How to improve S-Video?

[leadbelly]

As I rarely dabble in video, excuse me if this is a goofy question.

I have a cheap FTA receiver and a cheap DVD recorder. The receiver has a single S-Video ouput, and gives a mediocre picture. The recorder is also mediocre, so that I only want to record stuff on the S-Video input, because using the composite input results in a lower quality picture. I tried using an S-Video Y cable for a while, one receiver output to TV, the other to the recorder. This was OK in that in that the quality of the recorded video improved, but the live TV image suffered, so this got old after a while.

So, is there a simple DIY solution to this? Is there some super Y cable design with terminators or whatever that solves the problem? A simple video buffer circuit to drive 2 inputs? Or is it just better to put away the cash and upgrade eventually?

[Bear5k]

Realistically, you should start setting you sights on HD. Even if you aren't a videophile, it's a definite step up for not much of an investment these days.

That being said, you are potentially dealing with two things. One side of it is the cable quality and the other is the hardware itself. While not necessarily the wisest of investments, you can probably spend $15 - $30 on making some BNC break-out cables, but only do it if you have some good quality coax lying around. The hard part is finding a traditional S-video to BNC breakout adapters. These were about $20 five to ten years ago. I haven't seen one in a while (don't even know where mine are).

You might to skip the above and go to a better quality S-video cable, but to get something demonstrably better than what you are probably using already is not going to be cheap (e.g., Monster's mid-grade S-video cable is in the $30+ range).

Before someone rags on me for recommending Monster cables, do realize that the market for decent S-video cables is pretty barren right now.

Oh, yeah, do check your connections to make sure nothing is loose or that there is electrical interference coming from somewhere.

Bill

[peanut123]

For the money you are going to spend on trying to "upgrade" your s-video, you could of spent on something with HDMI.Better quality by far overs-video as s-video is still only 480i. Not really worth keeping it.