great video, even as a kid I rushed to find an S-Video cable for my playstation 2 and none of my friends could understand why mine looked so much better than theirs. I had tons of engineer family members to teach me early
I have seen hundreds of videos from 8-bit channels regarding S-Video, and Composite, and upgrades, and saw diagrams, heck, I am an engineer myself. And I knew that it is better, and I knew why, but I have never seen it displayed and demonstrated this clearly! Thank you!
My old analogue TV setup was basically a Grundig Sky digibox outputting S-Video to a Panasonic S-VHS VCR (with TBC), and then over to the TV's S-Video input. Recordings made on that setup were phenomenal! Naturally, all general day-to-day TV viewing was over RGB SCART, but no way to record a direct RGB feed until the arrival of DVD recorders. Most probably went with Sky+ by then!
Same. In my retro console set up only the N64 uses S-video whereas all the others use RGB and I have to admit that the N64 looks just fine. To get it looking any better would require significant modification of the console itself.
It's interesting to see the comb filter in the TV either cancelling out the signal of neighboring lines or falling back to a trap filter in NTSC along the seams between the zone plates. It does do a decent job with PAL given how much harder it is to implement a good adaptive comb filter. It does make me wonder what the BBC's PAL Transform Decoder would do if presented with the "Zone Plate Hell" pattern. I imaging even that would fail to suppress the cross-color.
I had for many years a JVC 66cm TV and a JVC S-VHS deck. And even though JVC were the ones who popularised S-video and that connector, they also had very good comb filters in the TV and VCR I had! So composite and S-video were nearly the same quality. I only really saw the difference with a Pioneer DVD player that had surprisingly grotty composite video. But it didn't matter to me because I used it's RGB output on the SCART connector.
Thank you. Well presented, and I don't say that to many 'content creators' on YT! Former student and engineer of NTSC and CCTV 'broadcast' dating back to the Ampex days in the mid 1970's here ...
This digital TV (and most modern digital TVs) does a very good job of separating the luma and chroma. For NTSC the picture is almost perfect. Back in the analog days the rainbowing was horrific and we also had dot crawl which is completely absent in this demonstration.
Actually at least some modern TV-sets get way beyond comb filtering, offering extremely good luma and chroma separation since they take multiple fields into account for their luma-chroma filtering.
Yeah I know. My brand new Samsung does absolutely ridiculous processing on analogue signals. Really good results. But back in the good old analogue days comb filtering was best for sure!
@@mattstvbarn In a way it's actually sad to see that in the place where it actually matters (DVD mastering) they actually use by far the worst PAL decoders still in widespread use.
You can achieve s-video output through the scart socket with a scart to RCA & composite video adapter with an s-video port built in, just use the s-video lead with the red & white audio leads leaving the yellow composite video lead unplugged, or use another screen with composite video output & you can see the comparisons between them in real time.
Does this mean that artifact colors generated in old home computers via RF out or composite would not work with S-Video? I knew that using analog RGB to play an NTSC Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer game that used artifact colors to generate red and blue would simply show black and white stripes or dots. But what about S-Video?
Excellent video Matt - just like your other videos! :) Thanks for sharing. A qq if I may please: What is the brand/model of the PC video IO card you're showing at 4:00? I desperately need some proper TV out for my PC either as a card or an adapter as any scan converter I tried so far (HDMI to CVBS dongle, Ambery semi-pro VGA to CVBS box) gives totally different output in terms of electrical signal parameters and picture size which is super annoying and visible of course. I have some modern, professional modulators and fully refurbished CRT televisions but I lack the professional grade video source from my PC which does adhere to the PAL standards.
Any chance you could do a video or link to a video/guide for how you set up outputting the test cards (and how you created the cards themselves) in software from what looks to be an AJA Kona LHi? Thanks!
It is a Kona LHi. The test cards were actually made in MS paint! The dimensions have to be an exact i.e. 720x576, this is the CCIR 601 bit - 720px wide corresponds to a 13.5 MHz pixel clock. Having done that I believe it was a case of opening the image in the AJA software and that was it!
