Help finding an HDTV tuner w/ VGA output?

[VJ]

IIRC, the vga connection has synchronization signals, which are not present on a component output.


Jörg

[WxDude]

No. Component (Y-Pb-Pr) is not RGB/VGA in a different connector (even though they color the
connectors Red Green and Blue). If you wired up 3 RCA connectors to a VGA connector and
plugged it in, you would get no picture at all.

Component video passes a B&W (lumanence) signal on 1 wire and then 2 separate chroma
signals on the other 2 wires with the sync signal embedded in the signal. S-Video is similar
being a 2 signal (Luma/Chroma) connection. Composite video is just a single signal
(Luma+Chroma combined).

To convert component video to VGA, you need to decode the Y-Pb-Pr signal to get the base RGB
info and then put that out as VGA. The more expensive transcoders will also allow scaling of
SD video to higher resolutions (progressive/HD res). There are also multiple possible sync
signals on a component signal (tri-level/bi-level sync) that need to be stripped from the RGB
signals and converted the Horizontal & Vertical sync signals. The cheaper transcoders have
had issues in the past dealing with the tri-level sync signals causing loss of picture on the
vga output or a darkened picture.

This is what a transcoder does and why it is important to get a good one.

[Kooldino]

Oh, fun.

So the one I ordered may either not show a picture or it may show a very distorted one?

[WxDude]

It is a possibility.