Why does everyone say Composite is "horrible"

[tshizzle.com]

Are you guys being serious, or just exaggerating?  I mean looking at the difference from Composite to S-Video, I can BARELY tell the difference.  Its definelty not something that you just look at and go, "WOW thats horrible".  Slightly more blurry for Windows, but gaming wise, not much of a difference when youre talking games that run at 640x480 MAX.

[Witchboard]

It could also depend on the quality of the TV.  I've seen threads where a person has returned one set and replaced with another and the difference was substantial.

[Darkstalker]

Well yea, it really depends on the given application and the quality of the original video source.  For 80% of MAME, Composite will work just fine since the real arcade cabinets didn't use digital video anyways.

For Windows, night and day difference.  I could read icon labels with S-Video, but couldn't make out any text with Composite.  I suppose the best workaround would be to use big fonts in a frontend with composite then you wouldn't notice as bad, but since S-Video is so easily obtainable, why not just use that?

[MonitorGuru]

Its horrible compared to RGB, it's a LOT better than RF cable.

The problem is you're doing two conversions.  RGB to Composite (on your computer's video card), and then Composite back to RGB inside the TV.  Both have loss of signal quality.

To borrow from Oscar's comparisons, here is Composite:


Here is Svideo:


Here is ArcadeMonitor:


I think those 3 pictures say it all. Composite adds artifacts in the image due to typical "dot crawl". Notice the light green patches in the grass that are only on the Composite. .  Also notice black is never really black.   Also notice the "fake" colors mixed in when colors are switching fast, like between the black road and the sand... theres tons of colors there that arn't supposed to be.

Svideo removes the visible dots in the black area but still isn't clear. Also the fake colors are removed a bit better though there are still somethere. Though you can finally start seeing the red dots in the sand by the car that are almost invisible in the composite.  The arcade monitor gives you the best look by far though.

Also notice that you can't even see the black "dirt" in the grass except on the Arcade monitor. That's a lot of detail missing in Composite/Svideo

To see all the comparisons and much larger images, click on Oscar's web page: http://www.oscarcontrols.com/monitors.shtml

[Witchboard]

That's a great reference page.  I wish there were some component images to compare as well.

[tshizzle.com]

yea thanks for the info....looks like I might as well at least return this badboy and get me a S-Video TV.

[tshizzle.com]

went ahead and returned it, and low and behold, a 20" Flat TV with COMPONENTS was at Best Buy =)

A Daewoo 20u4sc -  

Should be nice =)

[NoOne=NBA=]

The place you will most often see the "composite is horrible" posts will be in threads about vector games, or when a thread deals with windows/frontend issues.

The lines are so thin in vector games, and moving so rapidly, that they just kind of "fall out" on anything short of a PC monitor.

[monkeybomb]

I bought that tv and I love it.  But I am waiting for a component card to go down in price before I take full advantage of it.

[tshizzle.com]

monkeybomb = what vid card you using?  Ive read some people say Nvidias have bad TV outs, some say they like better than ATI.  Just dont wanna mess up and buy a ---smurfy--- tvout card