Scart connector: pinout and adapters for HDMI, S-Video and RCA. Video outputs: connector types Video out connector

You just bought a TV and, looking under the back panel, you have absolutely no idea what each one is for connector. Where to connect your home DVD player? How to output sound to external speakers? And is it possible to connect the TV to a computer? If you don’t understand anything about this, then this article was written especially for you. In fact, there is nothing complicated about this; all the variety of connectors can be reduced to certain types, which is what we will do now, in fact.

Video connectors

One of the types in any TV are VIDEO connectors. Let's take a closer look at each of them.

The abbreviation of this connector stands for High-Definition Multimedia Interface. What does it mean in Russian as Interface for High Definition Multimedia. Nowadays, this interface is the best option for connecting any video equipment to TV, as it allows you to transmit digital video, even HD, and plus digital audio up to 8 channels. All new TVs are equipped with one or even several of these connectors. It is also present in almost all models of household equipment capable of producing a video signal: Blu-ray and DVD players, game consoles, laptops, simple video cards for PCs, video cameras and some smartphone models.

PC / VGA In / Analog RGB

This connector is of the D-subminiature family, which is designed to connect a computer to a TV. This connector transmits analog signal, so the image quality here is inferior to digital signal connections.

This connector is a European standard for connecting various multimedia devices. Not only analog audio and video signals, but also control signals can be transmitted via SCART. As for the quality of the resulting image, it is comparable to a component connection, but is certainly inferior to HDMI.

Fully stands for Separate Video, which means Separate Video. This connector is so called because it transmits the video signal in the form of two separate signals, color and brightness. The image quality lies between component and composite. Nowadays it is almost never used.

Component (Y/Pb/Pr)

Perhaps the best option for connections source of analog signal to TV. This connector uses three separate cables to transmit the video signal: the brightness level (Y), the difference between the red level and brightness (Pr) and the blue level and brightness (Pb). There is no mixing of signals, as, for example, in S-Video and a composite connection, so the image quality for an analog signal is the highest possible. There are also two connectors for transmitting audio signals.

Composite (CVBS)

A composite connection is the worst option for connecting a video source to a TV, since three analog signals (brightness, saturation and hue) are transmitted over one cable. It is recommended to be used only in the most extreme cases. Next to the video connector, as a rule, there is a pair of inputs for audio signals.

Audio connectors

Modern TVs can also be equipped with analog audio inputs. Basically, these are a pair of RCA connectors, or as they are popularly called “tulips”, one of which is red for the right channel and white, which is for the left channel in a stereo or mono channel. There is also a mini-jack, which is used to connect miniature audio equipment.

In addition to TV inputs, there may also be audio outputs. Often this is a mini-jack for headphones. But there are also digital ones for optical and coaxial cables. The first is a TOSLINK connector, and the second is an RCA connector, exactly the same as that used for audio input.

Other connectors

In addition to AUDIO and VIDEO connectors, there are also other connectors intended for other purposes. Let's look at the most common of them.

Antenna/RF In

As you probably already guessed, a regular TV antenna is connected here. But in addition to this, some video devices can also be connected, for example old VCRs.

This is a network port. Using it you can connect your TV to a local network or the Internet. This way you can use multimedia data from your PC or access various online services.

An article about how you can use S-Video connectors.

Theory of the issue

S-Video output - black round 4 and 7 - pin connector, located, as a rule, on the back panel of the TV and often serves to connect cable TV to it. You can connect your computer to your TV in a variety of ways, but the most accessible way is to connect via the S-Video connector. An S-Video connector is present on almost every video card, and everyone, even an analog TV, is equipped with it. In addition, the S-Video interface provides very high-quality color and sound transmission: the picture quality when connecting a computer to a TV via S-Video connectors will be many times better than when using RCA connectors or several cables connected by an adapter.

The S-Video input is one of the earliest connectors for connecting external devices to a TV. Many should remember it from Soviet televisions: it was into these connectors that the antenna was inserted. Now this black “circle” is more used for connecting cables for TV and children’s game consoles. Modern TVs are equipped with many connectors: RCA (“tulip”), HDMI, DVI, VGA (D-Sub) and, without fail, an S-Video connector.
Many owners of modern plasma or LCD TVs unjustifiably “forget” about the S-Video connector and prefer to use more modern interfaces - the same HDMI, DVI, RCA.
At the same time, S-Video provides much better color rendering quality than either of them. Perhaps, only for connecting LCD TVs (which are similar in matrix structure to computer monitors) is it more convenient to use modern digital interfaces: HDMI or DVI. And the color triple RCA outputs are nothing more than an original innovation. The composite connection is inferior in quality to all the above interfaces.
Connecting your computer to your TV via S-Video connectors is also convenient because you don’t have to use adapters. Every TV and almost every video card (with the exception of only the oldest models) have such connectors. You just need to connect them with a cable. And there are plenty of S-Video - S-Video cables in every store. This standard cable has been in great demand since the early 90s.

