easycap with color issues from some devices?

I bought an EasyCap video capture USB device which "works" to some extent right out of the box (go Ubuntu Linux!) but for one of my devices it has trouble getting the color info. The video looks fine otherwise, but when I go through EasyCap it keeps dropping color and switching to B&W. I've tried adjusting the setting "Gain" in VLC for it's capture control, but there's no clear indicator of what the scale is and it doesn't seem to help. I tried switching the RCA cable as well, since the last one was cheap and seemed to make it more likely to drop if I jiggled it, but the new cable still loses color.

Is this just a failure of cheap hardware, or is there some setting I'm missing?