The maddening incompatibility of 3.5mm A/V cables
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 พ.ค. 2024
- 3.5mm A/V outputs were commonly used on camcorders, digital still cameras, portable DVD players, and other compact media devices in the 2000s. Unfortunately there were numerous different pinouts, and you usually can't tell just by looking at it which devices a 3.5mm A/V cable will be compatible with.
Time flow:
0:00 Introduction
1:08 Video only
1:54 Video & mono audio
6:17 Video & stereo audio
14:57 Apple's flip-flop
16:43 The camcorder standard
18:32 Are you feeling lucky?
20:47 S-Video
21:42 Component video
22:56 Where to buy
24:11 Sony's solution
#RetroTech #camcorder #CRTgaming - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
The best part about standards is there are so many to choose from
@@gorak9000and your device needs to actually adhere to the specifications for all those standards, then you’re right as rain!
The TRRS standards that chose to use another contact for ground than the sleeve should have been rejected by all importers/ regulation boards. That way the *cable* will actually work on all analog AV devices by just swapping RCA jacks around.
"Apple couldn't keep it straight even before Tim Cook became CEO" oh my god that came out of nowhere
That one went right over my head. Whoosh.
Was looking for this comment, I had to rewind after that one I was laughing so much 😂
The shade!
i had to pause the video after that one lol
Today I learned, I guess.
Not using sleeve for ground in all instances is quite sadistic. I can only imagine it would be done as a means of limiting crosstalk internally on a header, or to enforce proprietariness.
Kind of like the evil center pin negative power connectors....no valid reason to do it other than to break compatibility.
Thank goodnes no one did it. No one did it... right....?
It's for cross-compatibility with TRS connectors. Most board-mount TRS sockets have the ground pin where the second ring is on a TRRS plug. (but some chassis-mount TRS connectors have it where the S is so it still goes wrong sometimes...)
@@TheRasteri Yeah, and I immediately knew what Apple had done when changing connectors because I knew about this. (I actually know about this for a different reason: the now-mostly-over war between the two TRRS headphone/microphone jack standards: CTIA (LRGM) and OMTP (LRMG)).
Not to mention all the different sizes of external and internal dimensions
I had always assumed these cables were standardized. I appreciate this video.
the only thing standard is the size. except when its not lol
The cables are all electrically the same though, the thing with the different/non standard output is all the camcorder devices.
Nope, cause manufacturers wanted you to buy their accessories.
@@Balikon There's not always justification for cynicism. There are a few reasons why there are different variations of the TRRS connector, specifically:
1) Some devices are meant to support the insertion of TRS or TRRS plugs. E.g., the headphone jack of a device that can also produce video. If you insert headphones or a line-out cable, which are both TRS, you want Left and RIght audio, and you need Ground. And, if there's another ring, it should carry Video. But if there ISN'T a second ring, it should not connect to _anything_ on a TRS plug. For this reason, it's important that a TRRS jack use the "L,R,V,G" arrangement.
2) On the other hand, there are devices (like camcorders) where stereo audio isn't as important as video + mono audio. For those, if you only have a TRS cable, you would prefer mono audio + video over stereo audio and no video. So for those devices, it's important that a TRRS jack use the "L,V,R,G" arrangement.
3) Backwards compatibility is a thing. Some manufacturers want to ensure that when you upgrade your device, your accessories are compatible, ideally, forward and backward. But there's a wrench in the works: The 3.5 mm mini plug connector has been around a long time, and there are lots of manufacturers out there making parts. Back when only TS and TRS were common, the placement of the shield connection inside the jack wasn't critical. So, manufacturers chose a contact point with the stem of the plug that best suited the space they had inside the jack. And that was fine -- until you start adding additional rings. Then your leeway for where to contact the plug starts to shrink. If your existing products all used jacks that contact the shield toward the base of the plug -- no problem. But, if they contacted the plug higher up, it could actually land where the 2nd ring terminal goes on TRRS plugs. That might mean that you accidentally swap G and V (or mic, or whatever the third signal line is supposed to be), OR, it might just leave the signals ungrounded. (Particularly with adapters.) So, for those, it's important to have a "L,R,G,V" arrangement.
