s-video and "yellow" cable

im new to this whole world of HTPC's and any type of high quality video playback in general. any/all TVs i have ever messed with have been with basic cable and used a basic black coax cable. other than that, hooking up my old N64 via the 3 rca cables (red, white and yellow) i've never touched anything else.

so my buddy went to walmart awhile back and bought a 42" plasma HDTV. i start thinkin.... "i have a decent computer with a decent video card, i wanna see how it will look on his TV" so i take my system over and try to hook it up, but it looks like crap! like everything is blurry and pixelated (sp?). i tried playing with different resolutions but nothing helped. i eventually gave up and went home.

my system is a 4800+ X2 @ 2.750Ghz, 2GB ram and a X1900GT

question 1) why did it look so bad?
question 2) the way i hooked the computer up was via s-video. the video card came with a splitter which had 2 svideo cables and 2 yellow cables on it. i assumed that this was to hook up 2 TVs to the same card, just like having 2 DVI ports. each TV having an s-video cable and yellow cable. my buddy said no, only use s-video. so we tried that, but the picture was in black and white. whats the yellow cable for? i still think its something to do with video... the way we got it to work in color was using another adaptor that came with the card. it plugged into the "double s-video" port on the card and split into 3 rca type connectors. we hooked those up to the tv. it worked in color but the picture was really bad.

so whats the yellow cable for? whats the best was to hook a TV up like this, for best quality?

What res did you try running on the TV and what video card. The yellow cable is composite video, the s-video is just a tad better. To get the best image on the TV I would use a DVI to HDMI cable. Also if the cables you tried were red, green and blue those are called component cables.

I think that s-video and composite cables limit you to 1024*768 res, perhaps even lower like 800*600, but as mentioned above you should be using a dvi-hdmi or the component cables.

First the S-Video will only output SD TV resolution which is 720x480 for NTSC, no matter what your card is set to. Needless to say, that looks like total crap for anything other than FS SD video and there is absolutely nothing you can do about that.

The yellow cable is most likely composite video which is even worse. Your best hookup, provided the card supports it is either component/VGA for analog output or better yet DVI/HDMI for razor sharp image up to what the HDTV can natively support.

the card is an X1900GT. i know s-video has been around for awhile and figured it was starting to show its age. this is why i assumed you had to use it together with the yellow composite cable.

i tried a number of different resolutions, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, etc.

the other cables i tried were, in fact, red green and blue. these cables gave me color but no better image quality.

how expensive is a DVI to HDMI cable? how do i know if my card supports that? it has 2 DVI ports along with the larger, "double" s-video port.

You can get a 3' to 6' DVI>HDMI cable at Monoprice.com for around $10. Your video card has DVI output, so that's settled. If your TV has HDMI input, that's settled. If not, check to see if it has DVI input. If so, get a DVI>DVI.

Otherwise, you'll need to go with a component (RGB) or VGA (old analog monitor cable) for up to 1080i analog. Anything is better than composite and S-Video.

Try the component cable and set the res to 1920 x 1080. That should make it look alittle better. Also as is the text or videos that are blurry?

anything is better than composite and s-video?!?! i always thought s-video was a higher quality connection.

if i remember right, the tv doesnt have an HDMI port, BUT he has a PS3 hooked up to it and that uses HDMI i think. so maybe it does? http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4529485 he said thats the tv he has, it stats it has HDMI, but i never saw it, and from looking at pics of DVI to HDMi cables on newegg, i dont rememebr seeing that HDMI port anywhere...

text was blurry, but i also opened UT2k4 to see how that played and it didnt look right, maybe i had the wrong res or something, but even the colors were not so great.

in the description for that TV it states that it has HDMI

monoprice.com has the DVI-HDMI cables for cheap... pick one of those up and the picture will look better, BUT

from the specs on that TV, it says that resolution on it is only 1024x768 which is a 4:3 format and not a 16:9 or 16:10

yeah, when he bought it i figured it was only 1024x768. when i buy one i want to get a higher resolution.

enhanced said:

anything is better than composite and s-video?!?! i always thought s-video was a higher quality connection.

Click to expand...

For standard definition using analog, it is. For higher resolutions using analog, VGA and component are far superior. For digital, you have to move to DVI and HDMI.

Edit:

composite/component goof

Jon said:

VGA and composite are far superior.

Click to expand...

er....you mean component

Anyhoo, a 1024x768? Man that's some funky plasma display. How do they figure it is a 720p widescreen? Setting your comp to 1024x768 and over component/VGA/HDMI should normally give you a very good if not perfect picture on that TV. But then it is a widescreen panel with a non-widescreen, non-HD resolution so who the hell knows what's going on there. Wicked scaling be my bet and that will just never look good.

AtomicMonkey said:

er....you mean component

Anyhoo, a 1024x768? Man that's some funky plasma display. How do they figure it is a 720p widescreen? Setting your comp to 1024x768 and over component/VGA/HDMI should normally give you a very good if not perfect picture on that TV. But then it is a widescreen panel with a non-widescreen, non-HD resolution so who the hell knows what's going on there. Wicked scaling be my bet and that will just never look good.

Click to expand...

Yep, I goofed. Fixed

There's a lot of displays that are doing that. There are some 1080p displays that are 1440x1080. They're basically capable of doing the necessary horizontal resolution, but at a "neutered" total pixel count.

At any rate, I personally believe it to be a cruel trick being played on unsuspecting consumers. All they're being taught to look at is 1080p or 720p or High Definition. These displays fit the bill, but not entirely.

yeah, i know what you mean. my buddy bought this tv not knowing what he was getting. he saw that it was 720p and jumped at it. what is the native res of a 720p, 720i, 1080p, and 1080i screens anyway? i would assume that both 720p and 720i would have the same res, as well as both 1080's having the same?

AtomicMonkey said:

How do they figure it is a 720p widescreen?

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Are some TV's made with retangular pixels? Hence the 4:3 resolution being "stretched" to wide screen. Very sad.

I recently hooked up an old FX5200 to my brothers 60" Sony DLP, running at 720p with a DVI-HDMI cable; from the couch it is like having a nice wide screen monitor to play around on... games look pretty spiffy too!

bryan_d said:

Are some TV's made with retangular pixels? Hence the 4:3 resolution being "stretched" to wide screen. Very sad.

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That's the only thing that would come to mind. Sad indeed.

enhanced, for all intents and purposes the HD res is either 1280x720 (720p) or 1920x1080 (1080i/p).

There are many 37-50" plasma/LCD displays having 1366x768 native which is ok for 720p albeit it a 720p signal will be either "zoomed in" to fill the screen or displayed natively with a black frame around the pic. Either way it is not perfect for HDTV then. Although if your computer can be set to that resolution over DVI/HDMI, such display will be just as good as a regular computer monitor.

Jon said:

At any rate, I personally believe it to be a cruel trick being played on unsuspecting consumers. All they're being taught to look at is 1080p or 720p or High Definition. These displays fit the bill, but not entirely.

Click to expand...

That is very true. The thing to watch out for when buying a display, is "capable" vs "native". A panel may be capable of displaying a 1080p signal but if it is a 1366x768 native panel it simply means that it accepts and downconverts the 1080p signal to fit the pixels it's got. It will not display nor is it a 1080p display.