Laserdisc & VHS on 59" Plasma

[tholly]

Issue:

I have a 59" Samsung Plasma (replaced a 56" DLP). I also have a huge collection of laserdiscs (I know they won't look good) and a few VHS tapes.

The Samsung player only has HDMI and Component video inputs. The VHS & Laserdisc player need S-Video or Composite video. The Samsung comes with a cable adapter thingy that I can use to hook up the LD or VHS, but it involves switching out Components already plugged into the cable. Kind of a hassle. I am wondering if there are any dirt cheap converters that I can use to avoid this cable swapping. I need to fulfill one of the following scenarios to correct my issue:

S-Video & Composite -> Component
S-Video & Composite -> HDMI

Either conversion will work for what I want to do, but I need something that I can hook both up to without the need to swap cables.

Any ideas?

[Alan Smithee]

Wow- NO composite inputs? Does it have an analog TV tuner? (There are still some low-power analog stations on the air, plus you need that to hook up old video game systems that only have RF outputs.)

I have all my stuff going through my audio receiver and that passes everything thru HDMI to the TV. However if I want to see the closed-captions on tapes or laserdiscs, I still need to hook those up with composite as that's the only way the caption signal will go through. (It would be nice if they'd put a caption decoder in receivers, but only people like me would care about that.)

For something "dirt cheap", you can buy a switcher for $5 at Big Lots that has 3 regular A/V inputs and one output, so you could hook that to the 'thingy' that came with your TV and not have to swap cables.

[SterlingBen]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=S-Video+to+Component

[tholly]

Originally Posted by SterlingBen

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=S-Video+to+Component

$170 is a bit more than "dirt cheap" for something that I won't be using frequently. I'd be better off getting a new receiver at that point.

[tholly]

Originally Posted by Alan Smithee

For something "dirt cheap", you can buy a switcher for $5 at Big Lots that has 3 regular A/V inputs and one output, so you could hook that to the 'thingy' that came with your TV and not have to swap cables.

The big thing is changing the VHS composite and laserdisc composite or s-video to component. I'll have to check out the big lots item if it can do that conversion.

[Spiky]

It won't. I don't know the exact item Alan means, but....it won't actually transcode composite to component for $5.

However, if you have this Samsung wire adaptor thing, put that before the $5 switcher. When you switch, it will go to either your device that uses component video or the device that uses composite video run through this Samsung adaptor.

Got any model numbers so we can look at this all-digital wonder? Actually, the Analog Sunset dictates that TVs starting at some point will not be allowed to have analog connections at all. It's 2014 or something.

[tholly]

It is the Samsung 59" Plasma 3D HDTV (model # PN59D6500).

It has 4 HDMI ports, 1 PC port, wifi, ethernet port, one port for this dongle cable thing, and one antenna input for the spare over the air antenna I have. I have my DirecTV, PS3, & HD-DVD player hooked up via HDMI, and then I have a system selector hooked up component for my Wii, PS2, & XBox 360. Just trying to figure out how to get my Laserdisc player and VHS hooked up. VHS will not work through the antenna input.

So, on to this dongle thing. It has the red / white audio input and the red green blue component input. On the red video input, there is also a yellow stripe colored on. If you hook up composite, it will work just fine (as long as the blue and green inputs are empty). I cannot split the red / yellow and use Y dongles because as soon as something is hooked up in the other 2 inputs, the tv assumes it is component and not composite.

This is why I need to upconvert to composite. I can split same type connections, but cannot split for component and composite.


Note: The Samsung dongle needs to be hooked directly into the TV (it has a special connector end on it that will only fit in this TV......loose this cable, say goodbye to component inputs.)

[SterlingBen]

Originally Posted by tholly

$170 is a bit more than "dirt cheap" for something that I won't be using frequently. I'd be better off getting a new receiver at that point.

This was the first link after the google ad at the top

http://www.google.com/products/catal...wAQ#ps-sellers

Perhaps you meant to say $17 was too much?

[Spiky]

SterlingBen,
That's a specific product that only works with certain Infocus projectors, they had the transcoder built into the PJ.

tholly,
The specs at Crutchfield claim your dongle is switchable between component and composite, so there must be a switch in the TV's menu. (Crutchfield is usually accurate) And they must tell you which wire (of the red/green/blue) the composite would plug into, probably the green. The idea with Alan's suggestion is to have an external component switcher, like this. The dongle gets plugged into its output. And your inputs have to go to the correct color-coded connections. The component input would use all of the red/green/blue, while the yellow composite from VHS would just use the green or whichever. (it would not use the yellow)

You would have to switch both the switcher and the TV appropriately, which would be a little more complex, but that's what happens with a TV that has almost completely dropped analog video.