But mostly, many manufacturers solved this problem however they needed to, until standards started to emerge. When they did, a manufacturer was faced with retaining backward compatibility with older products, or dropping the arrangement they used before in favor of the more appropriate and/or standardized arrangement. Which is what I suspect happened with Apple when they released the iPod with video output, compared to the iBook.
Many manufacturers had vibrant third-party ecosystems, and not all of them prioritized selling aftermarket cables for their products. (Usually, they would ship WITH the product, and only sold separately as a replacement item.) So, no, nobody was trying to get rich off of selling proprietary composite video cables. It was just a chaotic ecosystem that has since mostly whittled itself down to a few common versions. But still a few, because the fallback-to-TRS case is different depending on the kind of product it is, which necessitates different pinouts.
Kids that grew up around knock-off electronics from early 90s are extremely aware of the incompatibility.
Parents asking ten times a day why the colors don't match...
"I don't know why the tape player has four cables. Just try every combination, MOM!"
"Isn't it going to break the TV?"
"I DON'T KNOW!"
If you find this confusing, know that USSR equipment used DIN5 for essentially everything - headphones, microphones, composite video, RGB video, remote controls, joysticks and even power. And yes, if you connect the power to the wrong socket, there is a risk of damaging the device. But don't worry - all soviet devices came with user manuals with circuit diagrams. So you can fix everything yourself. In the same manual, you could find the pinouts of all the cables so you can solder them yourself.
Not just USSR, DIN connectors were quite widely used across the rest of Europe as well. Same thing with product documentation that included schematics, parts lists and other repair & maintenance info. They don't make 'em like they used to... Nowadays it's the manuals just saying to leave repairs to authorized service locations and the devices saying not to open and there (supposedly) being no user servicable parts inside.
Yes I guess back in the day circuits where designed with a lot more passive components. Including the circuit diagram was common as well. These days, due to everything being highly integrated including a circuit diagram won't really help as the ICs are usually proprietry and cannot be purchased individually. Also with having components so small that you could easily fit a dozen or more on a grain of rice makes DIY repair incredibly difficult if not impossible.
My friend blew up his old Czechoslovakian amplifier since they used DIN5 jacks for everything and THEY HAD THE SAME PINOUT. So he accidentally connected a line input into the phono connector and blew up the preamp. I was tasked with fixing it 😂
Well score one for user repairability at least. Maybe that’s why devices are black boxes now, they see it as too communist to let us fix our own stuff :P
Way back when (I'm old) the Soviet gear had completely incompatible connectors (just like their system, lol). DIN is actually German (in what used to be West Germany) it stands for Deutsches Institut für Normung (literally German Institute for Standardisation.) So when DIN arrived in the USSR that was actually progress. :)
In case anyone is wondering, here is the theoretical total of possible combinations:
For a TRS connector: 6
For a TRRS connector: 24
Thank you very much for your work Mr Kevin.
Best regards from Chile.
Apparently there's more to it than the simple mapping, as the Iomega ScreenPlay showed.
If the sleeve is assumed to be ground, which is the standard but doesn't appear to be followed all the time, then the number of possibilities is 2 and 6 for trs and trrs respectively.
The possibilities for n varying poles is n!, i.e. n factorial. A mathematical operation where you multiply an integer by every integer smaller than it. 1! = 1, 2! = 2 * 1 = 2, 3! = 3 * 2 *1 = 6, etc.
If we assume that on the other side all connectors are of the same RCA type, then there are only two variations: with ground on the second ring, and with ground on the sleeve. Ensure that ground matches, and re-arrange other connectors accordingly.
There are also at least two different lengths of pin and some equipment can be damaged if you use the long pins in a short socket.
