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Over the weekend, I built a s-video(SVHS) cable that made quite a
significant difference in picture quality on my Sony 61HS10 hdtv. As someone that was dissatisfied with the quality of svhs cables on the market, I figured I could build a better one. Since a SVHS cable is supposed to be nothing more than two siamesed 75 ohm coaxial cables, one carrying the luminance (Y) signal and the other chrominance (C),I could not help but think that the noodle thin coaxs inside your standard SVHS cable might possibly be hindering picture quality. I think it is hard to manufacture and maintain true 75 ohm impedance and minimal attenuation in a cable when the coaxs are so small. Initially I had been using a 6' run of Monster Video II between my RCA DTC100 and my 61HS10, but when I moved the DTC100 to my equipment rack a couple of months ago, I handbuilt a SVHS cable from 18' of what looked to be a very high quality Phoenix Gold SVHS cable - two tiny coaxs covered by a outer shield and jacket. No difference in picture quality, but no degradiation either. Different SVHS cables I had lying around all looked the same.I went through the Belden, Canare, and Mogami cable catalogs
searching for a cable that would large enough to maintain high signal
quality and have minimal attenuation, yet would be flexible and small
enough to fit into a SVHS connector. My initial choice was the
Canare V3-3CFB hi-res digital component cable, but this cable is
difficult to find, and I live in Hollywood, studio capital of the
world. I also looked at the Mogami 2947 SVHS cable which is supposed
to be very highly regarded, but the small size (looks like a black
pair of 16g speaker wire) dissuaded me. I finally chose 18' of the
Belden 1406B RBG cable - about 80 cents/ft. Readily available, the
1406B is a pretimed video cable consisting of three 75 ohm coaxs
bundled in a 10mm jacket.The dielectric is a foamed polyethelene for
a low 17.3 pf/ft capacitance, the conductor is 26 g for low
attenuation, has a 78% velocity of propagation, and the shield is
foil with a 93%+ tinned copper braid. The individual coaxs inside
are 3.71mm diameter each, just enough to barely fit in the barrel of
a SVHS connector. I stripped off 6" of the outer jacket, trimmed
away the rope filler and cut off one the three coax cables. I
soldered the two remaining coaxs to the four pins of a SVHS connector
with some 2% silver solder, and finished off the ends with some 3M
shrink tubing. There is no outer shield over these coaxes, and it is
not necessary.So did it make a difference? Let me state that I am often skeptical
of claims when it comes to cables, and most of my cables are either
Audioquest, or handmade Canare or Beldens. But this cable did make
quite an improvement that I was not expecting. Immediately, I
noticed that the reds were deeper, as if you turned up the hue
+3 more red and the color up +2, and the disappearance of some very
fine video noise(snow). Sharpness improved to the point where I now
use the Pro mode with sharpness set to 0. Previously I had sharpness
set to about 30% for an acceptable picture. But now since the
picture sharpness is so good, increasing sharpness to 30% or whatever
provided almost no picture improvement and served only to accentuate
DSS MPEG artifacts and create video ringing. Now that I have
sharpness set to 0, 80% of picture noise is gone, and most
importantly, I got rid of most video ringing - the annoying thin
halos and lines around dark objects/faces against bright
backgrounds. For my tests, I used my DTC100 playing Direct TV and
KCET hdtv programming out of the SVHS output. My 61HS10 is highly
tweeked short of the TLV maneuver. I've even treated every
jack/jumper/connector inside with Caig Pro gold. Watching hdtv
programming through the SVHS now looks almost like hdtv with
sharpness set low! My hdtv cable is Belden 1522A.Overall, I spent under $20 for everything, and this since this cable
is a 3 coax RGB cable, it should work very well as a component cable
for a DVD player.
Follow Ups:
I've heard that if you have a braided shield grounded at the source end only, it would even be better!
br Wilks.
Planning to order and make an Ultimate video cable for myself.
