What's the difference between composite, S-Video and component video?

What's the difference between composite, S-Video and component video?

Composite video is the most common of all video connections and has been around for at least thirty years. A 75-ohm interface, composite video carries both the black-and-white and color information on a single coaxial cable. Robust and inexpensive, composite is a workhorse interface with maximum resolution of about 400 lines.

S-Video made its debut in the early 1980's with the advent of S-VHS and ED-Beta. S-Video is fundamentally different from composite in that it delivers the black-and-white (luminance) signal on one 75-ohm cable and the color (chrominance) information on another. While this system doesn't allow for greater resolution than composite per se, it does allow for significantly better color saturation and performance. All digital video signals, whether from DVD, DBS, digital cable or ATSC off-air digital transmissions will look better using the S-Video interface than they will with a composite interface.

Component is sometimes referred to as 770.3. This is the common analog HDTV interface and supports image quality up to 1080p. 770.3 is a three-wire system and transports the image as a full bandwidth luminance signal and two full bandwidth chrominance signals. Good quality 75-ohm triple-shielded video cables are the key to getting the full measure of your HDTV signal!

A different component connection is used on some consumer gear and much professional gear. This is the RGBHV component video connection. In this scheme the video signal is transported in the form of the three base colors - red, green and blue - which form all the colors (including white) that you see on your display screen. The H and V stand for "Horizontal" and "Vertical", which are the sync signals that tell the display device what the aspect ratio and size of the image should be. RGBHV is characterized by its use of professional quality BNC connectors and is an analog signal.

Please visit Kongcable for all your audio and video needs including HDMI. Founder and owner of Kongcable.com, Michael Mancini, lives in Columbus Ohio. Michael was born and raised in London, Ohio.

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