Those used car commercials are gold! 🤣
Best believe that the lads are still marketing their used cars to this day on cable 💯💪
This channel is about the last place on earth I'd expect to see a BBC 1 continuity announcement and then a clip of Match Of The Day... :D
TH-cam is finally going back to recommending to me the channels I truly love instead of the junk I won't pay any attention to. It makes me happy to see that your subscriber count has nearly doubled and that you're still the same voice and channel you've always been. ❤❤
yeah i also noticed the same, i was like wtf where are my favorite tech channels in my home page?
Maybe for you, but I found this video under "new for you", and I'm even subscribed. At least my unfiltered suggestion page was full of garbage today...
This here video gives not only "tips" but runs "rings" around any A/V content out there. I will give this video a "plug" on my social media.
What is wrong with you? Why are you blue?
Heh, looks like you really have something up your "sleeve" when it comes to puns.
This is exactly the kind of extremely specific content I love
Oh my goodness. You have unlocked a bunch of bad memories that I had forgotten with trying to get game consoles, camcorders and DVD/VCRs all to work together... Alas trying all the ports on the back of the VCR (as well as setting the time) was something only a very young child was seemingly capable of doing.
I remember my friend brought his xbox360. Picture quality was mind blowing, similar to digital ins on that tv.
UPD: it wasn't Xbox, it was actually DVD itself, where i used component cable from T2 decoder. It was fun seeing all colours messed up until you plug them right.
I despised the 3.5mm A/V connection but my young-self never knew why
@@vadnegruhow did you do that? to my knowledge all Xbox 360s have a proprietary video out that is adapted to composite or component with a cable. It would be really nice to use any old component cable with the thing so I’m pretty curious
@@notNajimi looking into them, all of them has cables and not sockets.
@notNajimi It was the XBOX 360 E that had the TRRS jack on it.
The OG / slim models had the weirdo cable.
The same problem comes up when using modern TRS MIDI. You can use this very technique to make it work.
MIDI on TRS?!? Who the heck came up with that, when it already has its standard DIN jack?
lol I definitely wasn't expecting to see a recording of Match of the Day from 2008!
Wow, that Spanish speaking lady is so energetic!
Wow what crazy timing. Funnily enough I was STILL dealing with this issue the very day you uploaded this video trying to use the TRRS port on my Raspberry Pi to output composite video.
RecordCouncil well done...i wondered while watching if anyone would have experienced the RaspberryPi pinout...many seem to have forgotten about it these days...i found this out a few years ago...you can find information online specifically telling the user to buy the cable from an authorised RPi seller such as The Pi Hut...which i did
My Sony flatscreen required a cable for the composite inputs (not included). A genuine Sony, from their parts supplier, was nearly $37! But after some online help, I located a compatible cable, on Amazon, for just over $6.
Ah, the Apple strategy! Take something away and charge a premium to get it back
TCL do similar, but they include a cable just don’t sell a replacement. I’m looking at a Sony tv so hoping the TVL cable is compatible
25:20 I love that Sony kept the recording chimes the same after all these years - My RX100 M7 still uses the same chimes!
Amazing how you can take a seemingly mundane subject like this and turn into a brain-melting epic. Great video!
I tried to use one of those splitters for modern TVs to get composite output from my Raspberry Pi 3B+ and it gave me an inverted composite signal, how lovely. Ended up building my own cable with an old TRRS headphone cable.
Yep, I just checked my own RPi cable and it seems to use the camcorder convention of video on the sleeve. Which I guess makes sense since it was the closest thing to an established “standard” by the time the Pi came out, but it still seems weird.
The problem is, if your cable connects the sleeve to ground, you're out of luck.
@@duncansnowden6857 They probably also made the 2nd ring ground so it would be compatible with headphones that have mics/buttons (which have the ground on the 2nd ring as well).
Ah,this must be the reason why the projector speakers at the school blasted out the sound of the composite video signal when some kids connected their camcorder to it
Didn't expect to see Match of the Day turn up on this channel.
I've come across this problem once or twice. The fun continues, however.
