Color Stream

[HDTV Forum]

See Component Video for a view of the connector type.

For practical purposes YCbCr and YPbPr are the same component video connection but if you are designing a display technically they are not.

YCbCr is a labeling coined by Toshiba and used on older product for 480I component analog video, CAV, inputs which Toshiba called Color Stream. This was a Toshiba exclusive developed for DVD players to improve picture quality since the native format of DVD is component video. Y is video, Cb is color stream blue and Cr is color stream red. These days we simply call this 480I.

YPbPr is another labeling for 480P CAV. Y is still video, Pb is progressive blue and Pr is progressive red. We call this 480P. This labeling is also used for 720P and 1080I. It is the most common method of labeling for any CAV input these days and the colorstream nomeclature is rarely used. Another version of this comes directly from europe and is called YUV and means the same thing. As a technician you can run into schematics that have all three types in it and this was very confusing in the early days of HDTV.

The technical issue is the 480I version differs from YPbPr in terms of peak to peak voltage for the red and blue color signals and a properly designed display has adjustable offsets to match the 480I signals to YPbPr so you get the correct response.

Richard Fisher