COMPONENT VIDEO

In producing a color picture from light, our color television system starts out with three channels of information; Red, Green, & Blue (RGB). This is certainly one form of component video. In the process of translating these channels for use in distribution, they are often first converted to Y, R-Y, and B-Y or Y Pb Pr. This is another form of component video. The term component describes a number of elements that are needed to make up the picture. It could be argued that an S video signal is also a component signal. A composite video signal on the other had contains all the information needed for the color picture in a single channel of information. Much higher program production quality is possible in the component domain because analog compression is used to place the three channels of component information into the single channel of composite information. Once that compression take place it is extremely difficult to get back the original quality of the component signal. One of the advantages DVD has over the laserdisc format is that it is component based.