Headsets - stereo audio + microphone - the kind of earbuds you might have used for your mobile phone. When they first started appearing, many devices used a different pinout than the standard you find today. I think it was on a SonyEricsson Walkman phone I discovered that.
Correct. It was Apple that screwed everything up by swapping the mic and ground connections around. Apple 'decided' that it would be better if the Mic connection went to the Sleeve and the Ground went to the adjacent Ring. This had the highly undesirable effect of breaking backwards compatibility so that mobile phone headsets could not be used as high quality earphones in other devices. Android devices, at least in the early days, kept the Sleeve as Ground and added an extra Ring for the Mic which was great because it maintained backwards compatibility. It doesn't help that 4-pole pcb connectors are difficult to get hold of and four-pole leads are generally lousy quality for anyone wanting to adapt existing devices or make adapters.
On cellphones at least there were only two headset pinouts, the tip and the outer ring were always L and R to keep compatibility with consumer audio headphones. One pinout was known as OMDP (inner ring mic, sleeve ground), and the other that became the de facto standard, is known as CTIA (inner ring ground, sleeve mic)
at least there are adapters to solve that problem (CTIA to OMTP), some headphones manufacturers even include (or used to) the adapter.
i bought a pair of soundmagic E10C headphones a while ago and they came with the adapter, so i can use them with my old sony ericsson xperia pro or my current phone.
HattmannenNilsson
WHAT PROBLEM YOU HAVE ?
You try video on walkman ? Just digitise the old tapes !
discovered what ? Where you store the Video content ? You Forgot ? upload it ?
@@josangoj78strangly enough I think I've only ever owned one pair of earbuds that had a microphone built in.
I did own a weird headphone that had a microphone built in but the microphone was in the cable like an earbud not in the headphones or on a sticking out bit like gamers have. Thats very strange and I don't know what Sony was thinking
I had an old cell phone that let me use the mic built into it when making a phone call with headphones or earphones so I had no use for my one pair with the built-in microphone and I liked other pairs I had so I got rid of them.
Headphones I had I didn't really use because I had other pairs and I got them as a Christmas gift. When playing online games I use a dedicated mic I double-sided tape to my headphones.
Sir this video was so timely, I found a box full of old 8mm tapes from the mid 90's and I couldn't get any video or audio on my new 2024 television, after watching this video and switching the plugs around, my grandchildren are now watching videos of their parents as children, thank you, I am now a Subscriber !!!
I once did a composite video modification to an old Intellivision video game console. Since I didn’t want to drill any holes in early 1980s brittle plastic, I wired the audio and video to a TRRS socket, and routed it out the opening for the RF jack. Because stupid me assumed that all sane TRRS cables make the sleeve ground, that’s how I wired the socket.
I just bought a TRRS cable on Amazon, and nothing worked.
I tried the swapping pins, no go. Then I toned out the cable and found that the ring next to the sleeve was wired to the grounds on the jacks, in contradiction of the description.
I rewired the socket after I finished using all the best kind of words for lovely chinesium manufacturers.
Don't forget the iPod Shuffle 4th gen which used a TRRS cable for both USB and stereo audio! The iPod can detect which one is plugged in and will switch modes automatically. that TRRS to USB cable is super tiny and easy to lose and annoying to replace lol
those cables are an absolute bitch to track down, the aftermarket ones don't work at all and the official ones cost too damn much for me to bother.
Wish I knew about the iBook having composite output back in the day. Thank you for this video.
Oh boy, yes. I remember working in an electronics shop as a teenager. We somehow had like 5 different versions of those AV cables, and we absolutely NEVER got it right on the 1st try.
I'd always assumed the 4-pole A/V plugs were standardised. Had no idea there were variations, including some that didn't use the sleeve as ground! Early Sharp Viewcams used a 2.5mm mono plug for video, and a 3.5mm plug for audio. It's surprisingly difficult to find a 2.5mm mono plug to Phono (RCA) cable. I had to resort to making my own cables. (I know you can get adaptors, but I always feel that these place too much stress on the delicate sockets on the camcorder.)