So, we connect the computer to the TV via S-Video connectors

1. Connect the computer and TV with an “S-Video – S-Video” cable. Before connecting, the computer and TV must be turned off. If the TV is connected to cable TV, the cable from the S-Video connector must be removed. After this we proceed to the connection.
We insert one end of the cable into the S-Video output of the computer (black “circle” on the video card), and the other end of the cable into the S-Video input of the TV (a similar black “circle” on the back (sometimes on the front) panel of the TV). S-Video output is the connector through which signals are sent (in our case, the S-Video connector on the video card), and S-Video input is the connector through which signals are received (in our case, the S-Video connector on the panel TV).

2. Turn on the TV first, and then the computer. When Windows loads, the TV screen should blink slightly. This action indicates that the TV has detected external signals. Therefore, our connection is on the right path. If you are using a digital TV, then in this case you do not need to switch it to AV mode - it must receive signals from the antenna socket (S-Video).

3. Set up the video card. If you are using a video card from NVidia (Ge-Force), do the following. Right-click on the desktop, select “Properties”, open the “Options” tab (in the upper right corner of the window that opens), and in the opened tab click on the “Advanced” button. In the window that opens, go to the tab with the name of the model of our video card (Ge-Force****). We put a point on “Clone” (thereby defining the TV as a second monitor), in the Ge-Force window open on the left, select nView and click on Apply. After that, click on the “Display” field and select the name of our TV from the list of devices that opens. The image should appear. You can also set additional image settings here (color correction, for example).
If you are using an ATI graphics card, the first three steps remain the same. And after clicking on “Advanced”, the computer itself will tell you how to further connect the TV to it. Installation instructions will begin to appear on the screen. You just need to complete them.

4. Turn on “search” on the TV. Unfortunately, when connecting a computer to a TV via S-Video, in some cases the image still needs to be configured as a separate television channel. To do this, turn on the search and scroll through the frequencies until we come across the computer desktop. In a word, the computer is connected to the TV via S-Video exactly like a game console: we connect the cord, and then adjust the image.

Currently, there are a huge number of different video standards and interfaces. Some have been in use for more than a decade, others are just entering our everyday life, and it’s quite easy to get confused in this variety. This is as difficult as for a non-specialist to understand a template for a forum. In this article, we have made a small selection of various interfaces for transmitting video signals, as well as common video connectors.

We hope you find this information useful.

Composite video output

Composite video output is designed to transmit all components of a video signal in a mixed form over one wire.

Typically the composite connector is a yellow RCA jack, or a generic SCART connector. To transmit a composite video signal, a coaxial cable with RCA ("tulip") connectors at the ends is used.

Composite video signal ( composite video) has been used since the reign of video cassettes, but is not capable of transmitting a high-quality signal. For this reason, it is currently used only in inexpensive video equipment, for example, in televisions with a small screen diagonal (14"-21").

Component video output

Component video is also called color difference video. It contains a luminance signal (Y) and two chrominance signals (U and V), which are determined by the formula:

Y = 0.299R + 0.587G + 0.114B

Interlaced ( interlaced) or progressive ( progressive) sweep. Interlace scanning is used in all existing television broadcasting systems. Progressive scanning is used in the modern television standard HDTV and in modern DVD players, as it allows for higher image quality.

To transmit such a video signal, three separate coaxial cables are used, at the ends of which there are RCA ("tulip") connectors or BNC connectors.

Video output S-Video

The S-Video connector is commonly used to output video signals from camcorders, PCs, and game consoles to household televisions and other consumer video equipment. The S-Video interface uses two signal lines - a chrominance (C) signal and a luminance (Y) signal. When used as a signal source, a DVD player or satellite receiver and a TV with a diagonal of 25" or more, this interface allows you to obtain a higher quality image than a composite video signal.

The cable for transmitting this video signal contains different types of connectors: 2 BNC connectors, 2 RCA connectors, 4-pin Mini DIN connector or a universal SCART connector.

RGB video output

To transmit a color image to a CRT monitor, intensity signals for each RGB color are used, as well as horizontal (H) and vertical (V) scan signals. A total of five signals are obtained - RGBHV.

To transmit the RGB signal, 5 coaxial cables equipped with BNC connectors are used.

VGA video output

In addition to RGB and synchronization signals, the VGA connector also contains so-called DDC signals for transmitting information between the video card and the monitor. The VGA cable connects using a 15-pin D-Sub connector (also called D-Sub 15 pin).

