July 25, 2008, Newsletter Issue #129: Home Theatre Projector Cable Tips: RCA or Composite Cables

Tip of the Week

TVs in the 1950s featured composite video inputs. In my opinion, any technology that is over fifty years old will usually not measure-up to the likes of today's technological advances. Yet, composite cables (also known as RCA cables) are still the most widely used cables today since most every piece of video electronics features composite inputs. Typically, RCA cables are color-coded: red, white, and yellow. Red is for right channel audio. White is for left channel audio. Yellow is for video.

For a home theater projector, your goal is to produce great video only – your audio will play through separate speakers, not the projector. Therefore, two of the RCA cables are useless and the entire video signal is transmitted by one cable. It stands to reason that these cables offer the most video degradation producing a poorer video image than one with component video cables. Sophisticated high-resolution displays will show all of the compression artifacts and cross-color (or moiré) blurring that comes with a composite video connection.

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