I know TRRS as a miniature balanced connector. Those are really frustrating because of all the different ways they could be wired and be incompatible.
3.5mm TRRS can be a little spicy as a balanced connector given how easy it is to confuse it with a headphone with remote or in this case stereo audio + video. I think 2.5mm or 4.4mm is much better to avoid getting this confused.
What uses TRRS for balanced audio? You only need 3 connectors for that and TRS/XLR is the standard
@@beefeeb Sony WM1A, Sony MV1, Fostex T60RP, Oppo PM-3 do on the headphone side. Incidentally the Sony’s use a different pin out compared to the Fostex and Oppo.
@@beefeeb For stereo balanced, you can do balanced as L+, L-, R+, R-,(Ground is derived after cancelling the two out), and some portable balanced headphone amps uses it.
@@rich1051414 oh right, forgot headphone manufacturers started selling "balanced" units. I'm used to the pro audio standard
The next time I hear someone complain about HDMI or Displayport I'm sending them to this video.
How hard can HDMI/DP be? You literally just plug them in!
What can be worse of HDMI feature just to not working for unknown reason when pinout is certain and all wires are good? Or that autodetection madness when you must power on devices in right order to make HDMI output active at all? A lot of STBs keep HDMI off if powered before TV and they can't wake monitor up either.
Lol.. your thumbnail is great showing scissors cutting one.. I did EXACTLY that about a month ago.. and I didn't realize it was a TRRS, and when I wired it for Stereo I was only getting mono. The default wiring was using the top for video and the next two rings for audio, but the wiring for my project was using the top as an audio channel. It worked out in the end, but I had hoped to just plugin and be good, and instead I had to cut and rewire..
Great Vid!
I love your videos, Vwestlife. I have several of these cables and I've got two of those ubiquitous Chinese Android boxes, with 3.5mm AV outs. These boxes both have CVBS settings, but about four of these 3.5mm AV cables only produce buzzing or flickering. I now realise that the ground is probably in the wrong place on them! Thank you.
Thanks Mr VWestlife. All my pain and buckets of AV cables from this era explained away in 2024. The nonsense of cable incompatibility is a saga and not just a story from the past - The cables today are different but just as annoying 🤓
Yeah USB-C is quite the can of worms. Different data speeds, different charging capabilities, some weird proprietary standards like OnePlus' VOOC exist...etc.
Wow! 🤯 Thank you very much for this video! I had no idea that there was no industry standard for mapping the contacts of 3.5 mm. TRS/TRRS AV connectors of this time, even though to the naked eye they seem identical. (This is where extra RCA male-male cords and alligator clips come in very handy! 😊) This video may save me and many other people from mistakenly trashing devices that actually work!
Well done video. Yes, I have had all these experiences. Thanks for putting all the discombobulated mess in an orderly way.
Aha! I got a kick out of the content on your ScreenPlay, didn't expect to see match of the day!
Anyone who's had even a modest number of AV-adjacent devices from the 2000s must have drawers of these things, I know I do. I don't use them often but it's always a bit of a guess what goes with what anymore!
Well that explains it then why I had problems in the past using similar 3 ringed 3.5mm Jack plugs..thanks very informative. 👍🏽
You could try using an OMTP/CTIA adapter.
Some years ago a guy on ebay sold me a half-working mini dvd camera for 50 pound, stating the video out didn’t work. I knew what was going on😄
You're amazing!
i have no idea about any of this but im still gonna watch it.
I understand. I never owned a computer until 2 years ago. I know nothing about computers. Especially the older computers and technology that VWestlife reviews but I still watch all the videos anyway. It's like an addiction. I wake up every Saturday morning eager to see a new video that he has put out regardless of what it is.
I wish this video existed back when I was just getting into Handycams and other equipment that used a 3.5mm AV jack; I can't tell you how many times I played the guessing game of which cable would work only to get a new one and have that one be incompatible too! Using a multimeter to figure out the pinout is something so simple and straightforward that it's almost too easy to overlook.
