s-video - component question

[greymalkin]

Hello.

Last year my parents bought a 55" widescreen HDTV. They also bought a dvd player and proceeded to hook it up with the dinky rca cables it came with (composite). I went and bought them component cables out of the goodness of my heart (just to clarify, I don't live with my parents, I live in my own home but help them out with issues such as this as they are technically challenged).

Anyways, they have been using it for dvd's and regular analog cable...they have never known the joys of HDTV and their tv does not have an integrated ATSC tuner. So I found a used OTA HD receiver for cheeeeeeeap ($30!) and I will hook it up for them as soon as it comes in. This is getting back to the DVD player I promise.

here's my question. I have a spare s-video cable..so I was thinking of taking the component I bought before and using it for the OTA HD box, then using the s-video on the dvd player. My understanding is that with component cables the dvd player does the de-interlacing and is fed to the tv as a progressive signal and with s-video it is sent as interlaced and the tv does the de-interlacing. Is this correct? And if so would there really be much of a difference between using the s-video on the dvd player instead of the component?

thanks for you time/consideration.

[turk690]

S-video or YPbPr component have little to do with whether the signals are interlaced or not. It's easy to infer component signals are progressive, but they can just as easily be the original interlaced, depending on DVD player settings. DVD player manufacturers just take precautions in preventing progressive signals from appearing on the S-video terminal in the event that it is used for an older TV that can't accept such and in fact may get damaged if forced to do so. It's safe to assume that newer TVs with component inputs can accept progressive from such inputs so it comes neatly tied up to be used with DVD players that can output progressive on their component outputs (virtually ALL current DVD player models do).
If the S-video output on your DVD player is only interlaced, that will be the difference between when you were using the component output in its progressive mode. It then comes down to where the de-interlacing is going to take place (your observations are correct): use the interlaced S-video output and let the TV do the de-interlacing and make it progressive, or use the component progressive output (which means the DVD player did the de-interlacing)? Most experts agree, in general, letting the DVD player do the de-interlacing and using the component progressive gives better quality (fewer motion artifacts) than using the S-video and letting the TV do it. But, with so many variables it is down for you to try both & see what you get.
Some very expensive TVs and projectors have high-quality (& expensive) circuits that even with composite video the picture produced is excellent. These circuits are called scalers and are the most critical parts of your TV that will determine exactly how film-like (or not) your picture is. Recent TVs (direct & rear & front projection) use any of three fixed-pixel technologies (LCD, DLP, & LCoS) whose picture quality will depend, in large part, on this scaler (part of its job is de-interlacing); it would be interesting to know what arsenal your parents' 55" HDTV has.

[edDV]

Just to be clear, S-Video is never progressive. It is normal standard definition NTSC with Y and C on separate coax/pins.

Analog component YPbPr can be 480i (interlace 29.97) or 480p (progressive 59.94) depending on the settings in DVD player menus. Walmart sells these cables for about $10. I suggest you keep the DVD player connected progressive if they like to play commercial movie DVDs.

In DVD player progressive mode, the DVD player performs the deinterlace for 480i DVDs (e.g. those recorded on standalone DVD recorders, or computer tuners). "Cinema" mode deinterlacers will perform the inverse telecine and produce a better result for "film" sources than simple blend deinterlacers. This is where the quality of the DVD player can make a big difference.

As for an older used ATSC DTV tuner, expect some problems. The early ones had many bugs. Most issues can be found with a Google search by model number. HD sources connect either analog component YPbPr or DVI/HDMI digital to the display. 720p and 1080i connections are much higher bandwidth than DVD player 480i/480p. For this reason it is important to move up the analog component cable quality to the $20 level at Walmart. Such cables are usually labled as HD capable. These $20 cables are good enough for most displays. The cheaper cables will probably work but may soften the image or cause connection lock issues.