Intro to Video Signals

Video Standard	Image	Description	Explanation
Radio Frequency (RF)	placeholder	A screw-terminal connector, usually seen on pre-80's TVs and consoles.	Carries both audio and video, but is very low quality. Audio is only mono, and there is a lot of color banding and mixing.
Composite Video	placeholder	Also called RCA, for the first company to make them, these typically come in sets of 2 or 3	Composite video is very common, and comes on almost every consumer TV made after 1990. Much higher quality than RF.
S-Video	placeholder	Also called Y/C.	Usually uncommon in consoles until the mid-90s. This standard achieves better quality, because the signal is separated into y (luma, or black and white data) and C (chroma, or color data)
YPbPr	placeholder	Commonly known as component video.	YPbPr splits video out to 3 different connectors, making it better quality than S-Video. These are Y (luma, same as S-Video, and Sync), Pb (the difference between Luma and blue), and Pr (the difference between Luma and red.) Green is unneeded, as it can be found using the information.
RGB	placeholder	Uses different types of sync such as HV or Composite (not to be confused with composite sync!)	RGB is the best quality video you can get on a typical CRT, as it requires no transcoding or changing of the color space, since it is the same format that the electron gun uses to make the image displayed. RGB has many different standards for connectors that will be explained in the next table.

Video Connector	Image	Description
Coax F-Connector	placeholder	Usually used for RF. Also sometimes in the form of a brown or orange RCA jack similar to composite.
RCA	placeholder	Most commonly used for composite but can sometimes be used for S-Video (labelled Y and C) or RF (if orange, black, or brown). Also used for component video (YPbPr or RGB).
BNC	placeholder	Generally found on professional displays and are used as a more secure RCA jack. Also often carry RGB signals.
SCART	placeholder	Can carry Composite, S-Video, and RGB signals, along with audio. Very common in Europe.
JP-21	placeholder	Identical in appearance to SCART but the pinout is different. Generally only found in Japan or Asia. Not compatible with SCART.
VGA	placeholder	VGA is an RGBHV standard that uses a 15-pin D-Sub connector, usually used on computers, PC monitors, and presentation TVs.