Yup, i also experienced something similar with a few of these chinese low-budget clone consoles with NES games on them or those better emulation handhelds. Even those are sometimes not compatible regarding their 3,5mm Combo Jack. I usually use the Raspberry Pi (Model 2 and up) as a reference for how it should be. As it makes great sense there to have an analog output, for when you need signals to be sent to an older Standard Def television.
This was an enjoyable video to watch, thank you for your time and dedication.
Oh my, this really takes me back. I’ve owned several portable TV and/or DVD players and a Raspberry Pi that all used a TRRS or TRS 3.5mm cable for analog composite A/V out and they all they all seemed to have different wiring configurations. I ended up making a cable for my Raspberry Pi since it seemed to use a particularly non-standard wiring config. It’s great when all your need to do is just swap the V, LA, and RA plugs but It a real pain when one of the sleeves is used for ground.
The buzzing is the sync pulses in the composite cable. Nice video for people who just started in this hobby.
Love seeing these old camcorders and the types of cables used in the past 👍
Please digitise the tape now !
Don't do what he is doing !
This video is bringing back so many memories. These cables were maddening and sometimes you couldn't find the right one so would have to settle for one that's nearly correct being plugged 2/3 of the way in.
The selection of clips is superb, as usual. 😂
I have a Roku with this type of output and I have long thought it was broken because the output is scrambled like in your video. Now I know I need a different cable. Thanks!!
In the Philippines, non-Japan/Europe spec devices have the Ground before the video. Oftentimes, devices sold here have L/R/V/G from top to bottom config for 3.5mm to rca cables.
Another banger of an explanatory video.
I ran into one of those 4 connector cables when attempting to transfer my digital videotapes from my trip to Didneyworld when I bought it from Amazon where it paired Video and Mono Audio together on a connector instead of with Ground. So I brute forced it - I soldered a wire changing adaptor to make it work correctly instead of buying another damn cable.
Another edge-of-my-seat video. But the Tim & Eric 80s intro/transition music has a new arrangement! It threw me for a while, but I got used to it.
Wow, good job...didn't expect to learn so much from this video. I had no idea that there were cables where the "S" wasn't used for ground. I definitely would have thought you could just swap the cables around! I've started collecting 8bit computers, and this reminded me of the AV cables for TI99/4A, Atari and C64. I haven't yet come up with a labeling scheme for my cable, as now I have all 3 computers that work with the same cable.
I did expect so, but only because of who this video is coming from, and how much Kevin can squeeze into 15 minutes, so if this needed to be almost twice that much...
Super video!!! I am a very old patagonian engineer and professsor and I love that youth like you adore vintage and teaches so well!!! I thank you.
Have run into this issue myself a number of times. As a side note (with me being a bit OCD) I am so pleased to see you know your 'jacks' from your 'plugs', so may YT videos I see where people refer to a plug as a jack, thank you for pacifying one of my pet hates lol. Great video as always, love your channel dude 🙂
My jersey boy always with the deep cuts. Love the vids
Thanks for the tour through the spaghetti world of A/V cables. I'm sure a lot of mod techs who only want the latest gadgets will wonder why all this matters now but it does. Remember when we used to ask, "why can't the world of cables and jacks be universal?" I have a box of these various cables and they come in handy depending on what project I'm doing. It can be both frustrating and fun trying to work it all out.
7:17 I guess they needed to use a 3.5 mm TRRS connectors for composite/component video and stereo audio on that Iomega ScreenPlay because of that SCART connector. You'd almost think they would've been further ahead to just use the SCART connector, and pack in SCART-to-composite-and-stereo and SCART-to-component-and-stereo adapters (maybe only outside Europe), instead of duplicating the ports and still needing to ship custom cables, but my money's on "that would've cost more".
Man, i had a handheld video game system i loved that used that cable. Lost it one day, and tried several others i had on hand randomly over the course of years and expirienced this exactly like you did. I just reversed the connections like you showed, and it worked perfectly. Such a simple solution. Always appreciate your videos!
