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RGB, SCART, Component, Composite- Understanding failed Misuse of Terms.


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Ok I have been reading into this a lot and first off let me say this is the most confusing and IMPROPERLY termed garbage I have come across in awhile.

 

Lets go over these:

 

Composite video - referred to as a/v or simply the Red, White, Yellow jacks.

Component Video- referred to as YPbPr or simply the Red, Green, Blue jacks.

Scart- refered to as RGB

 

Now first off In my opinion using the term RGB at all to describe any cable is improper and ambiguous and I will tell you why. These game systems output video and when you look at pin-outs and such you see on an extreme simple level they have a red, green, and blue pin-out. That however on a technical level should not be used to describe ANY cable IMO.

 

Lets dumb this down a little. Think of RGB as this and nothing more, 3 separate video signals. Right now throw colors out of the window and forget a component cable has colored jacks as they are nothing more than just colored jacks. They should have just made them orange, purple, and gray. It would avoid confusion.

 

Composite shoves all the video signals a system generates down 1 output or in this case (jack)

 

Component shoves all the video signals a system generates down 3 outputs or in this case (jacks)

 

Now SCART separates all the video signals even more and sends it down 4 outputs and it gets yet more confusing. SCART not only seprates the Red, Green, Blue, but as well an HSYNC and a VSYNC which is referred to as CSNYC (Composite SYNC).

 

However it doesn't stop there. In a SCART cable you are going to have a CSYNC over composite, and yeah this basically means that the SCART cable while it does seperate red, green, blue down seperate pins it as well transmits the red, green, blue down a 4th pin that transmits the HSYNC and VSYNC.

 

Are you confused yet?

 

The other form of SCART is simply listed as SCART CYNSC, yeah LOL the difference here is basically on the pin that transmits the CSYNC it does not include the red, green, blue as well. It transmits the HSYNC and VSYNC by itself.

 

However for the CSYNC over composite you can clean it up with a sync cleaner. That basically means you can rip away the red, green, blue signals out of the HSYNC and VSNYC, so the CSYNC transmits alone.

 

 

So as I stated earlier calling any cable RGB is poorly described as red, green, blue is technically being pulled by all the cables, the difference is how much the cables split all the video signals down.

 

This is basically what we have:

 

Composite

Component

SCART CSYNC (Composite SYNC)

SCART CSYNC (Composite SYNC) over Composite video.

 

None of these should be referred to as RGB in my opinion. RGB is nothing more than video signals that travel down all the cables. In order to be what is referred to as an "RGB" cable you need to do more than seperate the red, green blue you as well need to seperate the HSYNC and VSYNC!

 

Composite is derived from those same signals as component and SCART. So unless you know cable jack colors and RGB itself are actually two completely different unrelated things you are going to be confused as all hell.

 

 

Hope this helps other uneducated people from getting into lengthy discussions with people whom have no clue how to explain this properly.

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I honestly did not know that component was not the same as RGB until like a week ago. The cable colors had me convinced that it was RGB, but it's actually more like luma, the difference between blue and luma, and the difference between red and luma. Why in heaven's name they thought this would be easier than just red, green, and blue is a complete mystery to me.

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SCART is not a video signal, it is a connector that holds a lot of different signals. You are touching the RGB and the fact that composite sync is sent over composite video. That also implies that SCART is useful for just sending composite video, which is how it often is used over here with older TV's that ONLY have a SCART input but the video game or computer only has composite video output.

 

The SCART connector obviously also carries stereo sound IN and OUT. Some of the pins on the RGB can double as S-Video, which means that a TV with two or more SCART inputs usually is configured so one of those accepts RGB input and the other accepts S-Video input. Sometimes the TV can be configured about this, often not. If the TV only has one SCART input, that is nearly always RGB, so say goodbye to inputing S-Video on that TV.

 

SCART also has weird pins for controlling VCRs etc, things that nearly never gets used but the pins are defined and there is nothing you can do about it. It also has fast and slow blanking pins for forcing the TV to switch between antenna, composite, RGB etc.

