Video Asylum

Posted by petew (A) on January 16, 2002 at 07:24:07

In Reply to: Component output vs Progressive Scan ouput posted by MK Lai on January 15, 2002 at 21:52:03:

The short answer:

one outputs 480i (regular television or "Standard Definition" or SDTV) and the other outputs 480p (better than regular television, sometimes known by the marketing term: "Enhanced Definition" or EDTV).

if your TV is "digital ready" (a marketing term used to convince idiots that their old loudspeakers were for some reason "incompetent" for playing CDs), which in the case of video, means it will display at least 480 horizontal lines via a component input (usually 3-RCA jacks, but sometimes 5 and they could be BNC and even VGA), then use the "progressive" output on your DVD, unless you think the "component" output looks better, which might be the case if your monitor has a better de-interlacer than your DVD player. Oh, and the guy who sold you the TV or the DVD player knows less than you, so be prepaired to have him try and sell you a new HDTV monitor, which means you're going to need alot more wires. confused? welcome to high-end video, where nobody knows the answer, and everybody has the solution.

The long answer:

I've yet to find anyone who really knows AND can explain what the deal is with video today. The nice thing about "high definition" audio is that nobody can tell just by listening, so the consumer just has to buy the most expensive gear they can afford and "trust your ears" or even better, trust eveyone's ears but yours. But with "high definition" video, it's no "piece of pie".

You may think that judging the best video picture should be as "easy as cake", since you only have to look at the screen and listen to your brain. But no, it's not that easy, because the marketing folk are wise to this shortcut, and have come up with a scheme whereby you need so many wires to connect your television to the picture source that nobody, and I really mean NOBODY, knows how to get these things to work right. Oh, and for goodness sakes, make sure you look at all the little arrows printed on the cable jackets, so that they are all aligned with the Universal Magnetic Field (UMF or U-motha-f#%@!).

You're on your own pal, let us know if you figure it out. I do have one bit of advice that you may find helpful:

The total mass of wires behind the gear should be equal to the mass of the television monitor. This is what we mean when we say "balanced system".