RE: Video formats - was : Source Switching for Projector

["Keith Doxey" <ukha@xxxxxxx>]

As Phil says, RGB should be the best but if the source is actually
ORIGINATING as Component then the individual colour signals are already
matrixed and require de-matrixing at some point. Whether this is best done
in the DVD player or the display device will depend on which has the better
decoder. If the display device doesnt support component but does support
RGB
then the best (in fact only) place to decode it is in the DVD player
itself.

Its similar to connecting a CD player to an amplifier (excluding totally
digital amps) where you have the following options

1. CD - analogue - Amp
2. CD - digital - Amp
3. CD - optical - Amp
4. CD - digital - DAC - analogue - Amp
5. CD - optical - DAC - analogue - Amp

Whichever of the above you choose, the signal originates as digital data
>from
best option depends on which is the best Digital to Analog converter. Is it
the CD players internal one, the amps internal one, or an expensive
external
converter. Different people will have different opinions and it will also
depend on the individual items of kit. So many choices!!!!

The only way to truely compare RGB to Component is with a source that
originates as RGB such as a broadcast camera. The majority of modern
display
devices are far superior to the devices of a few years ago but I remember
going into an Outside Broadcast van at Great Yarmouth Racecource about 15
years ago and being totally stunned by the superb quality of the images on
the monitors in the van before they have been converted to composite video
for transmission.

Taking Phils last point... a few years ago I bought a HiFi magazine that
came with a free booklet explaining HiFi for the uneducated. Amongst all
the
"comments" about directional arrows etc which I chose to ignore
there was
one peice of advice I agreed with 100%...

"Stop spending money when YOU can notice no improvement"

Your DVD player supports RGB or Component and most likely S-Video as well.
Assuming your projector also supports all these formats then you could use
any of them but S-Video would be the lowest of the three.

If I was connecting Tivo and a DVD player I would probably do the following

TiVo/Sky - RGB - Projector
DVD  - Component - Projector


as this would give good quality images without requiring any external
converters.

Keith

www.diyha.co.uk
www.kat5.tv


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Phil Harris [mailto:phil@xxxxxxx]
>
> In theory RGB *SHOULD* be better as the triads that make up
> an image on a
> display are Red, Green and Blue and so feeding an RGB signal
> should give a
> truer picture (or at least require less "decoding" at the
> display end).
>
> In practice you probably won't be able to tell the difference
> - I certainly
> can't - between component and RGB and component has the
> advantage of being
> pretty "standard" whereas you get different
"flavours" of RGB
> (RGB with sync
> on green, RGB with separate sync, RGB with separate Hsync and
> Vsync) plus,
> I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that the encoding on a
> DVD is done as
> YUV rather than RGB (but that could be just my dodgy memory
> and it might
> have been laserdisc that I'm remembering) so if that's the
> case then you
> would have to have a conversion from the YUV colourspace to
> RGB colourspace
> occuring in the DVD player rather than in the TV.
>
> If you're happy then don't worry about it...
>
> Phil
>