What is the difference between component video cable and composite video cable?

Question

I understand that component video breaks it down to RGB cables. Which is better quality component or composite? Is composite just the pro. industry standard?

Answer 1

You will get better picture if you send the image in 3 separate cables rather than all in one. But I think this also has to do with the signal being sent through those cables; in this case, component can carry HD, not the composite cable.

Answer 2

Composite is what the name says ... a composite signal made up of all the components of the video signal. Limited to 480 line (standard definition) resolution. Cables are a single conductor with RCA plugs on each end ... usually color coded yellow. Often combined into a three cable connector with two audio connectors with RCA plugs coded red and white.

Component separates the luminence and chroma parts of a colour signal allowing for a better picture. This requires three cables, again with RCA plugs, and usually coded red, blue and green.

Composite is the lowest common denominator video connection ... use if nothing else is available.

Component is capable of carrying high definition video (although these days hardware usually limits resolution to 1080i), and HDMI (a single cable for digital HD video and multi-channel audio) is rapidly replacing component as the prefered HD connection.

A third analog video connector cable you did not mention is called S-video (a multi pin DIN socket). It's a compromise between composite and component, giving a slightly better picture than composite but not as good as component.

So, in order of increasing resolution and picture quality the various options are:

- composite

- S-video

- component

- HDMI

Hope that clears things up a bit.