A friend of mine made his own audio mixer from scratch. Steve’s just that kind of guy. He also reverse-engineered the infrared remote codes for his Yamaha tuner, which didn’t come with a remote, yet supported one. I think Steve might take a look at this article about creating your own component video switch and complain that the technology behind such a device is age old and that he could have done something similar as a teenager.

But that doesn’t change the fact that you may have several component video sources, no component video switcher, and only one or two component video inputs on your display. The only choice you have besides manually connecting and disconnecting devices every time you want to use them is to have a switch of some kind. Either a switch in pre/pro or receiver, or a dedicated switch. There are some video-game oriented switchers that can do this for surprisingly cheap. (Like this HD switcher from Pelican for $25.) So I think that the only real reason you’d want to build your own is for the challenge (if you’re not Steve, of course).

In which case, you might want to take a peek at this article from Engadget about creating your own component video switcher.

How-To: Make a component video switch