A composite monitor or composite video monitor is any

analog Analog or analogue may refer to: Computing and electronics * Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable ** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals *** Analog electronics, circuits which use analo ...

video display that receives input in the form of an analog

composite video Composite video is an analog video signal format that carries standard-definition video (typically at 525 lines or 625 lines) as a single channel. Video information is encoded on one channel, unlike the higher-quality S-Video (two channels) a ...

signal to a defined specification. A composite video signal encodes all information on a single conductor; a composite cable has a single live conductor plus earth. Other equipment with display functionality includes monitors with more advanced

interfaces Interface or interfacing may refer to: Academic journals * Interface (journal), ''Interface'' (journal), by the Electrochemical Society * ''Interface, Journal of Applied Linguistics'', now merged with ''ITL International Journal of Applied Lin ...

and connectors giving a better picture, including analog

VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the PC industry within three years. The term can now ...

, and digital

DVI Digital Visual Interface (DVI) is a video display interface developed by the Digital Display Working Group (DDWG). The digital interface is used to connect a video source, such as a video display controller, to a display device, such as a comp ...

HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a proprietary audio/video interface for transmitting uncompressed video data and compressed or uncompressed digital audio data from an HDMI-compliant source device, such as a display controller, ...

, and

DisplayPort DisplayPort (DP) is a digital display interface developed by a consortium of PC and chip manufacturers and standardized by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA). It is primarily used to connect a video source to a display device su ...

; and

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

(TV) receivers which are self-contained, receiving and displaying video RF broadcasts received with an internal tuner. Video monitors are used for displaying computer output,

closed-circuit television Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly t ...

(e.g. security cameras) and other applications requiring a two-dimensional monochrome or colour image.

Inputs

Composite monitors usually use

RCA jack The RCA connector is a type of electrical connector commonly used to carry audio and video signals. The name ''RCA'' derives from the company Radio Corporation of America, which introduced the design in the 1930s. The connectors male plug and ...

s or BNC connectors for video input. Earlier equipment (1970s) often used

UHF connector The UHF connector is a name for a threaded RF connector. The connector design was invented in the 1930s for use in the radio industry, and is a shielded form of the "banana plug". It is a widely used standard connector for HF transmission lin ...

s. Typically simple composite monitors give a picture inferior to other interfaces. In principle a monitor can have one or several of multiple types of input, including composite—in addition to composite monitors as such, many monitors accept composite input among other standards. In practice computer monitors ceased to support composite input as other interfaces became predominant. A composite monitor must have a two-dimensional approximately flat display device with circuitry to accept a composite signal with picture and synchronisation information, process it into monochrome

chrominance Chrominance (''chroma'' or ''C'' for short) is the signal used in video systems to convey the color information of the picture (see YUV color model), separately from the accompanying luma signal (or Y' for short). Chrominance is usually represente ...

and

luminance Luminance is a photometric measure of the luminous intensity per unit area of light travelling in a given direction. It describes the amount of light that passes through, is emitted from, or is reflected from a particular area, and falls withi ...

, or the red, green, and blue of RGB, plus synchronisation pulses, and display it on a screen, which was predominantly a

CRT CRT or Crt may refer to: Science, technology, and mathematics Medicine and biology * Calreticulin, a protein *Capillary refill time, for blood to refill capillaries *Cardiac resynchronization therapy and CRT defibrillator (CRT-D) * Catheter-re ...

until the 21st century, and then a thin panel using

LCD A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers. Liquid crystals do not emit light directly but in ...

or other technology. A critical factor in the quality of this display is the type of encoding used in the TV camera to combine the signal together and the decoding used in the monitor to separate the signals back to RGB for display. Composite monitors can be very high quality, with professional broadcast reference displays costing

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

10k-$15k as of 2000.

Comb filter In signal processing, a comb filter is a filter implemented by adding a delayed version of a signal to itself, causing constructive and destructive interference. The frequency response of a comb filter consists of a series of regularly spaced no ...

s are frequently used to improve the quality of a composite monitor.

Early innovations of this technology

Originally, these monitors were used for commercial studios. Composite video first saw home use for dubbing tapes on

VCR A videocassette recorder (VCR) or video recorder is an electromechanical device that records analog audio and analog video from broadcast television or other source on a removable, magnetic tape videocassette, and can play back the recording. ...

s. Early computers, both commercial and amateur, mostly used

teleprinter A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Initia ...

s for output; simple home models might simply display an array of lights to be interpreted as binary information. Later the concept of the TV Typewriter was born, effectively the video monitor used for digital information; this was implemented as dedicated monitors and as interfaces to the television receivers present in many homes. Many computers incorporated a display. From the late 1970s stand-alone composite monitors came into use, including by the

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

VIC 20 The VIC-20 (known as the VC-20 in Germany and the VIC-1001 in Japan) is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the P ...