 

Obviously composite video and S-Video also can come with different types of inputs - usually RCA plugs and in the case of S-Video the 4-pin mini-DIN - which means we really should separate the type of video signal and the type of connector. Often they relate to eachother, but telling about one doesn't determine the other.

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SCART is annoying as hell because nobody outside of Europe uses it, but the entire world expects you to. You want component cables for your Sega Genesis? Nope, you'll get SCART and like it. Except there's no way to like it because there's no place on an American television set for it.

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Just because you don't understand something right away, doesn't make it stupid garbage. If you're going to be on forums talking about displays and consoles, you should probably know about the video capabilities of the consoles you're talking about. Doing basic research goes for anything in life you're looking to learn about, not just video connectors.

 

It's really not complicated. Go watch some My Life In Gaming videos if there's still confusion..

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Seems reasonable. I gave up trying to figure out the retro die hards tunnel vision type fly to a zapper fascination with SCART years ago and RGB being tossed around as it is. It made little sense to me other than SCART was something from Europe we didn't get so I had zero interest in it, and RGB just seemed to get tossed around as some internal signal people wanted to get out of their systems. I've never bought into the whole well it's native to the inside so what you have putting out your system from the factory is garbage arguments. The whole prattle about how that's native and how it was intended and was in the day, but no sorry it wasn't, native is one, and intended to see was what the tech limited to use in the day which were coax, then RF, then composite, and then component before HDMI came along. (Yes I didn't write down s-video.)

 

To me trying to get out of the system more than it was capable of in the day and acting like old writing standards somehow applied just seemed equally amusing and delusional at least. Picking one at random in the day the SNES was limited to basically the old RF, RCA and if you bought it s-video standards out of the multi-av out and that was it. Perhaps SCART could do it nicer, but it wasn't native to this region as even an option, so to say it's better and more accurate just seems wrong. Perhaps for you, if you're european, but not here. it felt like imposing someone elses standards on another.

 

These days I stick to my HDMI fixes for 3 systems, and the others stuck I stick to the old RCA standard and it's great as it is. I see no reason to confuse things, it's not making things any better.

Edited by Tanooki
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I mean SCART doesn't just carry RGB, but it (and the similar JP21) basically is the standard connection for carrying an RGB signal, and both wirings are the standards for people looking to get RGB video out of their consoles, so it's interchangeable enough. Just like the little DIN connector is for S-video - remember back when they just used two RCA connectors for s-video quality chroma/luma signals? Because that happened on old computer monitors, too, instead of DIN, but it still gets called s-video and not chroma/luma. Common language, ya'll.

 

Like, it's not really confusing, and delving into it just as a way to gripe about how consoles that have RGB signals straight out of the connector (and had SCART/JP21 cables sold in Europe and Japan with RGB video) "weren't really designed with that in mind" is ridiculous. You'd have to get real granular, developer by developer, game by game, to know specifically what degree of clarity they were intending for games for these consoles, but generally speaking you can assume that any developers from Europe or Japan were designing with RGB out in mind, and anyone in the US probably composite or s-video.

 

And yes, RGB is a massive improvement over composite, but if you've only got s-video on your TV it's usually not that big a difference.

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SCART is annoying as hell because nobody outside of Europe uses it, but the entire world expects you to. You want component cables for your Sega Genesis? Nope, you'll get SCART and like it. Except there's no way to like it because there's no place on an American television set for it.

Why not? Scart is a viable solution for RGB for me here in the US, for both my Framemeister and CRT. I use a scart to component adapter for my CRT. Others who want to get more serious use a PVM or mod a TV for RGB.

 

iceman, you completely failed the thread that got locked. You proved you didn't know much about this topic. But I hope you learned something.

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The easiest way to view it is this:

Europe decided on SCART as a universal connector that could carry a variety of video signals. One jack to rule them all, so the speak. RGB was one of those signals. In theory, you could plug in a SCART cable and you'd get the best signal your device + TV could both handle.

