Video Asylum

Posted by Boo on April 07, 2000 at 15:07:12:

In Reply to: Component vs S video, when is it noticable? posted by Dartmouth on March 30, 2000 at 16:22:08:

Yes, absolutely noticable. My Toshiba SD-3109 has both Component and S-Video hooked up to a Samsung Tantus 40" WideScreen LCD RPTV. Switching between the two I have noticed these differences. Immediately I noticed that the S-Video was brighter than CompVideo. This is due to the better pixel and color resolution of the CompVideo signal. Higher resolutions have less illumination(same thing on PC Monitors). This is quite evident specially when comparing fully lit areas of the picture. CompVideo exposes more color shades whereas in S-Video the lit area is just a white blotch. Sharpness is about the same, CompVideo is just a little better.

Mind you my testing was not comprehensive by any means. Probably only took 10 minutes of comparing.

The Only problem I had with CompVideo is with non-anamorphic DVD's. My TV will stretch the picture, in this case I will switch to S-Video to have aspect ratio control. For some reason viewing on CompVideo will not allow any changes to the aspect ratio.