I am gonna video capture some VHS tapes. Unfortunately, my VCR does NOT have an S-Video output jack. Is there any work around possible? I have my VCR's video out going into my Panasonic ES-10 DVD Recorder. This DVD recorder has S-Video. I use it as a TBC pass-through. Then it goes into my Sony DVD Recorder, which also has S-Video, and it records the disc. Could plugging an S-Video cable between the 2 DVD Recorders help improve the quality, OR do I simply need a VCR with S-Video jacks?
S-Video is basically universal on S-VHS decks, and very rare for regular VHS. Using S-Video between the two recorders won't improve the image quality, but it may help ensure that it doesn't get degraded any further - if you're using the first one as TBC, it might also change the phase of the color subcarrier, which may indeed cause further artifacts in case of a composite connection, so probably an S-Video cable is preferable. I guess in theory you could tap somewhere on your VHS deck's PCB to get the separate luma/chroma signals but that's probably much more complicated than it is worth. The good news is that for regular VHS, the quality improvement is gonna be marginal. The luma bandwidth on VHS is about 3 MHz, and the chroma bandwidth is about 400 kHz. NTSC chroma subcarrier is ~3.58 MHz, and 400 kHz below that it's 3.18 MHz, still above 3 MHz - which means that the chroma and luma spectra on VHS tapes have basically no chance of overlapping - any overlapping information has already been filtered out (either correctly or incorrectly, but you can't do anything about it now either way) at the time of recording. For PAL it's even better because the chroma subcarrier there is ~4.43 MHz and the bandwidths are the same. S-Video can still be preferable if possible, because it's gonna be unambiguous to the receiving device what is luma and what is chroma, so it doesn't need to do its own, potentially further destructive filtering - but still, for regular VHS the difference is gonna be negligible. There's just not enough information on the tape for those effects to really matter.
@@kFY514 Thanks for the info! that is very interesting that S-Video is very rare for regular VHS VCR's. I once had a rarity. It was the Go Video deck that everyone bought to copy tapes. Had an S-Video output, but I had an accident with it one day and to make a long story short, I had to throw it in the trash dumpster. Anyway, I will buy a VCR with S-Video soon! Thanks again!
I can't fault the image quality, but I'd like to propose that S-Video is physically the worst video connector. SCART you only have two ways you can try plugging it in, Mini-DIN gives you infinite ways of getting it wrong.
And they are even worse today than ever. Back in the 1990s S-Video connectors were half decent i.e. if you mate them in the correct orientation they will actually fit together. Today's (purchased of Amazon) connectors all seem to require a degree of bending and straightening before there is any chance of a successful mate!
@@mattstvbarn yup, and the problems don't stop at how the bad the connectors are, the wires in most modern cables are absolute junk. I was looking for S-Video cables for a while to try it with my MiSTer FPGA and an external RGB to composite & s-video converter to get it to work on an older CRT TV I have with no component input, found a bundle of 5 cables for a suspiciously low price and got it. Two of them straight out didn't have continuity on all the pins, I decided to cut one of them open and sure enough, the wires were hair thin and there was absolutely no shielding. I do have an LCD TV with both composite and S-Video inputs where I did perform a few tests and it's very obvious when reading text how S-Video is way better than composite. After a bit of digging around I found the service manual for my CRT TV and, to my surprise, it's jungle chip supports S-Video input, but it's missing the connector and probably a few other components. I'd love to mod it to be able to take S-Video and perhaps RGB, but I'm not confident enough not to zap myself with high voltage. 😅
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great video, even as a kid I rushed to find an S-Video cable for my playstation 2 and none of my friends could understand why mine looked so much better than theirs. I had tons of engineer family members to teach me early
I have seen hundreds of videos from 8-bit channels regarding S-Video, and Composite, and upgrades, and saw diagrams, heck, I am an engineer myself. And I knew that it is better, and I knew why, but I have never seen it displayed and demonstrated this clearly! Thank you!
