Okay, bit of a long winded question this, so I'll try and make it short. I have a bunch of systems hooked up currently using system selectors/switchboxes. Everything is hooked up via s-video. I also have two TVs going -- one normal and one tate. Right now, just have two s-video cables hanging off, one going to each TV, and I've just been unplugging and replugging depending on which TV I want to use.
I've seen some cheap S-Video 'splitters' -- actually, they're intended to be used to hook up two inputs into one TV, rather than splitting one signal into two. They're passive devices. I've heard that using one of these as a splitter will degrade quality -- reducing brightness or some such. However, I only plan on having one TV on at any given time. So my question is this -- if I get one of these splitters, will I see a degradation in quality, even if I'm only using one television at a time?
S-Video splitting
I used to have my PS2 and GameCube hooked up via scart-splitter (to just one TV) and I did notice a degrade in quality. And oddly, I wouldn't get any sound from the Cube unless I turned the PS2 completely off (not just into stand-by). Nowadays I have a scart switcher, an active device, and I don't see any degrading whatsoever or it's so small I can't even notice it.
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The splitters you've seen might just be sending the Y and C signals off on to 2 of those male rca style plugs, or combining those 2 signals into the s-video plug. monitors like the amiga 1080/ 1084 have s-video but its in the form of 2 rca plugs.
a splitter for male svideo into 2 other male s video plugs would still have the same effect of possibly darkening the picture on one or both tvs if they are on at the same time.
s-video plug has 4 pins, y, ground, c, ground... chroma and luma, which is the reason why s-video is better quality than composite, because the 2 signals are seperate, while composite combines them into 1 signal which gets split back apart in the tv and degrades.
If the splitter is actually sending the s-video off into 2 composite signals (which you can do by just combining the y/c wires and the grounds) then the picture quality will get worse.
If it's splitting or breaking into seperate y / c plugs you will just get a crisp black and white grayscale signal from one of them, and then (I think) a bad color signal or no signal from the other.
a splitter for male svideo into 2 other male s video plugs would still have the same effect of possibly darkening the picture on one or both tvs if they are on at the same time.
s-video plug has 4 pins, y, ground, c, ground... chroma and luma, which is the reason why s-video is better quality than composite, because the 2 signals are seperate, while composite combines them into 1 signal which gets split back apart in the tv and degrades.
If the splitter is actually sending the s-video off into 2 composite signals (which you can do by just combining the y/c wires and the grounds) then the picture quality will get worse.
If it's splitting or breaking into seperate y / c plugs you will just get a crisp black and white grayscale signal from one of them, and then (I think) a bad color signal or no signal from the other.