Hawk, the red, white and yellow inputs on your TV are what's called composite TV inputs. S-video inputs allow for a slightly better picture and component inputs again are slightly better than S-video. The difference isn't huge, however, and the composite inputs are what you have to work with. The yellow RCA is a 75 ohm coaxial cable that's perfectly satisfactory for TV. The red and white for audio usually aren't coaxial cables, but work well for analog audio transmission, so that's all you need.
There's no good reason to get banana plugs unless you're going to be frequently connecting and disconnecting, otherwise there's no better connection than simply using the bare wire. You may not need 12ga wire for the relatively short runs you'll be using, but Home Depot and Lowes are among the places that have it at low cost and Parts Express is a good source for on-line ordering.
