plate Hell" pattern. I imaging even that would fail to suppress the cross-color.
Thank you. Well presented, and I don't say that to many 'content creators' on YT! Former student and engineer of NTSC and CCTV 'broadcast' dating back to the Ampex days in the mid 1970's here ...
You can achieve s-video output through the scart socket with a scart to RCA & composite video adapter with an s-video port built in, just use the s-video lead with the red & white audio leads leaving the yellow composite video lead unplugged, or use another screen with composite video output & you can see the comparisons between them in real time.
Actually at least some modern TV-sets get way beyond comb filtering, offering extremely good luma and chroma separation since they take multiple fields into account for their luma-chroma filtering.
Yeah I know. My brand new Samsung does absolutely ridiculous processing on analogue signals. Really good results. But back in the good old analogue days comb filtering was best for sure!
@@mattstvbarn Actually some PALplus sets might also do similar amounts of filtering.
@@mattstvbarn In a way it's actually sad to see that in the place where it actually matters (DVD mastering) they actually use by far the worst PAL decoders still in widespread use.
Excellent explanation.
Good talk and overview
Thanks so much for this video
Excellent video Matt - just like your other videos! :) Thanks for sharing.
A qq if I may please: What is the brand/model of the PC video IO card you're showing at 4:00?
I desperately need some proper TV out for my PC either as a card or an adapter as any scan converter I tried so far (HDMI to CVBS dongle, Ambery semi-pro VGA to CVBS box) gives totally different output in terms of electrical signal parameters and picture size which is super annoying and visible of course. I have some modern, professional modulators and fully refurbished CRT televisions but I lack the professional grade video source from my PC which does adhere to the PAL standards.
It's an AJA Kona LHi
Thanks!
4:46: "this is a beat pattern which occours between the oscillator in the color decoder and input signal"
Could you explain why that happens?
Thanks!
May I ask what the PCIe card you used for generating the signals is ? It looks like I could use something like this
AJA KONA LHi
Does this mean that artifact colors generated in old home computers via RF out or composite would not work with S-Video? I knew that using analog RGB to play an NTSC Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer game that used artifact colors to generate red and blue would simply show black and white stripes or dots. But what about S-Video?
Any chance you could do a video or link to a video/guide for how you set up outputting the test cards (and how you created the cards themselves) in software from what looks to be an AJA Kona LHi? Thanks!
It is a Kona LHi. The test cards were actually made in MS paint! The dimensions have to be an exact i.e. 720x576, this is the CCIR 601 bit - 720px wide corresponds to a 13.5 MHz pixel clock. Having done that I believe it was a case of opening the image in the AJA software and that was it!
I can't fault the image quality, but I'd like to propose that S-Video is physically the worst video connector. SCART you only have two ways you can try plugging it in, Mini-DIN gives you infinite ways of getting it wrong.
And they are even worse today than ever. Back in the 1990s S-Video connectors were half decent i.e. if you mate them in the correct orientation they will actually fit together. Today's (purchased of Amazon) connectors all seem to require a degree of bending and straightening before there is any chance of a successful mate!
@@mattstvbarn yup, and the problems don't stop at how the bad the connectors are, the wires in most modern cables are absolute junk. I was looking for S-Video cables for a while to try it with my MiSTer FPGA and an external RGB to composite & s-video converter to get it to work on an older CRT TV I have with no component input, found a bundle of 5 cables for a suspiciously low price and got it. Two of them straight out didn't have continuity on all the pins, I decided to cut one of them open and sure enough, the wires were hair thin and there was absolutely no shielding. I do have an LCD TV with both composite and S-Video inputs where I did perform a few tests and it's very obvious when reading text how S-Video is way better than composite.
After a bit of digging around I found the service manual for my CRT TV and, to my surprise, it's jungle chip supports S-Video input, but it's missing the connector and probably a few other components. I'd love to mod it to be able to take S-Video and perhaps RGB, but I'm not confident enough not to zap myself with high voltage. 😅
Do not watch this video if you've got a migraine! ;)
My N64 look quite better woth S-video... Of course, it is still an N64. 😅
MAC technologies is unavailable. Finding any MAC broadcasting devices is almost impossible. I will waiting for "How PALplus is working?".
Oh your observation skills are superb 👌
This digital TV (and most modern digital TVs) does a very good job of separating the luma and chroma. For NTSC the picture is almost perfect. Back in the analog days the rainbowing was horrific and we also had dot crawl which is completely absent in this demonstration.