[tholly]

Originally Posted by Spiky

SterlingBen,
That's a specific product that only works with certain Infocus projectors, they had the transcoder built into the PJ.

tholly,
The specs at Crutchfield claim your dongle is switchable between component and composite, so there must be a switch in the TV's menu. (Crutchfield is usually accurate) And they must tell you which wire (of the red/green/blue) the composite would plug into, probably the green. The idea with Alan's suggestion is to have an external component switcher, like this. The dongle gets plugged into its output. And your inputs have to go to the correct color-coded connections. The component input would use all of the red/green/blue, while the yellow composite from VHS would just use the green or whichever. (it would not use the yellow)

You would have to switch both the switcher and the TV appropriately, which would be a little more complex, but that's what happens with a TV that has almost completely dropped analog video.

My problem is more complex.

Sound splitting on this cable is easy. Y-dongles to split the red / white inputs.

Video is my issue. The Samsung cable must be connected to the TV, no options there. From that cable, I have the RGB inputs. One of them, I think R is technically R/Y since it is labeled for either input.

The problem is that once anything is plugged into the GB of the RGBs, the TV switches automatically to Component. You cannot select composite. Unplugging the GB and putting Y in the R/Y and the TV switches to Composite.

This is why Y-dongle splitters will not work to mix Composite and Component. I need to someone convert by Composite or S-Video to Component. I can then easily use Y-dongles to split the connector and hook them all up at once. I need to get all my signals to match which is my conversion issue.


Edit: this is how they describe that little adapter cable the TV came with.... 6" AV component video adapter (with two male minijack connectors on one end and female component video/stereo RCA jacks on other end)

Edit 2: they describe it as "switchable", but what they really mean is that you physically have to reach behind the tv, unconnect the componenet cables and then plug in the composite cables. There is no in-menu option to change from component to composite if you have all three plugs plugged into the RGB inputs.

[Numanoid]

Originally Posted by tholly

It is the Samsung 59" Plasma 3D HDTV (model # PN59D6500).

I just got this TV myself about a week ago. Beautiful freaking set.

[Spiky]

If it really is the physical connection that triggers it, rather than sensing signal, then you are down to the cheap switcher, plus reaching back to unplug 2 wires when you need composite as being the easiest method that is also cheap.

Or you can buy something that will transcode to component. They used to cost $300 for barebones models before HDMI came along, if you are seeing $170, that is a reduction considering these are hardly in demand. There is the DVDO Edge scaler for $500 which would do a great job. Or a receiver that can convert.

But going straight to HDMI might be cheaper. No idea how well these things work.

[tholly]

Originally Posted by Spiky

If it really is the physical connection that triggers it, rather than sensing signal, then you are down to the cheap switcher, plus reaching back to unplug 2 wires when you need composite as being the easiest method that is also cheap.

Or you can buy something that will transcode to component. They used to cost $300 for barebones models before HDMI came along, if you are seeing $170, that is a reduction considering these are hardly in demand. There is the DVDO Edge scaler for $500 which would do a great job. Or a receiver that can convert.

But going straight to HDMI might be cheaper. No idea how well these things work.

I have it set up now with the unplugging the other 2 wires option plus a Y-splitter on the red/yellow cable so it is only unplugging 2 wires for composite or keeping those 2 wires plugged in for component.

Seeing that going to component will likely be super costly and just going right to HDMI might be fairly cheap (since I have one unused HDMI port anyway) I might have to look into the quality of those composite to HDMI changers.

I am looking to get a new receiver at some point, so maybe my best option is to hold out and do the cheap switching cables option until I am ready to get a new receiver and then just find one that can do composite out upconverted via HDMI.

[tholly]

So, I'm thinking my solution might be to upconvert my component cables to HDMI and use the spare HDMI slot I have and then use the Samsung cable for my composite hookups.

Considering something like this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...A2YHHPMBONOB6F

[JimRochester]

This sounds like what my uncle went through. He gets a brand new SONY then proceeds to hook up the Blu-ray, the regular DVD (because one of his concert discs wouldn't play), his VHS, beta, and cable box. We had more fuckin wires pouring out of the back of that thing. I think he still had component because I don't remember needing any fancy converters. I have to ask just like I did with him (especially with the beta). Are the titles really that important? The VHS and beta looked like such crap on that TV I couldn't believe he would ever really watch any of that stuff. But he's a big "just in case" kinda guy.

[tholly]

Originally Posted by JimRochester

Are the titles really that important? The VHS and beta looked like such crap on that TV I couldn't believe he would ever really watch any of that stuff. But he's a big "just in case" kinda guy.

I can do without the VHS player, but the Laserdisc player is a must have. I have ~400 laserdiscs, most of which are films I don't have on any other format. Also, a pretty good chunk of them are Criterion Collection Laserdiscs, many of which did not make it into the Criterion DVD line.

[JimRochester]

Well I would agree. With that type of collection i wouldn't want to let that go by the wayside either. For $35.00 it would seem like a decent solution.

[mythmaker18]

the whole issue of connections was one of many factors I took into account ahead of time when I selected my TV set (the other main feature I needed was PAL compatibility on the inputs). I narrowed it down to two Sharp models, but went with the 60E88 over the Quattrons partially because the E88 has two composite connections instead of the single mini-jack composite connector on the Quattrons.