expensive scart leads

romperstomper

romperstomper

romperstomper

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9 Sep 2007
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Are expensive scart leads worth the extra money or will my cheap £3 tesco ones do as good a job .

Its to connect a 42 inch panasonic plasma(42px80ba) to virgin cable box ,dvd player and video the picture is not always as good as I would expect considering the plasma won about 5 awards (dvds seem good though).
 
PureAV™ Scart To RCA/S-Video Cable

Dunno if it's any use to you, but: -



Can be had for £1.99 (rrp £24.99)

Great quality cable at an amazing price. Had to pick a couple up today, felt wrong not to at that price

Nice lead for the Home at such a Bargain.



Enjoy :)
 
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Go for a cheap one just make sure its a fully wired 21 pin and is shielded

We used to pay 50p for ours and sell them for £12.50 so expensive may still be cheap anyhow.

Same goes for HDMI but not for speaker and Phono
 
A good quality Scart can make quite a difference compared to a poor quality one, notice how ive mentioned quality and not price and you dont have to pay stupid prices.
You should be able to pick up something decent for about £20 as long as you dont go to the big 2 electrical retailers we love to hate.
 
Does the Virgin box not have an HDMI port?

Make sure the box is setup correctly as well. Never heard anyone saying the quality is bad on the PX80, apart from low bitrate channels.

Set the tv to the right settings too?
 
romperstomper said:
Its to connect a 42 inch panasonic plasma(42px80ba) to virgin cable box ,dvd player and video the picture is not always as good as I would expect considering the plasma won about 5 awards (dvds seem good though).
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Scart is not a particulary good connection these days, does the virgin box/dvd player not support component or even better HDMI? If so get one of those, they should improve the picture quality.
 
Nymins said:
Does the Virgin box not have an HDMI port?
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no maybe you only get one for a hd box

Nymins said:
Make sure the box is setup correctly as well. Never heard anyone saying the quality is bad on the PX80, apart from low bitrate channels.

Set the tv to the right settings too?
Click to expand...

its not bad but not as good as I would expect going from a 28 crt to a 42 plasma ,the subtitles are not very clear and often people walking into a room can be out of focus its also not very good unless you are at least 6 feet away .Have tried adjusting the settings too.
 
IMO It's worth using a decently made lead (say around £10) for the cable box and DVD player and set them to RGB. Cheapo lead will be fine for the VCR as it only uses composite.
 
romperstomper said:
its not bad but not as good as I would expect going from a 28 crt to a 42 plasma ,the subtitles are not very clear and often people walking into a room can be out of focus its also not very good unless you are at least 6 feet away .Have tried adjusting the settings too.
Click to expand...

To get the most out of the tele you will need better AV equipment, it can only do so much with what you have now. Better scart leads will help, but will still only produce a picture that isn't representative of the TVs capabilities.

To get the most from your DVDs for example, i would recommend replacing your current DVD player with one that supports HDMI, they're not too expensive and i garantee you the picture quality will look better over HDMI in comparison to scart.
 
The worse part about cheap scart leads is they are prone to video crosstalk, the TV will normally output either the last channel its internal tuner was on, or another scart input back down each scart socket, the end result can be some ugly ghosting effects, which are even able to affect scart RGB signals.

Dont use the PureAV cable shown below, for best quality a fully wired scart cable of decent construction with the Virgin box set to RGB output, and connected to an RGB capable scart socket on the TV will give considerably cleaner "edges".

Composite or SVideo output from my Sky+ box looks like $#!£ compared to ScartRGB mode. ScartRGB on a top quality cable is almost (99.9%) as good as componant or even non upscaled 576p HDMI connections.
 
definatly worth getting a decent scart lead. I haven't got single one any more. All hdmi now. But when I did I bought a QED silver refrence cable. New it was £60 buri got it for ££13 off eBay a few ago. Made a huge difference to the pq at the time. And that was over a fairly chunky £10 gold plated jobbie. Gave it to my dad when I no longer needed it.

The QED p21 is another good cable. Under £20 new as well.
 
The Best ones I have used in the last 15years of setting up TV's is the Flat cable scarts. They are easy to install and unlike the round cable ones are not always looking for a quick exit. Not only that, but sometimes the worst thing I have come up against is someone trying to force a scart cable in the wrong way round. The flat cable ones fold away neatly and can be keyed correctly without any issues as to orientation.
The problem I have found with all round cable connections is the bad use of the Groppler. It is there to prevent cable wear but is so often put so close to the connector it negates its use. Professional ones come with a moveable one so you can shield it at the point you believe it is going to get the most wear and tear.
Gold plated connections only come into their own realm of use when a signal is amplified or enhanced in some way that the source needs that amplification feedback from the output. Enhanced video output is a sorry and sore subject I know but they tried it with SV output which is basically the ground ouput for component output to enable a progressive output over more scanlines being sent to the output also the beginnings of what lead to the HD revolution. But since you cannot send that information to a standard PAL source without losing its information or ending up with a blank screen I don't see the point. Your output source has to be able to handle the information being sent to it by the input source. So sending a PYB signal down an RGB output isn't going to work. The original Xbox360 has this issue. But cleverly switches between output settings according to your setup. It uses the component output to a HD TV fo HD output but because it uses the Pal Scan signal in the background you can and have to plug in a SCART source to setup a 60HZ Pal setting to handle most HD output settings. Effectively putting your TV into sync with the video module.
In closing I can only say that fools spend money where money isn't required, just common sense.
 
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