- Component video should always be crisper than composite video, because the composite signal is effectively two syncs (horizontal and vertical), plus three colour channels (green, red-diff, blue-diff) all munged into one, which the other end has to try to figure out. Suffice to say this is suboptimal. If the component video wasn't crisper, then there'd be something seriously wrong with the equipment. (Eg, beware that some video switches have only a composite backplane, and hence munge everything to composite before switching, and demunge it again to send out. The result there is also... suboptimal.) The difference between S-Video and Component Video is much smaller, at least for short cable runs.
- Regarding the WRT54G, there've been four hardware revisions of these now. The first couple were relatively easy to hack, but the last couple have been made progressively harder to hack (including firmware fixes for the backdoors being used to get in). The OpenWRT project (which is very close to an actual release -- RC3 at present) has done fairly well at coping with the wide range of hardware, and explaining what is in each. And they've also got a pretty nice build system now. As well as what seems to be a "set one flag to use as a wireless bridge to another LAN" option added pretty recently.
But if you just want a wireless bridge there's probably something cheaper that'll do it out of the box. And WPA is close to being secure enough for a non-critical link (I never did trust WEP for security, and always used a VPN or something over it).
Linksys, despite being owned by Cisco, is pretty much on par with many of the other "consumer electronics" companies -- ie, most of the stuff mostly works, but less so when you try to push it to do something "unusual." The reusability with something like OpenWRT is the sole reason I'd buy them over any of the other consumer items, so it's a shame that they're actively trying to defeat that reuse.
no subject
- Component video should always be crisper than composite video, because the composite signal is effectively two syncs (horizontal and vertical), plus three colour channels (green, red-diff, blue-diff) all munged into one, which the other end has to try to figure out. Suffice to say this is suboptimal. If the component video wasn't crisper, then there'd be something seriously wrong with the equipment. (Eg, beware that some video switches have only a composite backplane, and hence munge everything to composite before switching, and demunge it again to send out. The result there is also... suboptimal.) The difference between S-Video and Component Video is much smaller, at least for short cable runs.
- Regarding the WRT54G, there've been four hardware revisions of these now. The first couple were relatively easy to hack, but the last couple have been made progressively harder to hack (including firmware fixes for the backdoors being used to get in). The OpenWRT project (which is very close to an actual release -- RC3 at present) has done fairly well at coping with the wide range of hardware, and explaining what is in each. And they've also got a pretty nice build system now. As well as what seems to be a "set one flag to use as a wireless bridge to another LAN" option added pretty recently.
But if you just want a wireless bridge there's probably something cheaper that'll do it out of the box. And WPA is close to being secure enough for a non-critical link (I never did trust WEP for security, and always used a VPN or something over it).
Linksys, despite being owned by Cisco, is pretty much on par with many of the other "consumer electronics" companies -- ie, most of the stuff mostly works, but less so when you try to push it to do something "unusual." The reusability with something like OpenWRT is the sole reason I'd buy them over any of the other consumer items, so it's a shame that they're actively trying to defeat that reuse.
Ewen