Component Video

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What Does Component Video Mean?

Component video is a video signal that is transmitted in several parts in order to optimize quality. It is common in analog video transmission and is often paired with an accompanying audio signal. The different parts of component video signals generally consist of chroma (color) or luma (light) information, although sometimes this varies. Component video contrasts with composite video, which combines all segments of a video signal into a single channel.

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Techopedia Explains Component Video

Analog video developed concurrently with the advent of the television, and component video came with the rise of color TV in the 1950s. It provided a medium through which motion picture information could transmit reliably and efficiently, and still exists today in media display environments and setups wherein analog transmission is employed.

Component video cables generally have multiple connectors or pins on either side of their throughput, since they transmit signals separately from one another in order to achieve the best possible quality on the display end. One of the most common component video cable formats is RCA, which usually features three different connectors (for green, blue and red color information), with many of them also being paired with one or two more connectors for audio.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.