DVI video output

DVI digital video output is used mainly in video adapters of personal computers. It provides digital signal transmission directly from the video adapter of a computer or laptop to the projector. This does not use an intermediate digital-to-analog image (as in the S-Video standard or in a composite video signal), which allows you to obtain a higher quality picture.

Today there are two types of DVI connectors:

universal combination connector DVI-I. It allows you to connect both digital and analog monitors (with an adapter from DVI-I to 15-pin VGA D-Sub);
fully digital connector DVI-D, to which only digital monitors can be connected. This connector differs from the DVD-I connector in that it does not have four holes (pins) around the horizontal slot. As a rule, such an interface is used only in cheap video cards.

In addition, DVI connectors (DVI-I and DVI-D) have two types of connector: Single Link And Dual Link, differing in the number of contacts. At the same time, Dual Link uses all 24 digital contacts, while Single Link uses only 18. Single Link is used in devices with a resolution of up to 1920x1080 (the so-called HDTV). For higher resolutions, Dual Link is used, which allows doubling the number of output pixels.

HDMI video output

HDMI interface ( High Definition Multimedia Interface) is designed for connection to DVD players, satellite receivers and video adapters of personal computers, modern televisions and home theaters. Today it is the standard for transmitting digital audio and video in uncompressed form.

HDMI is an all-digital digital format that allows you to transmit not only high-definition video, but also many digital audio channels using just one cable. An HDMI cable with a signal spectrum width of up to 10 Gbps allows you not only to output high-resolution video, but also simultaneously transmit up to eight channels of high-quality audio.

The HDMI interface is a further development of the DVI-D interface and is fully compatible with it, but has more advanced parameters.

Currently, the following types of HDMI connectors are available:

Type A, which has 19 contacts and is most widespread.
Type B, having 29 contacts. It has an extended video channel, which allows you to transmit video information with a resolution higher than 1080p. Currently, this connector is not yet in great demand.
mini HDMI is designed for use in camcorders and portable devices. It is a variation of the HDMI Type A connector, but has a reduced size.

Please note that the HDMI cable cannot be longer than 15 m.

If we arrange all the video standards described above in increasing order of video signal quality, we get:

composite video
S-Video
component video

The article was prepared specifically for the site

Is a signaling standard for base definition video, typically 480i or 576i. By separating black-and-white and colorization signals, it provides better image quality than composite video, but has a comparatively lower color resolution than component video.

S-Video Cable Technology Background

Standard analog television signals go through several processing steps along the way, each of which discards information and reduces the quality of the resulting images.

The image is initially captured in RGB form and then distributed into three signals known as YPbPr. The first of these signals is called Y, and is created from all three source signals based on a formula that creates the overall brightness of the image, or brightness. This signal corresponds to a traditional black and white television signal, and the Y/C encoding method is key to ensuring backward compatibility. Once the Y signal is received, it is subtracted from the blue signal to obtain Pb and the red signal to obtain Pr. To restore the original RGB information for display, the signals are mixed with Y to produce the original blue and red, and then the sum of them is mixed with Y to restore green.

Problem and solution

A signal with three components is easier to translate than the original three-signal RGB, so additional processing is required. The first step is to combine Pb and Pr to form the C signal for chrominance. The phase and amplitude of the signal represent the two original signals. This signal is bandwidth limited to meet broadcast requirements. The resulting Y and C signals are mixed together to create composite video. To play composite video, the Y and C signals must be separated, and this is difficult to do without adding artifacts.

Each of these steps is subject to intentional or unavoidable loss of quality. To preserve this quality in the final image, it is desirable to eliminate as many encoding/decoding steps as possible. The S-Video cable eliminates the final mixing of C with Y and subsequent separation during playback.

Signal

An S-video cable carries the video signal using two synchronized signals and ground pairs called Y and C.

Y is the signal that carries the luminance or black and white image, including the clock pulses.
C is the chrominance signal, which carries the color or coloration of the image. This signal contains both the saturation and hue of the video.

The luminance signal transmits horizontal and vertical sync pulses in the same way as a composite video signal. Luma is the signal that carries the luminance after gamma correction and is therefore called Y due to its resemblance to a lowercase Greek letter

Comparative characteristics

In a composite video signal, signals coexist at different frequencies. The luminance signal must be a low-pass filter that dulls the image. Because the S-Video cable supports these parameters as separate signals, low-pass filtering for brightness is not necessary. Chroma still has limited bandwidth compared to component video.

Compared to component video, which carries an identical luminance signal but separates the color difference signals into Cb/Pb and Cr/Pr, the color resolution of S-Video cable is limited to modulation at a frequency of 3.57 to 4.43 megahertz.