How did you wire up your s-video connector? I've made cable for other things in the past but have never done an s-video cable. Thanks.
Steve: could you tell us where you bought the 18' from-I've tried to locate the 1406 but can't get any unless I buy a ton of it.
I purchased it from Pacific Radio Electronics - www.pacrad.com
You can also check www.anixter.com and www.zackinc.com.BTW- I figured you can fit two Belden 1505a or 1506a cables in a s-video connector if you strip off the outer jacket of the cable and use some shrink tubing instead, and find a s-video connector with a large rear entry and possibly drill it out a little larger if necessary. Bundle together with some 1/4 Techflex and some shrink tubing at the ends. 1505a should be much easier to find and should perform even better as it is a larger RG59 digital cable. If you are creative, you can even fit 4 stripped coaxes inside the barrel as recommended by the other folks in this thread. You shouldn't need the shrink tubing to isolate the cables as the shields dont't carry any current and should be left floating at the receiving end.
nt
If most of your cables are Audioquest, no wonder you are usually skeptical. That stuff is crap! Everything I have ever tested from them is really bad, and easily beaten by DIY, or less expensive manufactured cables from Kimber, and Analysis Plus.Nevertheless, I am using Tributaries copper S-Videos, and I really like them. I'd be interested in a comparison. . .
B
I'm sorry you find Audioquests to be displeasing. You may have missed the fact that I have built many different cables besides Audioquest, including Canare, and Beldens such as John Risch's 89259. I've heard many audio ics on many esoteric systems, I usually find the differences to be so subtle to indifferent when you are already comparing high quality cables to one another. I doubt the average person can tell a difference. After all, you are not trying to put something to the signal that is not there, just preserving the signal transfered from one component to another. Substantial video improvement on the other had is something that can be objectively quantified and can be seen by the average viewer. My point was that this was an improvement the average person can see and appreciate for relatively pennies, and that I was not some cable snob twarting some microfine illusions between a 1 meter length of some $400 audio cables. But this is video asylum and not cable asylum.As for the Tributaries svid cable, I doubt they would be much different than the Belden 1406b, since the coaxs need to be small to constrain them in a standard s-video jacket. In fact, the Beldens are probably better since the coax diameter is 70% of RG59 at the shield. One could probably run the Beldens at 500' with minor signal degradation. But why don't you try building a set and tell us how they compare - a 1 meter pair should only cost you $8 to build. Besides, I needed an 18' run and I think you would be hard pressed to find something commercially premade that would beat out the 1406b. I had to resort hand building cables as an only option.
I have come up w/my own recipe for the same reasons.
I use 4 runs of Belden 1506a.Nec-tec svid connectors. I have found this to give the finest picture in every aspect. The depth is absolutely incredible.Grain is so fine it is barely detectable. I have made and bought many a svid cable. Tested on Tosh. 40h80, Digital Cable.Mitch
I use Tributaries. It blows away anything by Better Cables or Monster.
belden 1506a is a DIY cable. It is not from Tributaries, Better or Monster.
Mitch
Interesting. Sounds like you also had made a svid cable with just a standard twin run of 1505a or 1506a or equal. How much of an improvement did you see over you current 1506a quad configuration? Also, what are Nec-tec connectors? I'd like to try it but the bulk of all that cable would seem to overwhelm a svid connector. I thought about making a short svid to Y/C splitter using 6" of smaller coax and some BNC connectors, but I figure I would also have to make the same splitter to the tv, and thought it might degrade the signal through all those connectors.Steve
I used 4 individual runs for each of the four pins. The braids were used only as a shield, connected at one end, to the crimp of the svid connector. (directional shielding). The connectors can be purchased from Markertek. Tec Nec 4MM/M - Metal connector. The shell unscrews from the connector. All four "DIELECTRICS" will fit through the rear shell. No other Broadband cable I tried would fit w/o modification.
The reason this recipe works so well is the bandwidth. Check out other cables and see. I would compare Digital Cable broadcasts on this cable to that of a DVD - non component.
