Component & RGB, not the same thing?

[crashwg]

It seems to me that they're pretty close to eachother, I mean, aren't they both red green and blue on individual cables.  It sure would be pretty cool to be able to use the arcadevga card with a tv.  

[b3atmania]

It is widely misunderstood that component video and  RGB are the same thing. Despite the colorcoding of the RCA jacks, component video encodes color as Y/Pb/Pr. Converting component to RGB requires a circuit and cannot be done by a converter cable.

The ArcadeVGA outputs RGB + Hsync + Vsync. If you create a composite sync signal from the Hsync and Vsync you can connect the ArcadeVGA to a television with a SCART (*) socket.

A component signal can optionally be non-interlaced (progressive), but requires a set that can handle progressive video. For arcade emulation purposes there is no real reason to use component as only recently arcade games have started to use progressive scan (like some new Sega and Konami games). You could ofcourse use progressive scan for older games, but it won't look authentic. It is also noteworthy that a Sega Naomi (i.e. Crazy Taxi) system doing progressive scan video still uses RGBHV.

In conclusion RGB remains the only true arcade perfect solution without picture degradation from signal conversion.

(*) footnote:
- SCART is also known as EuroAV or Peritel.
- SCART is common on TV sets in Europe, Australia, Hong Kong and Japan. Note that Japanese SCART uses a different pinout, but accepts the same signals.
- Not all SCART sockets are created equal. Most can handle composite video signals. Handling of S-video and/or RGB is optional. Most TV sets with multiple SCART inputs only accept RGB on one input while not accepting RGB on another.
- SCART sockets cannot handle progressive scan RGB.