 

The US was confusing and didn't ever settle on that kind of standard, so we were stuck (largely) with composite or s-video (or RF) while those "in the know" could track down cables to get an RGB signal for those cases where they were lucky enough to have a TV/Monitor that supported it. I remember back in the 90's being aware of RGB and SCART, and it was one of those things that "lucky" Europeans got (although I suspect they'd have happily traded us SCART for their NTSC->PAL ports not being lazy and unoptimized.)

 

I suspect the real reason component uses red, green and blue jacks is because they'd typically be placed right next to the composite jacks on a TV and yellow and white were already taken, and colors like brown or purple might be difficult to distinguish (even then, they doubled up on the "red" colored jack.) Oh, and some manufacturers called it "Colorstream" instead of component. I'm not sure why they kept the same jacks as composite, which while letting you reuse cables, could also lead to confusion.

 

But at least we've settled on modern standards! Except for having to choose Bitstream vs PCM for your digital audio. And knowing what type of HDR your TV supports. And making sure your HDMI cable that looks physically identical to all other HDMI cables supports the latest standard so that you can actually get 4K on your 4K HDTV. (And make sure your 4K blu-ray isn't 4K upscaling, which is different from real 4K...) And make sure you're plugged into the correct HDMI ports on your HDTV because of course different ports support different refresh rates and resolutions, and have different inherent display/input lags despite all being HDMI.

 

Ugh. Vectrex didn't have these problems.

Edited by deepthaw
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RGB used Red, Green and Blue color jacks because CRT tubes literally have red, green and blue guns inside them. They are discrete connections for those guns.

 

The problem is Component video (Y Pb Pr) cables used Red Green and Blue cables even though the connectors had little to do with those colors. Methinks it was just cheaper and easier to re-used existing red. green and blue colored jacks and cable ends than it was to come up with yet another whole new standard.

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The easiest way to view it is this:

 

Europe decided on SCART as a universal connector that could carry a variety of video signals. One jack to rule them all, so the speak. RGB was one of those signals. In theory, you could plug in a SCART cable and you'd get the best signal your device + TV could both handle.

 

What do people consider a jack? To me a jack is a phono end. SCART to me does not have a jack it has pins in a connector. When words like jacks and RGB are just tossed around that is why people like me don't understand wth people are talking about.

 

Plus RGB from how I understand it should not be considered a separate signol as it is multiple signals.

 

RGB used Red, Green and Blue color jacks because CRT tubes literally have red, green and blue guns inside them. They are discrete connections for those guns.

 

The problem is Component video (Y Pb Pr) cables used Red Green and Blue cables even though the connectors had little to do with those colors. Methinks it was just cheaper and easier to re-used existing red. green and blue colored jacks and cable ends than it was to come up with yet another whole new standard.

 

No Component used Red, Green, and Blue color jacks. RGB is simply video signals devices output.

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...

Hope this helps other uneducated people from getting into lengthy discussions with people whom have no clue how to explain this properly.

.... you can't blame the teacher far failing to explain when you started with a preconceived notion of what things should be because your mind wanted them to be that way.

That is called "prejudice" as in you already had your mind set and every other explanation would not fit your prejudgment of it ...

 

It's OK, things happens but please do not blame it on the other side.

 

Oh and btw HSync and CSync can travel separately as well (the VGA cables do that: R,G,B,H,V). And actually the PS2 had a Linux kit that could be used with an RGBHV cable (my US TV bought around 2006 happened to support it) as well as with a different kind of RGB cable with sync-on-green ... so yeah it is even more complex here.

 

Sync over composite was a cheap way to allow Scart connectors to be back compat in case no RGB signals were there at all ;) , CSYNC was a solution to the fact that many TV manufacturers (XRGBMini also is guilty of this) even when they detected RGB they didn't clean the composite sync well and the signal ends up being degraded (sync stripper ICs to the rescue [LM1881 for example], which is a misnomer as in reality they strip everything but the sync).

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_video_sync [in the link component only means separate paths and not YPbPr .... not my terminology].

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I suppose the reason that component video uses green, red, blue instead of e.g. yellow, red, blue (which matches the component names) is that yellow and red already are used for composite video + one of the two audio channels. It is bad enough there are two different red jacks, imagine if there were two different yellow jacks too.