That cable that produces rolling image, take the slim uninsulated copper wire and connect all grounds on the TV jacks. Can be done with aluminium foil. Video should work. but it sound will be mono and you will have to choose left or right audio out, but it is bearable if your device can select mono sound.
For emergencies ;)
Thank you for the info in this video. I often encounter problems with incompatible cables. Now I know why. I'm totally ignorant of how optical cables and other digital output cables work and which type of digital cables to use with my audio/video players and av receivers. I'm wondering if you made a video on that subject too. Much appreciated.
I have some of the composite stereo cables like this so now you got me wanting to try out this experiment about swapping cables🤔
Definitely a useful video for me!😉👌
Kevin thanks for making this video I wasn't crazy afterall! Very interesting video
Surprised and pleased to see Match of the Day and some dude celebrating a Vauxhall Corsa on that Iomega drive! Early 2000s UK at its best
Wasn't expecting a recording of Match of the Day with Gary Lineker 😊 (famous UK TV programme that has been on the air since the mid 60s).
Man, I never thought that such an A/V cable has many differences without looking at and testing them properly.
Best video on low-tech ever but sorely needed a refresher has every tech does now and again...
As an electrical engineering tech PLC programmer 30-year 40-year electrician US Air Force jet engine mechanic,, I am seeing that the shield possibly not being connected to the conductor used as ground as bad as the connectors just not working at all, low volts with no shielding turns into an instant RF antenna as is when the static changes when you change turn directions and your electric guitar noise changes if the noise changes it's RF if the noise doesn't change when you move it's bad grounding but you got to have proper shielding otherwise the game is already over. Like that and subscribed please keep that's a good work.
When my mother bought a new TV last year I was amazed at the (lack of an) input selection it had. 3 HDMI ports, and one 3.5mm port for a breakout cable for composite (which was not included.) That is it. No other analog inputs, just the 3.5mm port. I am sure that has been the standard for quite some time, but the newest TV I own is my 2006 Panasonic Plasma TV, which has about every digital and analog input you would ever want.
You really snuck the Tim Cook joke on me, good one. Also good info in general.
What a comprehensive video on AV cable pinouts! Without this information it would be easy for many people to assume (including myself) that the cable is faulty if it doesn’t work with a particular device.
I've seen a camera that had such a cable, except instead of having 3 RCA jacks, it had two (video and L audio), and a USB (power) plug.. Both weird and somewhat dangerous if plugged by mistake into a device that isn't compatible..
One of the most educational channels on TH-cam by far.
About 8 years ago I was teaching a class for phone technical support for a cable company. A kid in the class stuck around one day after we had gone over composite and component cables, worried if someone would call who couldn't tell the difference between the colors. I explained a strategy where someone could fold the flat cable in half to pair up the ends and match the labels between the TV and receiver jacks and everything will be fine. He wasn't so sure that the different colors would work because they're for different data. It completely blew his mind when we went to the racks and mixed up the color code and everything worked 😂 We discovered he was completely overthinking things and didn't pick up on the fact that copper cabling can't be trained to send only specific data while rejecting all others and as long as the ends are connected where they should be, the colored plastic doesn't care either🤦♂️
Copper cable can't be trained to a single type but that doesn't mean all cables are the same. Sometimes the video connection has a higher quality cable to maintain better high frequency signal integrity over distance.
another delightfully specific topic!
Apparently I'm happy to listen to you talk about anything.
I also have a small collection of these cables and have run into this exact problem myself on numerous occasions. Good to know I'm not alone!
Thanks for adding actual captions for the Deaf. - saving this to help sort the mess of cables
Useful info. Kudos and much thanks.
This weirdness also extends into the modern world with advanced smart phones that have headphones with microphones and controls for receiving a call. My sisters wedding reception in Cuba late April 2018 had a problem like this.
Spanish Car review shows are ten times more intense than any English speaking thriller!
