Anybody try s-video to rca

[boesiii]

I have an old tv that only has video composite support.  What if I use a s-video to rca converter to hook the tv up. What will the quality be?

[MonitorGuru]

S video consists of a separate wire for the luminance (Y) [black + white image] and the chromanance (C) [color portion].  A converter would re-multi-plex them into a narrower bandwidth, and depending on the quality of the device, add additional interference/etc..  But in essense, you'll end up with a pretty poor video signal.

A TV works in this order when processing a video signal:

Antenna or Cable:   RF Input -> Composite + Audio separation -> Luminance+Chromanance video separation -> Color Component separation -> Tube

Composite video inputs:  Start in above chart right after Composite separation

S Video inputs: Start after Luminance separation.


Therefore if you're starting with an SVideo signal, convert it to composite and feed it to the TV, you are now going through 2 additional levels of conversion over plugging in Svideo directly if you could:

SVideo -> Composite -> TV -> Svideo -> Component


Which basically means you can probably expect a lower quality signal than feeding Composite directly, and definitely than being able to feed svideo directly.  No matter what you won't have a picture better than Composite outright, since that's the lowest common denominator.

Refer to this thread for comparisons of Composite vs S Video vs Arcade CGA:
http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=4;action=display;threadid=23818

[BarontheFirst]

Yes I wasted the money and was very unhappy with the results! It was almost blinding how bad the picture on my tv was. Trust me don't go that way!