S-Video to Component

[Hornpipe2]

My wife and I bought a big plasma TV for our Christmas gift, and I'd like to hook up some of my old consoles to see what they look like on a 50" screen. Sadly, the TV does not have S-Video hookups... just lots of component, HDMI, and composite! And since most of my old systems don't support RGB or Component Out, this leaves me stuck with an inferior picture.

 

Since S-Video is Y/C and Component is Y/Cb/Cr surely there must be a cheap way to break the Chroma signal into two color components? I see some solutions online but they run into the $150 price range.

 

EDIT: Oh I also have a VGA input on this too, so an S-Video to VGA adapter would work fine too. Those seem to be available at a cheaper price ($60-70).

Edited January 1, 2010 by Hornpipe2

[tz101]

RF modulator should do the trick, and they are readily available at Radio Shack, K-Mart, Wal Mart, etc.

[Forrest]

Why not just use the Composite Video connection on your TV. There shouldn't be much difference in picture quality between Composite and S-Video.

[Hornpipe2]

RF modulator should do the trick, and they are readily available at Radio Shack, K-Mart, Wal Mart, etc.

 

While that would let me connect to the antenna/cable jack on the back of the TV, the quality would no doubt be worse than using composite. I was hoping to find a hookup that preserves the (relatively) high quality of the s-video signal.

 

 

 

Why not just use the Composite Video connection on your TV. There shouldn't be much difference in picture quality between Composite and S-Video.

 

I have not actually tried the Composite input on the new TV yet. When I compared composite to s-video on the old CRT, there was definitely a noticeable difference. I find "dot crawl" to be very distracting.

 

I guess I'll just have to live with composite, though, until I can spare some change for one of these:

http://www.google.com/products?q=%22s-video+to+vga%22&scoring=p

 

or enough time to build this:

http://elm-chan.org/works/sc/report.html

Edited January 2, 2010 by Hornpipe2

[tz101]

RF modulator should do the trick, and they are readily available at Radio Shack, K-Mart, Wal Mart, etc.

 

While that would let me connect to the antenna/cable jack on the back of the TV, the quality would no doubt be worse than using composite. I was hoping to find a hookup that preserves the (relatively) high quality of the s-video signal.

 

I misunderstood your original intent. You stated that your new TV had composite, HDMI, and component hookups, but did not mention a 75 ohm cable connector. The RF modulator I suggested takes 75 ohm cable inputs and outputs them to component outputs. My suggestion would allow you to play really old consoles like 2600, Intellivision, Colecovision, SMS, and Genesis that depended on your TV having 75 ohm input. My experience has been that even using component input from my 2600 or Intellivision improves both the audio and video feeds.

 

It now seems that you are only needing to connect more modern systems like PS2 and Xbox 360 to your new TV set. Worst case for any of these would probably be component hookup, but I do not know that there would be a very noticeable difference over S-video.

[gdement]

It now seems that you are only needing to connect more modern systems like PS2 and Xbox 360 to your new TV set. Worst case for any of these would probably be component hookup, but I do not know that there would be a very noticeable difference over S-video.

I think he's just trying to maintain S-video quality, since that's what he has coming out of the console. I'm assuming these are modded, older consoles since he has svideo output but not component.

He doesn't have an svideo input, so he's forced to mix svideo->composite.

 

By instead converting svideo -> component, the luma and chroma would stay separated. But somehow the chroma needs to be filtered properly into Cb and Cr, otherwise it'll probably look terrible.

The chroma -> Cb+Cr filtering probably wouldn't be any better than what the TV can do internally, but the point is to keep chroma and luma separated so it maintains S-video quality.

 

 

So unless I've misunderstood, the key question is if there's a reasonable way to achieve chroma -> Cb+Cr. (I don't know the answer myself).

 

 

Oh I also have a VGA input on this too, so an S-Video to VGA adapter would work fine too. Those seem to be available at a cheaper price ($60-70).

Several years ago I had a Viewsonic box made for watching TV on a monitor, but it also had Svideo input on it. I used it on my PS2 for a while. It worked fine, but it died after about 12-18months. I don't recall any noticeable lag.

FWIW, only 60Hz output mode is useful. Mine advertised a 72Hz mode but that just makes everything jerky because it doesn't match with the NTSC input.

There might be some ugliness with converting resolutions. The box already has to convert once, then your TV might have to convert it again to the native screen size.

[SoundGammon]

I bought a used DENON 7.1 audio receiver that has component outputs, inputs, svhs, (s-video), input and composite input. What I found out was that it converts composite and s-video to component and converts composite to s-video and vice versa for vcr recording! I can hook up my Sega Genesis to the composite input and it converts it to component to the tv!

[Hornpipe2]

I bought a used DENON 7.1 audio receiver that has component outputs, inputs, svhs, (s-video), input and composite input. What I found out was that it converts composite and s-video to component and converts composite to s-video and vice versa for vcr recording! I can hook up my Sega Genesis to the composite input and it converts it to component to the tv!

 

Oh wow, how cool. We're on the lookout for a new audio system (the 5-channel analog-only Dolby ProLogic system needs an upgrade), that's a feature I would definitely keep in mind.