You cannot recreate the original luminance and chrominance values, but you can re-establish them to a lesser extent. This is necessary to get back to the final RGB picture anyways, since your display device requires it. This is why using S-video for video capture can be hit and miss - it depends on which device, the tv or LD player, has the better comb filter. People often assume that the S-video on the player is better simply because it's on the player, and ignore the fact that it's often 10-20 years older than the comb filter in their new tv. They don't realize that, in either case, the composite signal is being changed back to S-video, and will eventually be changed back to RGB for displaying.
"Unless the hidden message here is that composite signal-to-composite-output would be akin to "stacking" two composite processes on top of each other, whereas outputting on some component level at least wouldn't make it any worse. (?)"
I'm not sure where you got that. I was just curious to know the means by which you were converting the composite signal. I knew your LD player had component out for DVD-only, so when you stated that the player had been modified, I was wondering if you were using the existing component circuitry (Which I now know you are not.) It just made me wonder why Pioneer didn't decide to engineer that in anyways for LD output. As much as they continued to promote laserdisc, it would have seemed like a no-brainer.
BTW, laserman. Two things...
1) Which model player are you using, and was it modified for RGB output?
2) CONTACT ME!?!?!?
[EDIT] According to that faq (Thanks! I need to renew my WSR subscription as well), there were some players with RGB and component connections. Anyone know which models had this?