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...

Atari 8-bit family The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE, ...

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...

with CGA card, some computers compatible with it, Hewlett-Packard 200 series, and other home and business computers of the 1980s. These computers had composite video outputs, and sometimes composite monitors bundled with the systems. Some computer companies separately sold their own composite monitors for use with their computers.

Composite video and game consoles

During the same time period, home game consoles chose to stick with

RF modulation An RF modulator (or radio frequency modulator) is an electronic device whose input is a baseband signal which is used to modulate a radio frequency source. RF modulators are used to convert signals from devices such as media players, VCRs and ...

since many people had color televisions without composite video inputs. However, in 1985, the

NES The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in American ...

was released and was the first game console to feature direct composite outputs. Although the redesigned NES ( NES 2) lacked these outputs, the Super NES and nearly all consoles made since have included the direct composite outputs. From the fifth generation systems (such as the Sony PlayStation and the Nintendo 64) onward, many consoles used these outputs as the primary means of connecting to the television, requiring a separate adapter for use on televisions lacking composite inputs. As of today, some people still use stand-alone composite monitors for some purposes, including modern game consoles even with the advent of televisions with a tuner and composite inputs combined.

Composite input to non-composite device

When a composite monitor is not available, a device requiring one can use an RF modulator to encode a composite output onto a RF signal which can be received by an analog television, available in many homes until the

digital switchover The digital television transition, also called the digital switchover (DSO), the analogue switch/sign-off (ASO), the digital migration, or the analogue shutdown, is the process in which older analogue television broadcasting technology is conv ...

. Devices are available to convert from composite to other standards such as analog VGA or digital HDMI; such devices may be called upscalers or

scan converter Scan conversion or scan converting rate is a video processing technique for changing the vertical / horizontal scan frequency of video signal for different purposes and applications. The device which performs this conversion is called a scan conv ...

s, although not all devices with these names will handle composite input. A converter with electronics is necessary; a simple cable will not do the job. With a whole market full of all sorts of solutions to convert composite (or its related standard

S-video S-Video (also known as separate video, Y/C, and erroneously Super-Video ) is an analog video signal format that carries standard-definition video, typically at 525 lines or 625 lines. It encodes video luma and chrominance on two separate channe ...

) to all sorts of other video transmission standards, it has even offered opportunities to

repurpose Repurposing is the process by which an object with one use value is transformed or redeployed as an object with an alternative use value. Description Repurposing is as old as human civilization, with many contemporary scholars investigating tha ...

non-composite monitors for composite video input, in which composite monitors themselves have also been repurposed for other applications of their own.

Commercial use of composite monitors

Television studio A television studio, also called a television production studio, is an installation room in which video productions take place, either for the production of live television and its recording onto video tape or other media such as SSDs, or for t ...

s use stand-alone composite video monitors to check and judge their output picture quality. These are usually high-end professional broadcast monitors that are used to view the output of

professional video camera A professional video camera (often called a television camera even though its use has spread beyond television) is a high-end device for creating electronic moving images (as opposed to a movie camera, that earlier recorded the images on film). O ...

VTR A video tape recorder (VTR) is a tape recorder designed to record and playback video and audio material from magnetic tape. The early VTRs were open-reel devices that record on individual reels of 2-inch-wide (5.08 cm) tape. They were us ...

character generator A character generator, often abbreviated as CG, is a device or software that produces static or animated text (such as news crawls and credits rolls) for keying into a video stream. Modern character generators are computer-based, and they can g ...

s, telecines and DDRs. They can also be used when new video devices are being tested. Most commercial composite monitors have no audio support or speakers, as the audio system is processed through high-quality audio equipment. * Stand-alone composite monitors are commonly used for

and video surveillance. Some monitors used in video surveillance give a monochrome picture.

Common features

Stereo sound Stereophonic sound, or more commonly stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configuration ...

* TV tuner * Front AV inputs *

S-Video S-Video (also known as separate video, Y/C, and erroneously Super-Video ) is an analog video signal format that carries standard-definition video, typically at 525 lines or 625 lines. It encodes video luma and chrominance on two separate channe ...

input *

Closed captioning Closed captioning (CC) and subtitling are both processes of displaying text on a television, video screen, or other visual display to provide additional or interpretive information. Both are typically used as a transcription of the audio por ...

References

Sources

* * * {{cite magazine, last1=Edwards, first1=Benj, date=19 April 2021, title=A brief history of Computer Displays , url=https://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/slideshow/366677/brief-history-computer-displays/, url-status=live, access-date=14 June 2021 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210429050657/https://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/slideshow/366677/brief-history-computer-displays/, archive-date=29 April 2021 , location=Australia, publisher=IDG, magazine=PC World, orig-year=2015 Television technology Film and video technology Video hardware