[box86rowh]

Hello!


I have purchased a new InFocus X1 projector and I will be using it to watch Satellite TV and DVD's. The satellite has 2 different ouputs, one is s-video and one is the rca style video. The dvd player has the same outputs. Which of these (s-video or rca) will end up with a better picture on the X1?

Also, I have heard of component to vga adapters...does this apply to my situation and if so, would it be better quality?


Thanks in advance!

Jason the newbie

 

[technut Canada]

If the rca-style video you are talking about is a single yellow jack, then that is a composite output. If there are 3 rca jacks (R/G/B) then that is component output.


If you have component then that would be best, but I'm betting what you are seeing is a single composite output and in that case you'd be better off using the s-video output instead.


Congrats on your new purchase. If you haven't seen my FAQ yet (linked at the bottom) then that might be a good place to start reading to get up to speed. Another good place is InFocus's own FAQs at their website.

 

[box86rowh]

I guess then that I have composite (one yellow plug)

The FAQ's will be very helpful when it is time to hook it up!

Using an S-Video feed from the DVD and Satellite, what kind of picture quality should I look for?


Thanks!

Jason

 

[Movie Mike]

You should expect fairly good picture quality. It depends a lot on the quality of the show being broadcast - either by sat or from your dvd player.


Most DVD players have component out (the three rca plugs). You may wish to buy a component cable and connect the dvd player to your x1 via the component connections. You'll get the best possible picture. S-video is one step down from component. Since S-video is the best your sat box can do, connect it to your x1 using S-video.


If someone wants to bring a camcorder to your place to watch a camcorded video, you'll have space to hook up a composite (single, yellow rca jack) cable.


You are running a very similar setup to what I had at first. You'll like it.


By the way, welcome to the forum, Jason.


Mike

 

[technut Canada]

Since you bought an X1 with Faroudja, you'll get better quality than you would with most projectors. But any time you blow up a compressed or lower resolution image to a large size, the little flaws (artifacts) become more visible than they do on a small screen. The DVD will probably look very good, but the satellite is a lower quality signal (more compression) and will show that.

 

[JeffStickney]

Unless your DVD player is high-end progressive scan, the best connection for it would be the component-to-svideo adapter. However, the best connection for your sattelite box is svideo, and there is no A/B selector for infocus' oddball 7-pin svideo port, so you have two devices wanting the same port and no switchbox available.


If your DVD is interlaced and you want to use both devices to their full capacity, you would have to either unplug one from the projector, and plug the other in -each and every time you switch from sattelite to dvd and vica versa, or build your own A/B selector/adapter. I built a pretty nice one out of a cheap mac printer selector I found on EBAY.



If you feel like playing with the soldering iron I described the selector in this thread and the two threads linked to it. Sorry, but I never took a technical writing class and I don't have a digital camera to take pictures of it.


Essentially- since I couldn't find a 7-pin plug to match the projector's port, I made 7 pins out of 20 gage single-strand wire(a perfect fit for the pinholes in the projector) and soldered these "pins" to 7 of the 8 wires in the mac A/B switch. On the other end of the a/b selector, I soldered component cables (well really plain audio cables- I'm a cheapskate) to the appropriate wires in one severed Mac cable for the A. For the B, I soldered the wires from a severed s-video cable to the wires in another severed Mac cable (except I ran out of Mac cables so I soldered to 4 paperclips- which I fed into the selector's pinholes).



The pinout for infocus' 7 pin port is in one of the threads and on Technut's FAQ.


My ugly, Duct-taped(why buy electric tape when I already have the ugly grey stuff on hand), paperclipped switchbox, is duct-taped to the wall behind my AV equipment, and it works beautifully.