4/6/7 pin S-video cables?!?! are all s-video inputs capable of accepting any amt of pins?

Asked by futurelaker88 (1600

) January 23rd, 2010

im looking to order an s-video-to-RCA adapter and online they sell them by 4 pin svideo, 6 pin svideo, 7 etc. ! why? ive never heard of that in my life! isnt s-video a standard out/input cable? Perhaps ALL inputs have the full 7 sockets and if you have a 4 pin cable the other pins just remain empty? or do i have to figure out which one i need? ive purchased s-video cables multiple times and never had to match pins before.

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Wikipedia has a nice article on S-Video. The simplest standard is 4 pins carrying 2 signals: Luminance (the monochrome picture) and Chrominance (color information). Composite video is normally carried on an RCA plug & can be produced by capacitative coupling of the s-video signals using a 400pF capacitor (link). So inexpensive cables suffice in place of an active converter. The 7-pin s-video connector is even simpler since one of the extra pins is already composite video. There’s also a 9-pin connector that carries true component video in 3 high-quality signals (YPbPr, not RGB).

Note that all connectors use the same mini-DIN shell. If your PC has a 7-pin female connector, it will accept a male plug with any number of pins up to 7.

Here’s a nice product guide for the cable you need: svideo.com

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