My old analogue TV setup was basically a Grundig Sky digibox outputting S-Video to a Panasonic S-VHS VCR (with TBC), and then over to the TV's S-Video input. Recordings made on that setup were phenomenal!
Naturally, all general day-to-day TV viewing was over RGB SCART, but no way to record a direct RGB feed until the arrival of DVD recorders. Most probably went with Sky+ by then!
Wow, that was fascinating! Those scope grabs really illustrated whats happening. Thank you for sharing your knowledge :)
I switched to S-video for my Nintendo 64, and for text and color it really makes a difference!
Same. In my retro console set up only the N64 uses S-video whereas all the others use RGB and I have to admit that the N64 looks just fine. To get it looking any better would require significant modification of the console itself.
It's interesting to see the comb filter in the TV either cancelling out the signal of neighboring lines or falling back to a trap filter in NTSC along the seams between the zone plates. It does do a decent job with PAL given how much harder it is to implement a good adaptive comb filter. It does make me wonder what the BBC's PAL Transform Decoder would do if presented with the "Zone Plate Hell" pattern. I imaging even that would fail to suppress the cross-color.
I had for many years a JVC 66cm TV and a JVC S-VHS deck. And even though JVC were the ones who popularised S-video and that connector, they also had very good comb filters in the TV and VCR I had! So composite and S-video were nearly the same quality. I only really saw the difference with a Pioneer DVD player that had surprisingly grotty composite video. But it didn't matter to me because I used it's RGB output on the SCART connector.
Thank you. Well presented, and I don't say that to many 'content creators' on YT! Former student and engineer of NTSC and CCTV 'broadcast' dating back to the Ampex days in the mid 1970's here ...
This digital TV (and most modern digital TVs) does a very good job of separating the luma and chroma. For NTSC the picture is almost perfect. Back in the analog days the rainbowing was horrific and we also had dot crawl which is completely absent in this demonstration.
Actually at least some modern TV-sets get way beyond comb filtering, offering extremely good luma and chroma separation since they take multiple fields into account for their luma-chroma filtering.
Yeah I know. My brand new Samsung does absolutely ridiculous processing on analogue signals. Really good results. But back in the good old analogue days comb filtering was best for sure!
@@mattstvbarn Actually some PALplus sets might also do similar amounts of filtering.
@@mattstvbarn In a way it's actually sad to see that in the place where it actually matters (DVD mastering) they actually use by far the worst PAL decoders still in widespread use.
Excellent explanation.
You can achieve s-video output through the scart socket with a scart to RCA & composite video adapter with an s-video port built in, just use the s-video lead with the red & white audio leads leaving the yellow composite video lead unplugged, or use another screen with composite video output & you can see the comparisons between them in real time.
Does this mean that artifact colors generated in old home computers via RF out or composite would not work with S-Video? I knew that using analog RGB to play an NTSC Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer game that used artifact colors to generate red and blue would simply show black and white stripes or dots. But what about S-Video?
Good talk and overview
Excellent video Matt - just like your other videos! :) Thanks for sharing.
A qq if I may please: What is the brand/model of the PC video IO card you're showing at 4:00?
I desperately need some proper TV out for my PC either as a card or an adapter as any scan converter I tried so far (HDMI to CVBS dongle, Ambery semi-pro VGA to CVBS box) gives totally different output in terms of electrical signal parameters and picture size which is super annoying and visible of course. I have some modern, professional modulators and fully refurbished CRT televisions but I lack the professional grade video source from my PC which does adhere to the PAL standards.
It's an AJA Kona LHi
Thanks!
Any chance you could do a video or link to a video/guide for how you set up outputting the test cards (and how you created the cards themselves) in software from what looks to be an AJA Kona LHi? Thanks!
It is a Kona LHi. The test cards were actually made in MS paint! The dimensions have to be an exact i.e. 720x576, this is the CCIR 601 bit - 720px wide corresponds to a 13.5 MHz pixel clock. Having done that I believe it was a case of opening the image in the AJA software and that was it!
4:46: "this is a beat pattern which occours between the oscillator in the color decoder and input signal"
Could you explain why that happens?
