|
OK, so SCART may not be that great but in most cases, who cares? As you've mentioned, the advantages of superior systems are often nullified by converting everything down to a lowest common denominator like S-Video or even composite.
It wasn't that long ago that most people were sending RF output from their VCR and/or STB to the TV, and that has to be by far the worst option! Still, most people were happy with it. Common acceptance of SCART has at least made that option almost obsolete.
SCART has the advatage of being very practical in that you can daisy chain devices with it (providing they have 2 sockets as most do these days). It never ceases to amaze me how useful SCART is - everything just 'works' with it.
I'll give you a (rather long) example:
I live in Portugal but I have an old JVC VCR bought in the UK which doesn't support PAL-BG (only PAL-I) so I can't use it as a tuner (coz I'd get no sound). However, I have a Portuguese TV. Both the VCR and the TV only have a single SCART socket so I connected them up. Now, the TV can act as a tuner for the VCR (VCR on AUX (SCART)) with the SCART cable being RGB from TV to VCR and when I play tapes in the VCR, the TV automatically switches to the SCART input and I can see the video, so the SCART cable is now being RGB from VCR to TV.
It gets better, in order to decode premium cable channels I have a decoder box from the cable company which has 2 SCARTs - one goes to the TV, the other to the VCR. Amazingly, the above scenario still works as before and in addition:
When I change channel on the TV to a coded channel, the decoder picks that up and sends decoded output to the TV on the SCART and the TV automatically switches to SCART input, showing the decoded image. Of course if I want to record that decoded channel the SCART from the decoder to the VCR takes care of that.
So, with just 2 SCART cables every imagineable scenario is taken care of and just works, in particular, the TV switching to the SCART input whenever it's relevant. The only thing that doesn't work is if I want to watch one channel and record another but that's the fault of my VCR (not being able to decode PAL-BG) and nothing to do with SCART.
Michael.
|