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Audio / video leads from Simply DigitalAs any home entertainment enthuesiast will tell you, having the right audio video leads can make the difference between a good quality picture and a fantastic quality picture. Here at Simply Digital we know what works best and stock only high quality AV leads. |
Audio and video - ScartA SCART connector is a physical and electrical interconnection between two pieces of audio-visual equipment, such as a television set and a video cassette recorder (VCR). Each device has a female 21-pin connector interface. A cable with a male plug at each end is used to connect the devices. (The 21st pin is actually not a pin but a ground shield contact.) Stereo audio, composite video, and control signals are provided in both directions. RGB video signals are input only. The interface is an industry standard originated by the French company, Peritel. Today, most new television sets and VCRs in the European market and other countries that use the PAL video standard come equipped with a SCART connector.
The latest generation of high resolution A/V sources like hi-fi VCRs and DVDs can bring today's films and sound tracks to life in your living room. But no matter how state-of-the-art your A/V system may be, its performance may be compromised unless you're hooking it up with high performance interconnects.
Many people hook up their A/V systems with ordinary SCART interconnects which offer the convenience of error-free hookup, but lack any significant technology inside the interconnect. As a result, even the highest performance components deliver a dull, fuzzy picture, poor colour rendition, "ghosting" and audio distortions.
The THOR SCART interconnect is designed for high performance. Each of the coaxial conductors offers true 75 ohm impedance for improved video performance. 100% breaded copper shielding around both the audio and video conductors minimize crosstalk and provides maximum interference protection.
THOR SCART leads have been developed with the following benefits:
* High resolution audio/video cable for high performance hookup of DVD, Satellite and other A/V components
* True 75-Ohm impedance conductors for the sharpest picture possible and minimum attenuation
* Separate shielding between audio and video conductors for improved overall performance
* Ultra-flexible jacket for easy routing and installation
* Heavy-duty contoured strain relief provides maximum protection and durability
* 100% foil shield coverage of all audio and video conductors for superior rejection of EM and RF interference
* Separate internal shielding around connector for additional noise rejection
* Special locking collar holds connection in place—won't accidentally pull out.
* Heavy mass ground shell made up of 100% brass with hard wearing gun metal coating for more contact mass.
* Precision machined to ensure the best possible signal transfer.
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Video - Progressive ScanThere's a new term in video now being bantered around in home-theater circles: progressive scan. What is it? How does it work? What makes it so special? These are all good questions, especially considering that progressive-scan players are now drastically dropping in price.
To illustrate the meaning of progressive scan, let's take a look at that old analog TV in your living room. It most likely uses the interlace method to draw onscreen images. That is, the electron gun at the back of the TV tube first fires off the odd lines of the onscreen image, then during a second pass, it shoots out the even-numbered lines. This all occurs within 1/30 of a second, but what you wind up seeing is an acceptable picture that has some occasional flicker or artifacts.
To improve upon those images, sophisticated front- and rear-projection TVs have used and continue to use line doublers. Line doublers turn an interlaced NTSC picture into a progressively scanned image for big-screen home-theater use by effectively doubling the number of lines on the screen, making the scan lines that make up the picture less visible.
Newer digital HDTVs draw progressive-scan pictures. Progressive scan works in the same manner as your computer monitor. It writes one full frame of video from left to right across the screen every 1/60 of a second. And since you get an entire image drawn at one time--as opposed to an image split into two--a progressively scanned video image is better than an interlaced one. This also means you wind up with few artifacts from the interlacing process or motion artifacts introduced into the picture.
Progressive-scan DVD players will work only with digital HDTVs and are not compatible with older analog sets, due to their higher horizontal-scanning frequency of 31.5kHz. One big feature that will be in any progressive-scan DVD player worth its salt is 3:2 pull-down circuitry. This tiny bit of silicon makes all the difference with your movies, by helping differentiate between the 24fps (frames per second) frame rate of film and the 30fps frame rate of video. In plain English, it smoothes out the picture and virtually eliminates what we in the industry call jaggie artifacts.
The other big reason why progressive-scan DVD players deliver much better pictures is because they can read extra data tags on DVDs and the players can work their image-processing magic in the digital realm before they output the video signal in analog form. (At this time, all home-theater DVD players output an analog signal.) If you feed an interlaced DVD signal to a digital HDTV, the TV's line doubler must convert the signal to digital before processing the image, and the TV doesn't have access to the extra data stored on the DVD. For this reason, a progressive-scan DVD player can deliver a sharper, cleaner picture.
* Labelled as: Probably Progressive Video/YUV, PS
* Output progressive scan YUV component video in the form of 3 BNC or RCA connectors.
* Connect to the 3 video inputs of a progressive-scan line multiplier or a progressive-scan TV. Toshiba's version is called ColorStream PRO.