Thank you for the upload! 😊
That Tim Cook joke..... Savage!! :-))
14:30 Fun fact: there's a 5th pinout like this, and it's got quite a story behind it. In mobile phones TRRS connectors are used for headsets and other accessories. However around 2010 for some godawful reason allanufacturers changed the pinout by swapping the accessory pin and the ground pin, rendering a lot of phones and headphones incompatible. Phones woth video output like the Nokia n95 used the accessory pin for video, so you need a cable that goes "Right-Left-Ground-Video" instead of "Right-Left-Video-Ground" (i may have mixed up those 2 variants if my memory isn't correct). Luckily i happened to have one
Nice video! I did not know that there were so many combinations of 3.5mm AV. I do not like when they use these on TVs since they have enough space to put full connectors on there but they don't, I will stick to old TVs from now on. I'm also familiar with the Sony camcorder video out as my DCR-SR100 has it, and its pretty nice.
This issue would be solved if we had a database of all the 3.5mm A/V RCA output pinout layout of available devices, then every seller of 3.5mm A/V RCA cables additionally posts the pinout of the cables.
Usually, sellers don't even post the pinout layout. They just state it's for a camcorder, you buy it out of a whim and it end up being the wrong pinout, even though you are using a camcorder. It's also impossible to find the pin out of every camcorder or other device too, so it's a bunch of trial and error with wasted money. Very frustrating!
This explains so many headaches in the past. I thought was crazy
CPC Farnell in the UK have a vast range of cables and connectors, and I have used them since 2004.
Very helpful, great video.
What a mess ! I didn't realise there were TRRS connectors where ground wasn't the base sleeve, that's just going to be trouble somewhere along the line. I can believe that audio and video got all mixed up by some manufacturers though.... thanks for showing.
The sleeve not being ground is a new one for me...
Thank you for including decent reseller links !
Can't wait till the end of the video. Came across TRRS problem not so long ago when tried to connect a crt tv to that dumb TV-box (nonAndroid, 64MB RAM/4MB ROM) antenna receiver aerial tv broadcasting receiver. I have 2 of them and one combo Android4+tvtuner media box . Sleeves appear to have different lengths. 🤪🤪 Went to local radio-market to check if there are some to buy, there were, but I abandoned the idea of cutting and soldering thin wires.
I bought a TRRS cable off aliexpress a year ago to plug a old CRT to a Android TV Box (which had a 3.5mm TRRS output), lucky me it worked at first, didn't know they never had a proper standard and I was just lucky it worked 🤣
Yay a Vwestlife video about cables and adapters.
"Surely you can't make a 26mn entertaining video about... RCA cables!
- I am serious, and don't call me Shirley..."
I've been there for a while but didn't know the apparently simplest cables could be such a mess.
Now I understand better how they completely lost their mind about USB and HDMI and so on! (which in french could be translated as "ils ont complètement pété un câble" -> they have "broken a cable", how appropriate 😄)
First ever comment here... Thanks for your great work and your no fuss approach, and for debunking yesterday tech that is still there!
About 5 years ago I bought a Sony TV that one of the inputs was 3.5 composite audio/video. The TV did not come with the cable and Sony did not offer a cable that would work with the TV. Luckily I found a 3rd party website that did have the cable for it. And yes it was maddening to find the right cable it.
DUDE! You are a WIZARD my friend! Thank you! 🙏🙏🙏
Very informative.
These variations occur outside USA too…..I’m in U.K.
I encountered 2 of these “breakout” cables which were wired up differently years ago. Video was on red on one cord but on yellow on another. I never knew why until now.
I appreciate there must have been some “pain” involved in making this video.
PS there are now headphones with microphones featuring the same 3 ring 3.5mm Jack. Many audio devices which don’t use the microphone feature can use such headphones…..but some can’t….unless you hold the speech button in.
Most models of TiVo Mini use these 3.5mm jacks to breakout A/V and component cables. I'm sure it's about space saving on the back of an already small set top/back device. Otherwise, the HDMI port works just fine, but not much love for older connector technology from TiVo.