How much diff between S-Vid & Composite?

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vindaloo

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#17866 15-Dec-2007 13:54

I've got a fairly simple set up in a spare room at the mo with a basic DVD player plugged into an LCD PC monitor via an external TV tuner. Its only composite video and obviously the picture is pretty average. The only other connections the external tuner supports is S-Video.

I've never tried S Vid before (my main set up is component & hdmi) so not sure how much of a difference it will make?

Is it worth giving a go?

sbiddle

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#100134 15-Dec-2007 15:40

S-video is marginally better than composite but IMHO most people couldn't tell the difference. It's certainly nowhere as obvious as the difference between composite & component/HDMI.

cyril7

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#100157 15-Dec-2007 19:31

On an LCD display you are unlikely to notice any real improvement, other than some chroma crosstalk reduction (ie dot crawl) you are unlikely to notice any improvement as most/all LCD displays have so much digital processing and the panel itself has so many problems that mask any improvements that you are unlikely to see any real improvements.

If you were talking about a 29-34inch CRT display then I would say yes you will see an improvement from composite to S-video, and from there an improvement to component, but CRTs are simple analog displays with little masking digital processing between input and screen.

There is a general impression that modern LCD displays show up the difficiencies in CRT displays and SD TV in general, well sorry to break the news but this is wrong. A CRT is a simple device that reproduces what its given with little or no interventions, the same cannot be said for LCD displays.

Cyril

mcraenz

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#100222 16-Dec-2007 12:50

I agree. on a 29" CRT especially for PC TVOUT applications the difference is very noticeable, composite is hideous, s-video is less hideous!

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richms

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#100231 16-Dec-2007 13:37

Well worth the change, since you dont need to have a digital comb filter on svideo, and thats responsible for most of the weird artifacts that are plamed on lcd's like colours lagging behind movement and stuff.

Richard rich.ms