Using IPTV for your HDTV

As more opportunities become available to view TV programs on your PC, you may want to incorporate that newly purchased HDTV screen in the family room so the whole family can enjoy a home theater experience. This new "buzz word", IPTV, stands for Internet Protocol Television. It is not difficult to set up your PC to project on your HDTV, but you do need to check your PC and TV connections and connectors.

Since your PC might be in a home office or a bedroom, you may find that the connector cables will not transmit the signal as far as you need. A cost effective way to get the distance you need is with BALUNS and ETS has the largest selection of BALUNS for extending cable distance between PCs and TVs. The big benefit is that you use inexpensive, easy to find CAT5 cable for the extension. You might even be fortunate enough to have CAT5 cables already installed in the walls of your residence.

VGA (Video Graphics Array):

SVGA, XGA & SXVGA are included in this category.

Most computers connect to monitors with this kind of cable. The connector is a 15 pin high-density D-sub, that looks like this:

A VGA monitor requires 5 signals to display a picture:

R, G and B (red, green and blue signals).
HS and VS (horizontal and vertical synchronization).

The R, G and B are low-level analog signals (from 0V to 0.7V), while HS and VS are digital signals.

Most of the new flat panel TVs and projectors will also have a VGA connection. SVGA, XGA and SXGA are improvements on the standard VGA but the cable distance decreases from the 5 to 10 meters available with standard VGA. ETS offers both passive and active VGA BALUNS, the AV970 passive set requires two CAT5 cables for stereo audio & VGA video. The active AV970G utilizes only one CAT5 cable but requires power at both ends. The following table gives a distance guide for using BALUNS:

Format	RESOLUTION	Max Distance for CAT5 Cable
VGA	640 x 480 pixels	350 to 450 feet (107 to 137 meters)
SVGA	800 x 600 pixels	250 to 350 feet (75 to 107 meters)
XGA	1024 x 768 pixels	75 to 250 feet (23 to 75 meters)
SXGA	1280 x 1024 pixels	40 to 200 feet (12 to 61 meters)

ETS' active unit will increase the distance considerably and the above figures are best case maximum distance, real world distances could be considerably less.

For video only, check out ETS Part Number PV934 for a passive solution & PV974G for an active solution.

For video & audio, check out ETS Part Number AV934 for a passive solution & AV974G for an active solution.

CV & HDCV (Component Video and High Divination Component Video):

The cable can be 5 BNCs to 5 BNCs or 5 RCAs to 5 RCAs. It could also be 15-pin D-sub to 5 BNCs or 5 RCAs and that works as a VGA to HDCV converter.

ETS offers 15 different BALUNS in the CV & HDCV format. Again, if full stereo audio is required the balun will use two CAT5 cables.

For video only, check out ETS Part Numbers PV920, PV920WP, PV921, PV921WP, PV921DW, PV924, PV926, PV926WP, PV820 & PV821

For audio & video, check out ETS Part Numbers AV822, AV823, AV824, AV825, AV826

S-VIDEO (Separate Video or Y/C Video)

Separate video, abbreviated S-Video and also known as Y/C is an analog video signal that carries the video data as two separate signals (brightness and color). The luminance (Y; gray-scale) signal and modulated chrominance (C; color) information are carried on separate synchronized signal/ground pairs.

In composite video, the luminance signal is low-pass filtered to prevent crosstalk between high-frequency luminance information and the color sub-carrier. S-Video separates the two, and detrimental low-pass filtering is unnecessary. This increases bandwidth for the luminance information, and also subdues the color crosstalk problem. The infamous dot crawl is eliminated. This means that S-Video leaves more information from the original video intact, thus having a much-improved image reproduction compared to composite video.

Due to the separation of the video into brightness and color components, S-Video is sometimes considered a type of component video signal, although it is also the most inferior of them, quality-wise, being far surpassed by the more complex component video schemes (like RGB). What differentiates S-Video from these higher component video schemes is that S-Video carries the color information as one signal. This means that the colors have to be encoded in some way, and as such NTSC, PAL and SECAM signals are all decidedly different through S-Video. Thus, for full compatibility the used devices not only have to be S-Video compatible but also compatible in terms of color encoding.

Today, S-Video signals are generally connected using 4 pin mini-DIN connectors using a 75ohm termination impedance. Apart from the impedance requirement, these cables are equivalent to regular mini-DIN cables (like Apple's ADB); these cables can be used for S-Video transfer if no other cable is available, but picture quality may not be as good. Due to the wide use of S-Video connections for DVD players, S-Video cables are fairly inexpensive compared to component or digital connector cables, and are routinely available in places where the higher-bandwidth cables are not.

Pin numbers (looking at socket):

PIN ASSIGNMENTS
Pin	Name	Function	Pin	Name	Function
1	GND	Floor to Ground (Y)	3	Y	Intensity (Luminance)
2	GND	Ground (C)	4	C	Color (Chrominance)

Often new computers and TVs have an S-Video connection. The connector looks like the small circular connector that your PCs keyboard goes into. You will still need cables with RCA plugs for the audio. This is a very popular solution and gives a good picture at a very reasonable price. S-Video cables are normally good to 15 meters. ETS offers a BALUN that will handle audio and video over one CA5 cable. We also offer an eight port S-Video distribution hub that can be used so you can broadcast the IPTV program to TVs all over your house.

Check out ETS Part Numbers PV907 & PV907WP for video, AV902 & AV902WP for audio & video; AV918 is an eight channel S-Video Distribution Hub.