TVs Scart quality question

Hi,

Yesterday I bought a new TV from Amazon (1080p, 42" etc) - I don't really have the money to give Virgin an extra ~£10 a month for 4-5 HD channels therefore I have decided to keep the standard virgin box.

Now I have to buy a new scart lead as our current one isn't long enough for the tv to be mounted on the wall; how important is it to spend (lots of) money on a scart lead. Will this one do (i.e. ~£5 for a 5m lead) - or is this better (@ £12.50 for 3 metres). Or should I be looking for something better?

Any help would be appeciated

Thanks

Ed

 

Your not gona see a great deal of difference really, it will all be pretty bad

I kid, i would doubt you'll see a big difference, but as a one off purchase it might be worth it. I personally would go for a midrange ish one, gold plated, maybe sheilded if its less than a tenner

 

Cheap scarts can have a large impact on quality, make sure you get a decentish one!

10-20 should be plenty.

Ive got a mid range one which was about £30 10 years ago and when i compare it to freebie ones its very much more vivid.

 

GF's right, SCART is SCART, there's no point spending a fortune on the cable.

Follow these steps for the best of what you have...

1) Route the SCART away from other cables - mains particularly.
2) Try and ensure the earth of your set top box is the same as for the TV.
3) For films and the like, run your PC to the TV using an HDMI cable and use the PC as a source, otherwise buy a Western Digital HDTV Live or some other streaming device.
4) Occasionally check the firmware of you telly is up to date, refer to the manual for this as it varies wildly from TV to TV.
5) Mount your Virgin box away from other electrical equipment - don't sit it on a power amplifier for example.
6) Make sure the digital feed into the Virgin box is tight and routed away from other cables.
Most importantly...
7) Don't worry - get a beer/wine and enjoy!

 

+1

I had all sorts of problems with ghosting of images on the wii through it's scart connection, pretty strong at times.

I tell you there's nothing more disheartening than putting all that effort into a clean wall mount installation only to find the picture really sucks for one of your components.

I had run all my cables in the same cable chase behind the wall. I re-routed the power cable for the telly ~6 inches to the side and all ghosting disappeared.

 

OK thanks for your answers. If I was to buy a shielded scart cable could I then run it next to the power cables?

 

i guess so. not sure tough

 

Go here:

http://www.thatcable.com

Get a scart from them, it's good value, but great quality (for scart). Do you not have the option of component? What about using an AV amp to upscale?

 

Not always - shielded cables are not perfect, do your best to separate them.

 

ok thanks, I don't think my Virgin box has a component output, for reference my amp is an Onkyo TX-SR506. If I can go via my amp to upscale then that would be great but I don't think its possible. It looks like I'll just order a cable from that website you mentioned unless the upscaling was to work.

Thanks

 

You could go scart to s-video from the VM box to the 506 then hdmi to the TV

 

ok good idea, would that actually improve the image? I can't seem to find a scart to s-video on that website; can anyone tell me another good cable website?

 

Here you go:

http://www.thatcable.com/acatalog/info_WM10023.html

Then s-video cable, to your amp, then HDMI to TV as Sas suggests. Result. I don't know your amp, but if it offers upscaling then the picture should hopefully be noticeable better than just scart. Either way for the sake of a few quid, worth a play IMO.

 

I'd say it all depends on the type of signal you send through the SCART cable. Remember that SCART only defines a connector and an interface. The type of signal you send through can be anything from composite (worst quality and lowest bandwidth required) to component (probably the best quality and the highest required bandwidth). Other common types are S-Video and RGB.

Either way, with SCART generally being an analog connection the quality of the cable DOES matter quite a bit. Therefore I'd not go for the cheapest possible cable. Also, make sure it's fully mounted (i.e. all pins connected).

 

The 506 should upscale to 1080i, it's quite good upscaling as well (I've got the 605).

 

Received my order from Amazon, unfortunately after further research today I have realised my amp doesn't convert s-video to hdmi. Further to this I can't put the s-video cable directly to the tv because it gives me a black and white picture! (again further research seems to suggest this is true the case)!

Looks like I'll just have a buy a good quality scart cable to get the best out of my virgin box/new tv!

 

Sounds as if either you didn't switch to S-Video mode or your tv doesn't support S-Video at all, because what you describe is what happens when you try to watch S-Video input in Composite mode. The reason for the B/W picture is that S-Video sends the colour information separate from the B/W signal.

 

Are you sure? My Onkyo does and it's older than yours

 

Ok I'll try again in a min.

Page 21 (4.3mb pdf) "Video equipment can be connected to the AV receiver by using any one of the following video connection formats: composite video, S-Video, component video, or HDMI, the latter offering the best picture quality.

When choosing a connection format, bear in mind that the AV receiver doesn’t convert between formats, so only outputs of the same format as the input will output the signal.

I could have read that wrong and they are talking about something totally different but it doesn't look like my AV Receiver converts s-video into hdmi

 

Looks like they took upscaling out of the budget AVR's when they bought out the new models. My 605 upscales everything to 1080i (unless the source is better quality) & outputs it all over hdmi