Should a DVD recorder pass an RGB signal without distortion?

[Captain_Danger]

I have just purchased a Samsung R-128 DVD recorder from Richer Sounds for £89, and first impressions seem great.

However on closer inspection, when I pass through the RGB signal from my cable box into the recorder I can see there is a noticable degredation in image quality compared to plugging the cable box directly into the RGB scart on the back of the TV.
The image looks softer, and there is an odd light flickering on mainly blue colours...

Should this be so, is it "acceptable" or should a recorder pass the RGB signal perfectly with no loss in quality.

PS, actual DVD playback from purchased DVDs is flawless with no image quality loss. I have also tried different scart leads, from gold "performance" leads, to bog standard £2 ones, with the same result.

Cheers.

[Gavtech]

Are you certain that you are feeding RGB into the dvdr from the cable box?
RGB is only output from the TV socket of such boxes .

I don't know this Samsung unit... so are you sure that: 1 - It has RGB pass through capability... and 2 - The AV2 input is configured for RGB input and AV1 is configured for RGB output.

Also be sure that the scart from cable box to DVDR is a fully wired type.

If all the above are OK ... it may be simply a limitation of a £89 DVDR.

Samsung tend to feature pack machines and build down to a price... Nevertheless I would be surprised to find a fully capable RGB machine at this price.

[Papua]

There were also Samsung DVD Recorders listed as having RGB in but didn't actually have this facility. A friend took his back to the shop because of this fault/incorrectly printed spec.

[Captain_Danger]

Yes, only one of the outputs on the cable box actually outputs RGB, the other just throws out standard composite video. I have put the RGB signal into the DVD AV2 input.

It is definately taking through RGB as when I change the cable box to output composite instead of RGB the image quality gets even worse (and also shifts slightly to the left), when I re-enable RGB output on the cable box the colours become sharp-ish and the image shifts the the right slightly by say 1cm, so it is taking in and chucking out RGB, however the image quality when it does so isn't as "pure" as just going direct from the cable box into the TV.

I just wondered if this was commonplace...

I am half thinking about taking back the Samsung and going £30 more for the Sony RX120.

[gallois]

I returned a R-136 for exactly the same problem. RGB pass through would only work when the unit was on. Since I had the output as HDMI this overrode the SCART and wouldn't feed the RGB SCART signal to my TV. Rubbish. My Panny DMREZ25 for £50 more doesn't do this. In fact it's the opposite! Which is fine for me.