User manual TERRATEC TV CARDS AND EXTERNAL DEVICES

[. . . ] TV cards and external Devices (c) 2003 Terratec Electronic GmbH, M. Dreese , , The picture could be better. . . " Approximately 70% of all questions concerning TV cards address this issue. In fact, unrealisable expectations or a simple lack of knowledge about correctly connecting external devices to a TV card account for almost all cases where picture quality becomes a problem. 1. [. . . ] This round port can handle the full capabilities of an S-Video cable signal, but decodes only the FBAS signal and therefore has no quality advantage compared to the composite In. Should the S-Video cable not send the complete content (cable layout dependent) a black & white picture will result. for external device audio routing. Composite In S-Video In Black Audio In (Line-In) Audio Out) Out Blue (Line- Green Stereo Output, delivers the corresponding TV audio signal to the speakers. This port has to be connected to an active speaker set or Line-In on the soundcard. Be sure the Line-In on the soundcard is active :-) 2. Which input for what function? Depending on the source several connection options are possible, but in practice only one really makes sense. The aim is to avoid unnecessary modulation and demodulation. Modulation is, simply put, the conversion of a video signal into a high frequency (HF) signal, which then complies with the communications engineering standard. For example let us take a video signal broadcast from a TV studio (HF) and displayed (demodulated) in turn by the TV tuner. The same happens when a VCR sends data to a TV over the VCR antenna output. The biggest problem: Modulation and demodulation can lead to quality loss that is sometimes not to be ignored (i. e. TV reception distortion makes itself visible when bad weather conditions exist). Source TV antenna Cable TV VCR Satellite receiver Video camera Digital receiver Tuner Composite Practical Not possible Practical Not possible Not practical! [. . . ] Should the VCR already have a composite output option (Yellow-Black/White-Red), this can of course be used directly. The same applies to satellite receivers. [. . . ]