Are component and composite video cables made of the same materials?

Question

They both have RCA jacks, so I was wondering exactly what the physical difference is: what kind of wire, shielding, etc.

Answer 1

In most cases they are exactly the same cable. 75Ω Nominal impedance for video bandwidth. It when you use a professional set up with the much different 110Ω impedance interconnects and/or the more exotic applications of high end cables where engineers have made specific changes to the characteristics of of the individual cables.

In a pinch a video cable can be used also as a digital coax connection for audio, but the bandwidth specific type should offer more room for performance.

Answer 2

Component cables are just 3 composite video cables of identical length bundled together.

All video cables should be made with 75 ohm impedance but you cannot tell by looking at a cable if it conforms to this.

"Shielding" and "number of slits in the RCA plug" have been over-used marketing terms to try to get people to buy expensive cables.

Go to the Belden website if you want to learn more. Belden makes and sells coax & wires sold to industry and they have some good articles about how to pick from their 100+ different wires for different applications.

Answer 3

There's really not much difference. Component cables will have slightly higher quality requirements, but realistically, you could just any 3 RCA cables as component video cables, and maybe even as a digital coax (for surround sound) cable.

Answer 4

the big secret---yes they are generally the same thing and are interchangable they all have the same components--a sheild, a center conductor, and a dielectric in between, but the quality is all over the board for these cables though
here are two cable

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10241&cs_id=1024101&p_id=2196&seq=1&format=2

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10241&cs_id=1024102&p_id=2752&seq=1&format=2

as you can probably see from the pictures, the 2nd cable is much thinner---that is bad---i would normally say that thicker is better, but there is an extent to the madness-----the first cable would be good for any application----and yes you could run component video over left / right rca cables (and vice versa)

Answer 5

Looks like I'm late to the party! The answer is yes. -everyone else has already explained the difference.