Are component cables really better than s-video?

[ann coates]

People saying component is far superior, this confuses me. I've used both now and I like the picture I get better with S-video, so that's what I'm sticking with. The colors look more natural to my eyes. Maybe my setup is kerflooey, who knows. What does everyone here prefer?

[ejai]

Component by far! I started using the component inputs while experimenting. I thought nothing was better than svideo until I stumbled onto component.

The video showed deeper colors and a sharper image using component.

Just my opinion

[solidsnake]

component is definately better, but you get the most out of it with an HDTV. But even without a digital tv, it will look slightly better, and in my opinion is worth the upgrade especially if your not using the component input for anything else. Wal-mart sells a cheap component cable I believe. I think you can sample what it may look like with a regular yellow and stereo red/white cable substitued for component cables, like hook up the yellow to both green on dvd and tv, red to both reds, and white to both blues. The audio cables are no substitute for the real thing, but I believe you can get an idea of what it may look like.

[gshelley61]

Sometimes people prefer the interlaced s-video picture to a progressive component video picture. Depending on the specific DVD player and the TV or display involved, the progressive scan picture will be smoother, but may appear softer (less defined and sharp). Colors can appear different on some displays due to the completely separate signal processing circuits for s-video and component inputs, too.

Component video should be superior theoretically, but in practice is not always automatically true. Same as with s-video and composite... the s-video signal has the potential to be superior to composite, but in the real world other factors come into play and it is not always so.

[edDV]

Composite NTSC (or PAL) share bandwidth above 3MHz with Luma + Chroma in the same frequency space. This leads to serious luma-chroma interference aka cross color. Remedies are expensive (e.g. 3D comb filtering)

S-Video is still NTSC (or PAL) with luminance Y separated from chrominance UV on separate wires Y and C where C is color subcarrier (3.58MHz NTSC, 4.43MHz PAL) each modulated with U and V.

MPeg2 has Y and color components Cb, Cr (similar to U and V) separate on the disc. Proper authoring keeps Y, Cb, Cr separation before MPeg2 encoding.

Component analog outputs (Y, Pb, Pr) continue this separation to the display without touching NTSC or PAL. This keeps chroma bandwidth high, but more important, keeps chroma distortion out of luminance and visa versa.

Progressive component analog (Y, Pb, Pr) goes one step further by transferring a 60 frame per second component set to a progressive TV in either standard (EDTV) or high definition (HDTV).

This is the natural progression of image quality. Improper application of this technology can screw things up at each level.