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Comment by jimpudar | Hacker News Reader

I'm so happy they haven't removed the composite video out in the headphone jack! If you didn't know, you just need a 3.5 mm TRRS connector - the pinout[0] looks like:

T - Left Channel Audio

R - Right Channel Audio

R - Ground

S - Composite Video Out

[0] https://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2014/07/raspberry-pi-model...

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Woah, I had no idea about this. This is great! Do they sell an official adapter?

They don't need to, that's an official jack, often used in digital cameras or video cameras.

Google "audio video jack".

Update: Oh, I just read the linked article, apparently these cables aren't as standardized as I thought. There are some links in the comments.

It's somewhat common. https://www.amazon.com/Adafruit-Composite-Video-Raspberry-AD...

Why? What do you use composite video for? I think the last time I used composite video for anything was 10+ years ago.

Playing your emulated video games on a real CRT TV so you don't have to use computationally-expensive CRT filters on your video output to get it to look even sort-of the way you remember? Can't think of another use but I assume they exist.

If you're interested in native CRT output without the quality hit of composite video, I'd recommend taking to a looking at something like the Pi2SCART: http://arcadeforge.net/Pi2Jamma-Pi2SCART/PI2SCART::264.html

Not OP, but I love the composite output.

I have a raspberry with retroarch connected to an old CRT and an arcade stick. Old arcade games with a lot of dithering just don't look the same on an LCD.

(Some emulators now come with some decent CRT filters, but It's still not as good as a real CRT)

The good-looking CRT filters take some serious hardware to run well, too. The cheap options like the "scanlines" mode on the NES Classic so little resemble the real thing that I'm not sure why they bother. Maybe people who didn't grow up with CRTs think that's a retro look?

It is analog video. Meaning you can read the result without needing a HDMI decoder.

It also has much long range than HDMI (150 feet is cited compared with 50 feet for HDMI). You can also use boost extenders to transmit the feed over almost unlimited distances for little additional cost.

It is less useful at home, and more useful in industry, scientific, and experimental applications.

Wouldn't it be better to just need run Ethernet instead? You could use the PoE hat to get both power and digital data over a single cable 300 feet long. There are PoE repeaters to let you extend that distance without needing additional power cables. What situation requires you to be viewing a video feed from a raspberry pi a long distance away that wouldn't be better served with ethernet?

I've seen Pi's used in the art world for video installations. It can be quite a bit cheaper (and a different aesthetic) to get a pile of old CRTs than to get HDMI-capable TVs/monitors for such things.

IIRC, if you're building a handheld gaming device on the RPi Zero, your two choices for driving a small display are composite output or the SPI interface. The SPI interface has lower bandwidth, so some people use composite to eliminate tearing.

The SPI driver readme has a lot of details about its limitations and tradeoffs. https://github.com/juj/fbcp-ili9341

I setup a friend with a librelec raspi media player in his ~5 year old minivan that only has composite video in for the built in screen. Its not quite dead yet.

I really love old CRT monitors. It's super nice to be able to hook up to them easily.

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