* This format preserves the progressive nature of most 24-frame movie discs, providing a film-like, flicker-free image with higher vertical resolution and smoother motion
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Video - Component video RGB / YUVComponent is rarely seen on DVD players but will start to appear with increasing regularity as projection systems and Plasma become more popular. Basically, the picture is spilt to it's component parts and passed via three different connectors to the TV/Projector. Component can only be used when there is a dedicated component input on the TV/Projector.
DVD stores a component video signal in digital format. Since this is the native video format that is stored on DVD, this is also the best format to use to display the picture, if your equipment is capable of dealing with this type of signal. In Australia, virtually no equipment exists that is compatible with a component signal, though there is some that is compatible with an RGB signal. Many DVD players are capable of converting their native component signal to an RGB signal, but this varies on a player-by-player basis.
Problems with the Component signal
As discussed above, DVD stores its video information in the component form, but unfortunately the great majority of us cannot take advantage of this format. The designers of the DVD format anticipated this, and made allowances for it in the specification. All DVD players are capable of downconverting a component video signal into a more suitable format for display on the current generation of consumer display devices. The first such downconversion step is to S-Video, which is a connector that will always be found on any DVD player.
What comes out of a TV camera?
A TV camera outputs a video signal that is split into the three primary colours; red, green and blue (RGB). The entire colour spectrum can be represented by varying intensities of these three colours. This signal needs to be modified before it can be further processed or broadcast. Why?
Problems with the RGB signal
The RGB signal has two specific problems associated with it in the professional video world. Firstly, it has a very high bandwidth. Secondly, the colour and the black and white picture information are combined within the RGB signal. This is dealt with in the professional video world by converting the RGB signal into a component signal, also referred to as a YPbPr or YCbCr signal. The Y component of this signal is the black and white information contained within the original RGB signal. The Pb and Pr signals are colour difference signals, which are mathematically derived from the original RGB signal. For our purposes, it is sufficient to understand that the Y signal contains full bandwidth black and white picture information, and the colour difference signals contain bandwidth reduced colour information.
It is important to realize that component video output and RGB video output are not the same and are not directly compatible with each other.
* Labelled as: Either RGB or YUV, YPbPr, YCbCr or Y/B-Y/R-Y.
* Some U.S. and Japanese players output interlaced component YUV video via 3 Phono or BNC connectors.
* European players usually provide RGB via scart or 3 Phono.
* 80% of European TV may lose control of colour saturation.
* Note: RGB (European) and YUV (US) are non-compatible variants of component video. A transcoder is needed to link up the YUV player and RGB equipment.
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Video - S-Video or SVHSAnother high quality connection that is only for running picture. This connection separates luminance and chrominance to maintain a high quality picture. Will also drive long runs of cable (10M) provided the cable used is high quality and well screened.
S-VHS interconnect differs from composite in that it carries the brightness (luminance, or Y) and colour (chrominance, or C) signals on separate lines within the same interconnect.
Every TV has a Y/C separator built in, but using the S-VHS connection bypasses the TV's Y/C separator. You should use the S-VHS connection if your source device (such as a VCR or DVD player) has a better Y/C separator than your TV.
How do you tell which component - the TV or the source device - has a better Y/C separator? To start with, assume that any device that creates separate Y and C signals from the start has good Y/C separation. With these devices, you should always use an S-VHS connection if your TV has one.
How to Choose the Right S-VHS Connection If Your TV Has One.
DVDs contain a composite video signal that must be separated inside the DVD player to produce an S-VHS output. The only way you can tell whether you should use composite or S-VHS connections here is to test them yourself. Connect an S-VHS interconnect from the DVD player to your TV's video input 1, and a composite interconnect from the DVD player to video input 2. Now switch between the inputs to see which looks best.
S-VHS and Hi8 VCRs can produce perfect Y/C separation, if the signals on the tape were recorded from a cleanly separated source. The VCR must separate the Y and C to record tapes off the air, and it usually does only a fair job. Some prerecorded tapes are produced with excellent Y/C separation, some aren't. If you have a TV with a good Y/C separator, using the S-VHS connection with one of these VCRs will only sometimes produce a better picture. If your TV's Y/C separator isn't very good, though-if you see dot crawl and hanging dots on network TV shows, for example-you're almost always better off using an S-VHS connection with these VCRs.
S-Video
Remember that the component video signal is split into three parts; black and white information (Y), and two colour difference signals (Pb and Pr). The S-Video connection keeps the all-important black and white (Y) information separate, and combines the colour difference signals into a single colour signal (C). Instead of three separate signals going to the display device, there are now two separate signals.
As you would expect, combining the two colour signals results in a degradation of the colour information. In the grand scheme of things, this is a fairly minor degradation, and you still get an exceptionally good picture from this signal.
s-vhs connection Scart connection
* Labelled as: Either Y/C, S-Video, S-VHS or AV1/2/3 (need to check via set-up menu).
