Video Input

Video connection quality refers to the type of video connection used to connect the console playing the Street Fighter game of choice. While this isn't a Street Fighter specific issue, the connection quality might matter more than most other games because of how much focus the game requires, especially at high level play.

Description
As Street Fighter has evolved, so has Television technology. Up until recently the major manufacturers of game consoles have made sure that their consoles support as many legacy connections as possible as well as the current highest quality connection of the console's time. However as the current gen systems have stripped out all support for legacy connections in favor of HDMI. This can mean that players who revisit older games such as Special Champion Edition for the Sega Genesis can feel disappointed as they natively (especially in the U.S.) used inferior connections.

Kinds of connections.
In the United States five major consumer level connections when it comes to game consoles (and by extension Street Fighter). By order of quality they are RF, Composite (AKA AV), S-Video, Component (Y PB PR variety) and HDMI. Recently, the European SCART and Japanese JP21 through their capability of carrying RGB (Red Green Blue) has come into popularity for scalers of older consoles.

RF Video
RF Video combines audio and video into one cable. while in theory convenient the quality of visual and sound is very low. This can actually be detrimental in all levels of play as the "bleeding" (colors and objects extending further than they should be in the picture) can mislead spacing and make tactics such as Shimmies visually impossible. The flicker of the image can also lead to a generally poor experience.

Composite (AKA AV)
Composite video usually consist of a yellow cable accompanied by a white and red similar looking cable that carries audio. In terms of audio it sounds much better than RF and it doesn't feature screen flicker or black out that RF does. It is still considered poor quality due to composite video squeezing everything related to video (not related to this WIki) into a single cable. In Street Fighter terms playing in composite might make characters look a little weird as they could still "bleed" into nearby areas of the screen. Projectiles may appear to be bigger than they actually are.

S-Video
S-Video is a rather rare connection type, still it was a rather noticeable improvement compared to composite and it uses the same audio cables. In the United States this was the best type of connection for a while. In terms of Street Fighter this is the first real "sharp" option of consumers. If their display method accepted S-Video it is probably the cheapest (Pre-Ps2) way to get an acceptable video signal to onlookers who do not know about video signals, which can be important for people who set up events. The clarity is acceptable in high level of play generally due to 240P being accepted from the signal, both older CRT and newer HD TV's can be found with the port with some work, and many older consoles outputting the signal. For playing Playstation 1 games such as Pocket Fighter and the Street Fighter Alpha port with the original console for example S-Video is the best (in America) port a player can use.

Component (Y PB PR)
Often confused with RGB video signal, Y PB PR is actually a mathematical equivalent of RGB. It was meant to get the same results of RGB video similarly to video compression of a video editor can lower size but retain quality to a raw uncompressed (and massive) video file.

Represented by a red, blue, and green (usually the source of confusion with RGB) cable accompanied by the same red and white audio cables as composite and S-Video, Component is the best analog cable that was widely accepted in North America. The higher bandwidth of component compared to S-Video allows for much better colors as well as higher sharpness at the same resolutions. While S-Video can be considered the baseline for acceptance Component is a really high quality. old style CRT televisions that accept the connection are considered a luxury due to the look that those televisions provide compared to modern HD TV's or digital video recorders (capture cards). The Street Fighter III series really benefits from the higher clarity due to the highly detailed sprites. The Dreamcast had Double Impact that used VGA rather than Y PB PR (but functionally very similar) and 2nd Impact benefited greatly from the clarity VGA used.

Special mention goes to the Playstation 3, as Y PB PR is the best way to record videos (legally) of games such as Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter X Tekken as the HDMI port is protected by HDCP and capture devices can not record signal through the port. The PS3 and Xbox 360 can both run games up to 1080P just the same as HDMI through Component. Special care has to be taken as many sellers sell low quality Component video cables that have bad color levels and bleeding, which usually gives the impression of Y PB PR being inferior to HDMI and RGB.

HDMI
All current gen consoles only output this (as of the making of this article.) It is a single cable that carries audio and video, but at a much higher quality. While not better in itself than Y PB PR it is much more convenient as it is only a single cable and it is much more universally supported. Many capture devices only support HDMI for this reason.

Games like the 30th Anniversary Collection tend to look better than older consoles due to the capability of HDMI alongside the ability to natively output High Definition. Street Fighter V (assuming a good capture device was used) has a lot of detail in it's character models that is displayed to great effect on modern televisions. HDMI is often used for reference quality for mods on PC versions.

RGB
While it wasn't used in North America much due to no consumer level connection supporting it, it has seen some retrospective resurgence by enthusiast of retro consoles. Commonly accessed via European SCART or JP 21 Cables, this is the most "raw" analog output for older consoles. Despite some consoles not supporting S-Video like the Sega Genesis RGB output is actually enabled on many North American consoles despite not being a thing when older televisions were on display.

RGB is usually considered to be the best Pre-480P video signal. Due to the major uprising of video scalers such as the Framemeister, RGB is often used as the source for the aforementioned object. This leads to video signals going to HD Televisions that are sometimes even considered better than what native HDMI capable consoles are capable of, for example the 3DO version of Super Turbo compared to the PS4 Super Turbo.

RGB has also enabled CRT users to play games that were re-released (minus online features) to play the game with zero input lag and great quality. One of the most notable RGB innovations is HD Retrovision 's Component Cables for Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo, both cables access the console's native RGB hardware and actively converts the signal in very high quality Y PB PR. For Street Fighter this means most systems that had any sort of Street Fighter games (especially those of perfect ports) can be played without input lag compared to rereleased counterparts and looks arguably even better.