Video Asylum

Posted by sam9 on July 17, 2002 at 13:54:17

In Reply to: s-video "Y" splitter posted by John C. - Aussie on July 14, 2002 at 18:39:16:

I looked into this a few months ago and got similar results. I talked to someone at PartsExpress who said that S-video "Y" cables don't seem to work out well, but gave no real reason why. He suggested that I buy a switch box from them that would take care of my needs. It turned out that it would let me switch the output between two different jacks but not let me sent it to both.

I open the box up to take a look. Prom the PCB it turns out that of the 5 pins, three were wired parallel and unswitched thoughout. The switching took place on only two pins. I took some magnet wire and wired the coressponding pins together using the traces on the bottom of the PCB. This is really simple and almost anyone could figure it out easier than I can explain it. I choose the magnet wire only because it was the easiest to work with in the confines of the PCB and the case and because i had it laying around - there is nothing special about it otherwise.

Except for switches, traces and jacks there are no other components in the box. Somehow, since it was video, I had imagined I would find something more involved.

If I were to do this again, a cleaner way would be a small plastic box, three S-video jacks (one in, two out), some wire and some solder. Just wire each of the two outputs to the input one-to-one on the pins.

Maybe there is something wrong with this in some cases, but it mine the results on screen look perfect.