May 2007

Rev 1

1/6

AN2483

Application note

Video signal standards

Introduction

As PC games, video editing, streaming movies on TV and DVD playback are becoming

more common, there is an increasing demand to display such video graphics on larger

display screens like those of TV rather than the PC monitors.

Analog switches are often used to route RGB data (Red, Green, Blue format) or component

or composite video data from different video sources, or to feed encoders with the video

data to different displays. The former is a multiplexing function while the latter is a de-

multiplexing function.

Interest in using analog switches in video signal routing applications is growing due the

rising trend of using lower pin count and the possibility of achieving cost reduction by

sharing the same video encoder/decoder or RAMDAC. This application note first describes

the video signal standards and then explains the various important parameters, which are

necessary to consider, in video signal switching.

www.st.com