With S-Video, the signals are separated along the cable, so no low-pass filtering is required. This increases the luminance transmission bandwidth, suppresses the problem of color crosstalk, and leaves more video information unchanged, thus improving image reproduction compared to composite video.

Because of the separation of video into luminance and color components, S-Video is sometimes considered a type of component video signal. What makes S-Video different from these higher component video schemes is that S-Video conveys color information as a single signal. This means that colors must be encoded, and therefore NTSC, PAL and SECAM signals are distinguished in S-Video. Thus, for full compatibility, the devices used must not only be S-Video compatible, but also color code compatible.

Signal encoding and resolution

Transmitting color information as a single signal means that the color must be encoded in some way, typically NTSC, PAL, or SECAM, depending on the applicable local standard.

The S-Video cable has low color resolution. NTSC S-Video color resolution is typically 120 horizontal lines (approximately 160 pixels edge-to-edge), compared to 250 horizontal lines for Rec. 601 encoded DVD signal or 30 horizontal lines for standard VCRs.

Standardization

In many European Union countries, S-Video cable is less common due to the dominance of SCART connectors found on most existing televisions. The player can output S-Video via SCART, but the TV's SCART sockets are not necessarily connected to receive it, and only a monochrome image will be shown on the display. In this case, it is enough to change the SCART adapter cable.

Game consoles sold in PAL territories usually do not include a cable output. Early consoles came with RF adapters and composite video (on PAL TVs) on classic RCA-type video connectors.

In the US and some other countries, NTSC S-Video is available on some video equipment, including most televisions and game consoles. The main exceptions are VHS and beta video recorders.

Physical connectors

The four-pin mini-DIN connector is the most common of several types of S-Video cinch cable connectors. The same mini-DIN connector is used on Apple Desktop Bus for Macintosh computers, and the two cable types can be interchanged. Other connector options include the seven-pin locking "redundant" connectors used on many professional S-VHS machines, and the two Y and C BNC connectors often used for S-Video patch panels (HDMI cables). Early Y/C video monitors often used RCA connectors that switched between Y/C and composite video input. Although the connectors are different, the Y/C signals for all types are compatible.

Mini-DIN cables are prone to damage when used in kinked areas. This may result in loss of color or other damage to the signal. A bent pin can be forced back into its original shape, but this may cause the pin to break.

These connectors are typically manufactured to be compatible with an S-video RCA cable and include additional features such as component video using an adapter.

7-pin connector

Non-standard 7-pin mini-DIN connectors (called "7P") are used in some computing devices (PCs and Macs). The 7-pin connector is compatible with the standard 4-pin S-Video connector. Three additional sockets can be used to supply composite (CVBS) and RGB or YPbPr video signals. S-Video cable pinout usage varies among manufacturers. In some implementations, the remaining pin must be grounded to enable the composite output or disable the S-Video output. Some Dell laptops have a 7-pin digital audio output.

9-pin video input/video output

9-pin connectors are used in graphics systems that have the ability to input video as well as output it via an S-Video Scart cable. Here too, there is no standardization between manufacturers as to which pin does what, and there are two known variations of the connector used. As you can see from the diagram above, although S-Video cable signals are available on the appropriate pins, none of the connector options accept an unmodified 4-pin S-Video connector, although they can be configured by removing the plug key.

Practical experience of connecting a TV to a computer equipped with an NVIDIA GeForce 8500 video card. The review allows you to connect the TV to a computer within 15 minutes.
The latest line of nVidia graphics cards feature an S-Video (9-pin) video input and output connector for various display devices. This video card connector outputs information in S-Video, composite video (PAL/NTSC), and component signal (HDTV) formats.

The easiest way to connect a TV to a computer is through a composite video signal, since most modern TVs are equipped with a video input - an RCA (“tulip” usually yellow) or a SCART connector.

The connection to the TV is made through a special adapter that comes with the video card:

In the absence of an adapter, you can “remove” the signal from pins 5 - video signal and 3 - ground on the S-Video connector; 20 - video input and 17 - video ground for the SCART connector.

After connecting the cable to the adapter, you need to switch the TV to “video” (AV) mode and connect the adapter to the computer.

From this stage, all parameters are configured using a program: a disk with a driver and the “NVIDIA Control Panel” configuration program is supplied with the card.

The setup is carried out using the “Launch the TV Setup Wizard” setup wizard.

Select composite signal type.

Determine the format of the television signal.

The display mode allows you to configure the TV as a second “DualView” desktop, or stretch the current desktop while the desktop is divided in half; one part remains in the monitor and the other in the TV. “Clone” mode - displaying the same information.