Ergonomics!

I recently picked up a snazzy, new, 160GB iPod. Regina recently bought a snazzy HDTV that was on sale at Staple's. My intent is to store movies on the iPod so that I don't have to fumble through a pile of DVDs to find something to watch.

To that end, I needed a cable to hook the iPod up to the TV. Although I ordered it at the same time as the iPod, the cable just arrived today; it was shipped from China, while the iPod was shipped from right here in California.

Being an HDTV, it wants "Component Video" instead of the familiar composite video. The cable therefore has three video connectors: Y, Cr, and Cb. The video connectors are your average RCA plug with, not surprisingly, red, green, and blue doobers to mark which is which.

Audio is, of course, stereo, so there are two connectors for that. They are labelled in the normal way: white and red.

That's right; this cable has two red connectors on it.

And there's no obvious visual difference between the video red connector and the audio red connector; that'd doubtless interfere with its stylishness.

Which means that in order to know which is which, you have to trace the red cable to see whether it comes from the three-way video splitter end or the two-way audio splitter end.

Ergonomics!

EDIT: Death to line breaks.