Above: the finest s-video cable ever made

S-video is great. You always get a better picture when you choose the s-video
port on anything that has it.

My video camera and DVD player have s-video out. The DVD player looks better
with s-video so I used the provided s-video cable that came with it. Good deal.

My camera was used and did not come with a cable. The next step was to visit
the Friendly Local Radio Shack. I was amazed at the cost of premade s-video
cables. True they use dual coax and have really lame DIN ends. I did not want
to spend $14 on an x foot cable so I boght instead two "exciting" gold plated
s-video ends and a 30 foot reel of Radio Shack s-video cable. The cable that
shey sell on a spool sems to be of a nice enough quality and was more flexible
that the type used for the premade cables. 

The packaging with each connector was detailed and made perfect sense. The
problem is it is a real pain the finish the three or four stage precision
stripping process on really thin soft coax wire. Also, the shield when twisted
together does not even come close to fitting in the solder cups for the shield
conductors. Trimming them down to the right size takes a while as there will be
strays that want to do nothing but create a short. 

Why did I write this? To tell everybody that I wasted a great deal of time
trying to make my own s-video cable. It is a Precision Crafted cable, but it
took too long to make. Now I have 21 feet left to use up later on. 

02-25-2000