GameCube Component Cables. Red showing up as Dark Green. Huh?

[Cloud121]

I finally got some GameCube component cable back in April. At first they were giving me all kinds of problems, with the picture always dropping out, a lot of flickering, etc.

Now it doesn't do that anymore. Instead, all my reds show up as a really dark green. All the other colors are fine, just red shows up wrong. Sometimes, though very seldom, it will show up fine. But the vast majority of the time it shows up like this. All my other inputs are fine. HD DVD player (HDMI), PS3 (HDMI), Dreamcast (VGA/S-Video), Jaguar (AV), and everything else show up fine on my LCD.

Is it the cables? They are official cables obviously, and no frayed wires. My component inputs are fine as I plugged in my PS2 to test it out, and reds showed up great.

[c0ldb33r]

First things first, I would get my hands on another gamecube to test them with. It might be your cube (which would be best considering cubes are so incredibly cheap right now).

IF that's not it, try them in a different TV set.

[alec006]

Hopefully it's not the chip thats embedded in the cable,shouldn't be thou.

[Cloud121]

If it's the chip in the cables, anything I can do to fix it? Or I likely have to buy new cables?

[Tokimemofan]

Could be a bad connection on the red. If it is the chip get a new cable.

[Cloud121]

So I've since been able to test the component cables on three different TVs, and two GameCubes, and the red still comes up as a dark green sometimes.

It's very frustrating for me as I have to boot the console up, and check the red icons on my memory card to see if they're showing up right, and then turn the console off and fiddle with the cables a bit. Hell, I was playing Madden a couple weeks ago, and the Cardinals jerseys turned from red to dark green mid game. That's the first time I've ever seen it do that mid game.

[APE992]

Sounds like an intermittent break in the red wiring somewhere. Only going to get worse until it finally stops working. Luckily for you all it really means is that the cable end will have to be chopped off somewhere and replaced with is decidedly MUCH cheaper than a new component cable. Though it won't look quite as factory fresh.

If you're lucky its a break in the last few inches of the red only side.

The green cable carries the black and white information, the blue cable carries the difference between "blue" and what is being transmitted on the green cable with the red cable carrying the difference between what green has and red.

Its been a while since I've played with a component cable but I'd assume plugging in the green cable would produce a black and white picture. Plugging blue in with green should produce a picture with plenty of blue. Assuming the red cable is broken somewhere it should produce the dark green you're seeing as well with one/both of these plugged in.

One guy here:
http://www.gamespot.com/forums/topic/26169999

Found that not having red plugged in at all on a 360 produced a really green screen like you are describing. Not entirely "mystery solved" quite yet.