S-Video cable and RCA?

Question

Hi i have a wii, ps2,n64, ps1, etc that use rca cables.

Recently i bought a graphics card for my computer (NVIDIA GEFORCE 8600GT that came with a s-video cble and a plug for the cable on the graphics card.

First, what does the s-video cable do/ that the rca doesnt?

What am i preferably supposed to plug the video cable from my g card into?

And lastly im looking to buy a PC HDTV Tuner, should i look for one also with a s-video slot as well as an antenna slot?

Thanks

Answer 1

RCA cable is also called composite video since all video signals are combined into one.  S-video outputs the video in two parts which results in a slightly better picture.  Component video, which uses three cables, outputs the three video signals separately in order to have the best possible ANALOG signal.  

The s-video from your graphics card is used to output video to your TV.

If you are looking to buy a PC HDTV tuner you should really be looking for one that has DVI and/or HDMI output as this would allow the high definition signal to be output.  S-video and RCA would not.

Answer 2

RCA is the most basic, and S-Video will carry a cleaner signal than rca.

RCA - fair/good

S-Vid- very good

HDMI and Component Video- better

Answer 3

Composite video are the chroma (color) and luma (grayscale plus sync) elements of video composited into one (hence the term).

Before the video can be used to drive the display, the color and grayscale elements must be separated by a comb filter.  The problem here is that the comb filter can't completely separate those elements, which is the cause of various video artifacts such as dot crawl.

S-video is short for "separated video" and the color and grayscale elements are delivered to the display already separated so no processing by the comb filter is required.  For video sources that are natively chroma/luma separated, such as DVD, the improvement is actually VERY noticeable as opposed to merely being slightly better.  The s-video cable uses four lines (two ground lines, one line for luma, one for chroma).

Component video is the same as s-video except there are two color components (Pb, Pr) instead of one in addition to the grayscale/sync signal (Y).

As for a PC HDTV tuner, you might not be able to find one with an s-video output.  An antenna socket, however, will be integrated because how else are you going to connect an antenna or cable line to receive broadcasts?