Off Topic SCART lead recommendation

[Toppsy]

Hi all,

I know this is nothing really to do with hifi but i have just bought a LCD TV and need some decent SCART leads to connect it up. What recommendations can any of you make?

Regards

Colin

[Stratmangler]

Hi Colin

Maplin do some good quality ones in their Nikkai range.
You can order them on-line too.

Chris

[Cobblers]

Originally Posted by Toppsy

Hi all,

I know this is nothing really to do with hifi but i have just bought a LCD TV and need some decent SCART leads to connect it up. What recommendations can any of you make?

Regards

Colin

If you only have a little portable LCD TV then scart may be the only type of available connection.
In which case QED do an excellent RGB scart cable av2105 it really is surprisingly good. Though of course it wont make an LCD look CRT good!


if its a big tv .......
However scart comes a VERY poor third compared to HDMI and Component video. These connections allow for vastly superior colour accuracy and resolution. HDMI is the best choice if your DVD player has it. Get Component if you have an older player.


Go into the menus of your TV and switch all the digital processing off. Back off brightness (which makes black areas look grey), colour, contrast, and especially sharpness. These settings are usually incredibly over the top and very unnatural out of the box, in order to make a picture look punchy and attractive on the shop floor.
Sharpness adds noise to the picture to give the impression of detail. Turned completely off the picture will look blurry though. As a rule of thumb try it around 30%, get used to image, and go from there.

[BOONDI]

Try these, use em in all my equipment...... http://http://cpc.farnell.com/jsp/en...sp?SKU=AV07499

EDIT:------

The link above is broken, but if you go to www.cpc.co.uk, it will redirect you to the CPC / Farnell web site.
Then search for

AV07499

Or as Roger A has got the right link (Thanks for that...;-)

By clicking the link in his post......

[Roger A]

I couldn't get the link in the previous post to work and believe it should be http://cpc.farnell.com/jsp/endecaSea...9#alternatives though if you do a search on the site there are a huge range of scart leads of varying qualities and lengths.

As others have mentioned the QED ones always get a good write up and I have used one from Campaign Audio Design which seems pretty good for the money. However, the Farnell ones are very cheap for what looks like decent cabling and plugs.

Roger

[Shian7]

Originally Posted by Cobblers

In which case QED do an excellent RGB scart cable av2105 it really is surprisingly good.

I'll second that!!!...excellent cables, the RGB only AV41xx especially.

Cheers,
Mike.

[Toppsy]

Thanks guys,

It is a big screen TV so with what you guys have recommended I'll plough through the manual and set things up as Cobblers suggests and check out the deals on the leads.

Best Regards
Colin

[John Caswell]

Hi all,
A slight correction here if I may.
Cobblers comments "However scart comes a VERY poor third compared to HDMI and Component video".
Not so, all colour TV is generated in Red, Green and Blue (R,G.B) whereas Component ( and here I use the generic Y, B-Y, R-Y) is derived from the RGB by matrixing some R, G and B to generate Y and then B-Y and R-Y are generated by subtracting Y from the Blue and then Y from the Red to provide B-Y and R-Y, so there is bound to be some degradation of the signal
These three signals are then encoded with colour subcarrier at approx 4.43Mhz to provide a standard PAL signal.
For those Americans amongst us it is Y, I,and Q, 3,58 Mhz subcarrier and NTSC
The Scart connector generally provides both RGB and PAL of which RGB is far superior. I have not seen a Scart providing Component as this usually comes out on Phono connectors.
If asked to rate all the signals it would be ,HDMI, RGB, Component, and then PAL (or NTSC if American).

Toppsy before you buy Scarts have a look to see what connectors are available on the TV and also on the source devices.

John aka Dr John

[Cobblers]

John,
This is not the case with a flat screen device, when connected to a DVD player, projector or SKY HD.

I wasn't trying to get into a technical debate upon the merits of pal/secam ntsc (never twice the same colour) etc which colour the cable sync's with, blah blah, merely which is the best connection on a new flat screen set!

RGB connected scart will of course give you the best image quality for a uk PAL based CRT telly, but Toppsy's bought an LCD!


Scarts fine for older non progressive scan sources (especially with RGB pins) but RGB is a bandwidth hog, and hence is unsuitable for modern sources which require prog scan and upscaling to look their best on the new generation of flat screen which have a fixed native resolution (which they like to see to operate at their best).

[John Caswell]

Sorry but not so.
Scart is generically used as a means of describing the signal, when if fact all it is is a connector and doesn't give a stuff as to what is on/through it.
Because of this it is assumed that the signal coming out of a Scart is of poor quality, which is not so as it carries high quality RGB as part of the original spec.
That being aside if the signal comes out of the DVD/Sky HD or whatever on a Scart Connector or Phono as opposed to an HDMI connector then by very definition it is an analogue signal, as that is what the industry has decided, and as such will need to be converted to a digital version thereof and butchered accordingly
I still hold that in order of quality it is HDMI, RGB, Component, baseband PAL/NTSC/SECAM, and finally SVHS.

John aka dr John