* Almost all DVD players have s-video output. Connect either directly to a TV or to an AV receiver that can switch s-video.
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Video - Composit videoChances are, you should probably use composite video interconnect throughout most of your Home Cinema. All VCRs and DVD players have PHONO composite video jacks, as do most of today's TVs and receivers. Composite baseband video suffers from RF interference to a lesser degree than RF video. At baseband video's typical maximum frequency of about 5 megahertz, only low-frequency radio waves can interfere with it. Still, this interference can cause problems similar to those you experience with RF video interconnects, so Philex also double-shields its composite video interconnects to prevent interference through the interconnect.
Composite
What about if your display device doesn't have an RGB, component or S-Video input? Well, then we downconvert another notch to composite video. As its name suggests, composite video is a single video signal that is a composite of the black-and-white information (Y) and the colour information (C). This is the same type of signal that at least some of us will have been using prior to the advent of DVD to connect up our laserdisc players or VCRs.
Composite video signals have a number of unavoidable image problems because of inherent limitations of the PAL and NTSC systems. The problem is, once the colour (C) and the black and white (Y) information have been put together, they can no longer be perfectly separated due to fundamental design limitations of the two systems. Whilst a detailed description of these image problems is beyond the scope of this article, there are two specific artifacts which I will mention which are readily demonstrable.
Dot crawl. This occurs on the boundaries between two colours where you can see moving blocks of incorrect colour information. The simplest way of demonstrating this artifact is to look at a test pattern on your TV. If you have access to either Video Essentials or A Video Standard on DVD or Laserdisc, take a look at a colour bar pattern. In particular, look at the vertical edges between the colour bars. You will notice that the edges are smeared, with little blocks of moving colours throughout in a regular pattern. If you then compare this same test pattern via an S-Video input, you will see that these blocks have disappeared, and the edges of the colours are sharp and clear. What applies to a test pattern also applies to normal images that are displayed with composite video. They, too, will exhibit dot crawl at the boundaries of different colours on the screen.
Cross-colouration. You may be familiar with this artifact when watching a black-and-white image on your TV, particularly if it is an older model. Fine lines in the image result in a purple colour being displayed by the TV. If you look at the test pattern shown on the right via a composite video output, you will readily see if your TV is prone to this artifact. If you look at the same test pattern via an S-Video input, you will not see this artifact.
* Labelled as: Either video, CVBS, composite, or baseband. Usually in yellow colour.
* All DVD players have standard RCA (Cinch) baseband video connectors. Connect either directly to a TV or to an AV receiver.
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Video - RFIn general, avoid RF only connections since this is the least satisfactory method to obtain the best sound and vision from your equipment. On top of that, all but extremely high-frequency radio waves can interact with RF video signals. This interaction can produce a wide range of interference patterns.
If you use only an RF interconnect between your VCR and your TV, you can't get stereo sound when you play tapes, even if your TV and VCR are both stereo. Why? Because VCRs use an RF modulator to convert the sound and picture from the tape up to radio frequencies that work with the RF connection.
In some cases, though, you have no choice but to use RF interconnect, especially if you have an older TV set or a small, inexpensive current model, there's a good chance it has only an RF input.
If you do have to run RF interconnect, using a top-quality interconnect like Home Cinema can make a big difference.
RF Connection
* Labeled as: Coaxial, RF
* Hardly any DVD players have RF video output
* Should only be used for older televisions.
* Only output in mono audio, even on stereo TVs. |
Audio - Optical and CoaxialBoth of these connections are for running the Digital soundtrack of the movie into a Digital amplifier or decoder for Digital Surround Sound. If only a short run is required from the DVD to the amp, we'd recommend using coaxial. If a longer cable is required (up to 10m) we'd suggest using optical as it is clearly better over very long distances. All sound information (including ordinary stereo and Pro-Logic sound) will be passed down these cables. |
Audio - Component Analogue Audio * Labelled as: 5.1 CH, Surround.
* Only DVD players with built-in Dolby Digital or DTS decoders can provide this output.
* As a general rule: built-in internal decoders are normally slightly inferior than its external counterparts.
* A receiver/amplifier with 6 inputs is required.
* Most players with internal decoders also provide the options of outputting digital audio.
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Audio - Stereo Analogue Audio * Labeled as: Either <Actinic:Variable Name = 'Phono'/> Audio, Stereo, Left/Right or <Actinic:Variable Name = 'Scart'/> AV
* All DVD players include two RCA connectors for stereo output.
* Any disc with Dolby Digital or MPEG-2 audio will automatically be decoded and down-mixed to Dolby Surround output for connection to a regular stereo system or a Dolby Surround/Pro Logic system.
* Connect to either an AV receiver, amplifier, or TV.
These are provided for connecting your DVD player into an ordinary stereo system. Long cables can be provided up to a maximum of 10m. |