Mitch
Are you using the "SVHS-4M" TecNec connector at the MarkerTek site? Looks like a round silver colored metal connector with plastic barrelled body?Thanks!
NO,My invoice shows as follows:
SVHS-4M/M - Metal SVHS male Cable Connector Unit cost $7.19
http://www.markertek.com/MTStore/product.CFM?BaseItem=SVHS-4M/M
nt
Interesting. From what I can tell from your post, you used one coax pair for the cable. You should try doubling up and using two pairs (one for the signal, one for the return). I do this, and it should outperform a single pair, which uses the shield as return, noticeably.Good luck,
daryl
> You should try doubling up and using two pairs (one for the signal, one for the returnWould you use a cross-connected configuration as with the Risch 89259 speaker cable recipe or leave the shields unconnected? (Forgive me, but I'm a cable idiot. I wouldn't know the advantages of one configuration over another.)
I'll be building an 89259-based S-Video cable to connect a new SVHS player to my TV. It'll be a challenge soldering the cables to the S-Video connectors.
BTW, why are those connectors so small? I suppose the standards people wanted to keep costs down?
Agree, they took me 2 hours to do! they should design some with crimp pins like the Canare RCAs!
That'll make work much easier!
When you use a two pair configuration the shields no longer carry the return. Thus I'd connect the shields to the DIN connector at one end only, and leave them floating at the other end, making sure they don't touch each other to form loops. This will let them do what they do best, which is shield the inner connector, instead of carrying the signal in addition.As for why they use connectors only the children of gnomes can comfortably solder, well, your guess is as good as mine (which has to do with the use of gnome-child labor....)
--daryl
I just finished building the four coax cable combination and it did not work for me. I used four runs of Belden 1505a using only the center conductors for the pins and the shields were connected to the barrel of the source only. I got some kind of fine interference pattern on my picture - kinda like diagonal crosshatching. Not sure if its rf or the fact that the combination is not true 75 ohm. I rebuilt it with only two runs of 1505a and everything was fine again. Compared with 1406b, I could tell no discernable difference, even though 1505a is a larger RG59. My run was 18 feet.
Hmmm, that's a strange result. The only thing I can think of offhand is perhaps try connecting the shield at both ends. Sorry it didn't work for you. I'm using double runs of Belden coax pair (can't recall the parts number offhand; they are paralleled 75ohm minicoax), six feet in length, and this configuration works extremely well for me.--daryl
Are the three strands of coax color coded to allow easy identification when terminating? Thanks.
Yes, actually the three coaxs are separately color jacketed in red, green, and blue. You can just pick any pair and castrate the third.Steve
Last year I spent a small fortune (for an S video cable that is) on a supposedly "state of the Art" S video cable & could see no difference. The choking point might well be the Theta Data III so I'll be intrigued to test any differences with a HLD-X9 due sometime this month or next. Up to now picture quality from S cable on LD is generally very inferior to component out of DVD. That is not meaning to praisde all DVDs, some of them are pretty ordinary too but the best LD has not appeared as good as the best DVD, yet.I'mm bookmark your post with a mind to duplicating your experience. You do not mention your source, DVD, LD or tape.
John
Peace at AA
My source was a RCA DTC100 DirectTV hdtv receiver playing both standard DSS programming and hdtv programming out of the svid output. I watch mostly DSS programming (too much video compression by the way) and used it as a reference for improvement of everyday programming. I then used broadcasted hdtv programming playing out of the svid jack and rapidly a/b/c compared it to another cable on another svid input and also the true hdtv output on my 61" Sony HDTV to see the differences. I figure, I cannot get a better video source than 1080i hdtv down converted to the 480i of svid.In my opinion, unless you have a high definition big screen, or your tv is 32" or smaller, the improvements may not be noticeable. Also if you have a front or rear projection tv, and it is not tightly focused and converged, you have other more serious problems that will mask any improvements you will get in the signal, since the improvements are fine.
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