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What do people consider a jack? To me a jack is a phono end. SCART to me does not have a jack it has pins in a connector. When words like jacks and RGB are just tossed around that is why people like me don't understand wth people are talking about.

 

Plus RGB from how I understand it should not be considered a separate signol as it is multiple signals.

 

 

No Component used Red, Green, and Blue color jacks. RGB is simply video signals devices output.

 

Jack is used almost universally as a way to refer to the fixed, typically female physical connector into which a non-fixed, typically male plug is inserted to form a connection in electrical or electronic systems. I say "almost" because apparently you've never heard of phone jacks, ethernet jacks, power jacks or even heard of somebody offhandedly refer to a collection of sockets simply as "jacks" to save time over-explaining what they mean. The official definition can be found in (now withdrawn, but still recognized) IEEE-200-1975 among others, if you want to be pedantic - which you clearly do.

 

https://www.cosjwt.com/jack-plug-male-female-connectors/

Edited by deepthaw
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Jack is used almost universally as a way to refer to the fixed, typically female physical connector into which a non-fixed, typically male plug is inserted to form a connection in electrical or electronic systems.

 

Ok so when you said.

 

Europe decided on SCART as a universal connector that could carry a variety of video signals. One jack to rule them all, so the speak.

 

You are saying the scart cable is a connector but then when you used the word jack you were no longer talking about the Scart connector but instead the jack on the TV that connector goes into..

 

Thanks for clearing that confusion up so nicely :)

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Didn't this thread get locked yesterday?

 

I guess there's always space for another thread where some folk can tell us how much CRTs suck and how anybody still using them is a stuck up snob.

 

And yes, RGB is a massive improvement over composite, but if you've only got s-video on your TV it's usually not that big a difference.

 

This is not really true, at least not on a CRT, though it depends here on personal definition of "massive". For me the difference can be, ahem, "substantial", but not as big as RF vs RGB for example. The point being, is that in the CRT "community" the received wisdom has it that using anything below S-Video is anathema, makes the games totally unplayable and will give you eye cancer or some such. This is just silly, because composite is perfectly functional, as long as you don't obsess over it and keep your nose further than few inches from the TV surface. Sure, it's good to try for the higher options but it's not always possible.

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I like to call it ignorance, it is completely different. I'm not the only person who thought RGB was a term given to component cables.

 

Why would you think that, have you ever shopped for component cables or just seen them sitting on a shelf in any store? I've never seen "RGB" on the packaging used in reference to them, ever. They're always sold as "Component Cables". Actual displays or devices have Y, Pb,Pr

 

Component_video_jack.jpg

 

410KMVQNXEL.jpg

 

61KW7Dr5o7L._AC_.jpg

 

61TALvpIKEL._SL1024_.jpg

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I guess there's always space for another thread where some folk can tell us how much CRTs suck and how anybody still using them is a stuck up snob.

 

 

This is not really true, at least not on a CRT, though it depends here on personal definition of "massive". For me the difference can be, ahem, "substantial", but not as big as RF vs RGB for example. The point being, is that in the CRT "community" the received wisdom has it that using anything below S-Video is anathema, makes the games totally unplayable and will give you eye cancer or some such. This is just silly, because composite is perfectly functional, as long as you don't obsess over it and keep your nose further than few inches from the TV surface. Sure, it's good to try for the higher options but it's not always possible.

 

I mainly use a CRT for my old games (a Wega) with a scart connection through a component converter, s-video, composite, rf etc. plugged into it. SCART made a huge jump in clarity for the genesis, sms and neo geo, but compared to the s-video on my snes and saturn it was a pretty minor improvement. I still opt for RGB over s-video where available but really if you've got the option of s-video and no option for SCART, you're not missing a whole lot on a number of consoles.

 

That said, if you're using an upscaler or some sort of high end monitor it does show up more between s-video and RGB, but consumer grade CRT sets I wouldn't claim it to be a high priority. And yeah, nothing wrong with composite or even RF, if that's the easier/only option you've got - I typically prefer not to mod consoles for greater video output - but man, it can be jarring going from a crystal clear neo geo game to the decidedly fuzzier NES :P

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