What is the difference between RGB & Y, Pr/Cr?

Question

Which is best to use when using Component Cables from a DVD player to a 720p LCD TV?

Answer 1

In TVs, component inputs accept ONLY YPbPr

DVI  is ALWAYS RGB and HDMI can be both RGB and YPbPr

Use RGB only if you want to use the VGA port using component-tp-RGB cable.

Answer 2

This can get quite technical, let me apologize if I go too far.

The short answer is Y Pr/Cr is analog component video used for transport (to transmit or move around video) and RGB are the actual Red, Green and Blue full images constituants of the original image.  The two are not interchangeable.  Your DVD player is probably putting out Y Pr/Cr even though the jacks are color coded Red Green and Blue.  Use these.

A color TV picture can be described with the primary colors for light Red, Green and Blue (RGB).  In fact, most cameras separate the image into a Red a Green and a Blue image.   Eventually a display needs to get everything back to the RGB signals to drive the display.

The problem with sending RGB is, 1) It is not compatible with Black & White displays because there is no one luminance (B&W) signal to display, 2) The RGB signals are a bit delicate in that if there is any loss in any signal(s) it would affect the colors of the displayed image and 3) It is like sending three complete pictures for every image making it a bandwidth hog.

So, Analog Component signals were developed.

Y = Luminance (the B&W or grayscale image)

Pr aka R-Y is Red with Luminance removed

Cr aka B-Y is Blue with Liminance removed

The display has to do some math to recover the original RGB, but that's relatively easy.  Also, there is a Y (B&W) signal for monochrome displays.

This whole process is why "experienced" broadcast engineers joked that NTSC actually stood for Never Twice the Same Color!

Edit:  I did some searching around and found this article:  http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/compon.h...

I hope this helps.

Answer 3

I think you may find your answer here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/archive/i...

Ok maybe not, I just read more of it and it is a bit techy, but maybe it will help. It doesn't seem like there is a short answer to this question.