Thanks!
I've never liked comb filters in TVs. They tend to soften the image far too much
I am gonna video capture some VHS tapes. Unfortunately, my VCR does NOT have an S-Video output jack. Is there any work around possible? I have my VCR's video out going into my Panasonic ES-10 DVD Recorder. This DVD recorder has S-Video. I use it as a TBC pass-through. Then it goes into my Sony DVD Recorder, which also has S-Video, and it records the disc. Could plugging an S-Video cable between the 2 DVD Recorders help improve the quality, OR do I simply need a VCR with S-Video jacks?
S-Video is basically universal on S-VHS decks, and very rare for regular VHS.
Using S-Video between the two recorders won't improve the image quality, but it may help ensure that it doesn't get degraded any further - if you're using the first one as TBC, it might also change the phase of the color subcarrier, which may indeed cause further artifacts in case of a composite connection, so probably an S-Video cable is preferable.
I guess in theory you could tap somewhere on your VHS deck's PCB to get the separate luma/chroma signals but that's probably much more complicated than it is worth.
The good news is that for regular VHS, the quality improvement is gonna be marginal. The luma bandwidth on VHS is about 3 MHz, and the chroma bandwidth is about 400 kHz. NTSC chroma subcarrier is ~3.58 MHz, and 400 kHz below that it's 3.18 MHz, still above 3 MHz - which means that the chroma and luma spectra on VHS tapes have basically no chance of overlapping - any overlapping information has already been filtered out (either correctly or incorrectly, but you can't do anything about it now either way) at the time of recording. For PAL it's even better because the chroma subcarrier there is ~4.43 MHz and the bandwidths are the same. S-Video can still be preferable if possible, because it's gonna be unambiguous to the receiving device what is luma and what is chroma, so it doesn't need to do its own, potentially further destructive filtering - but still, for regular VHS the difference is gonna be negligible. There's just not enough information on the tape for those effects to really matter.
@@kFY514 Thanks for the info! that is very interesting that S-Video is very rare for regular VHS VCR's. I once had a rarity. It was the Go Video deck that everyone bought to copy tapes. Had an S-Video output, but I had an accident with it one day and to make a long story short, I had to throw it in the trash dumpster. Anyway, I will buy a VCR with S-Video soon! Thanks again!
Thanks so much for this video
MAC technologies is unavailable. Finding any MAC broadcasting devices is almost impossible. I will waiting for "How PALplus is working?".
Oh your observation skills are superb 👌
May I ask what the PCIe card you used for generating the signals is ? It looks like I could use something like this
AJA KONA LHi
I can't fault the image quality, but I'd like to propose that S-Video is physically the worst video connector. SCART you only have two ways you can try plugging it in, Mini-DIN gives you infinite ways of getting it wrong.
And they are even worse today than ever. Back in the 1990s S-Video connectors were half decent i.e. if you mate them in the correct orientation they will actually fit together. Today's (purchased of Amazon) connectors all seem to require a degree of bending and straightening before there is any chance of a successful mate!
@@mattstvbarn yup, and the problems don't stop at how the bad the connectors are, the wires in most modern cables are absolute junk. I was looking for S-Video cables for a while to try it with my MiSTer FPGA and an external RGB to composite & s-video converter to get it to work on an older CRT TV I have with no component input, found a bundle of 5 cables for a suspiciously low price and got it. Two of them straight out didn't have continuity on all the pins, I decided to cut one of them open and sure enough, the wires were hair thin and there was absolutely no shielding. I do have an LCD TV with both composite and S-Video inputs where I did perform a few tests and it's very obvious when reading text how S-Video is way better than composite.
After a bit of digging around I found the service manual for my CRT TV and, to my surprise, it's jungle chip supports S-Video input, but it's missing the connector and probably a few other components. I'd love to mod it to be able to take S-Video and perhaps RGB, but I'm not confident enough not to zap myself with high voltage. 😅
Do not watch this video if you've got a migraine! ;)
My N64 look quite better woth S-video... Of course, it is still an N64. 😅