Why SCART is so Smart 

More like HDMI

@@ShadowriverUB Bluetooth moment.

Bollocks! It was more like a half-a$$ed HDMI. USB-C on the other hand, works and works well, is very convenient , and pairs well with USB-A (*and* there is easy availability of USB-to-other connectors for compatibility with older cellphones, cameras, etc.)

Imagine micro-USB 3.0 crap everywhere: phones, gadgets, low speed devices like kb, powerbanks, printers and scanners (cuz, you know, type B is "obsolete"). Imagine this crap big and bulky and that's what SCART is. 99% users of the era used triple RCA to SCART connection and this often means they got multiwire cable instead of 3 coax as a "bonus".

Why Bluetooth? And it's more like yesteryear of HDMI than USB C right?

And yet here we find ourselves.

Here in spain is called: euroconector that has no traduction, because it is the same for english

I am in awe of these old connectors

Add me too

Still have a couple of them in my "just in case" box of junk.

You could get ones that used ribbon cable instead of round cable, they didn't have that problem. Harder to find though.

If that's your biggest gripe, you have never had to solder the 21 wires onto the 21 pins, just to find out you left the "cable nut" holding the housing together and grabbing the cable so that it would not be pulled out of the connector. THAT my friend was the biggest frustration with these cables :)

@@JohnDoe-bd5sz you are entirely correct, I have never had to solder any of the pins on a SCART lead, but I can imagine your pain!

@@kyle8952 Just about to say that! Still got 5 or 6 ribbon SCARTS somewhere.

@@JohnDoe-bd5sz That a common type of problem with many connectors for example TRS or XLR connectors so it really is about experrience of soldering cables over all, i have done it professionally but mainly worked on circuitboards and repairing electronics.

While the standard for the signals was very well thought through, the physical connector was simply awful. As if the French developed it. Oh wait, they did...

@@mjouwbuis Exactly, but on the other side, it is probably awful so it stays cheap to manufacture, and that might have helped in its industry-wide adoption, at least for consumer gear.

@@mjouwbuis Sort of the SCSI of it's time, big and bulky connectors and cables.

Connecting TVs in the USA was such a pain in the butt with all the different types of connectors we had. Now the big problem is that many TVs don't have enough HDMI ports on them. It never changes!

@@mjouwbuis connector size was never really an issue tbh - looks big now but then, it was just normal. VCRs were never very slimline and it was never really an issue with dvd players. Only seemed big once hdni appeared

The most typical fuckup with SCART is when TV actually accept c-video only, no s-video, no rgb. Scart is just dick slipping on your lips...

I still connect a GameCube and a Sega Mega Drive with SCART RGB. It’s the best option for retro gaming. I remember when I brought my Dreamcast to Canada in 2005 and tried to connect it to the TV and realising that they don’t use SCART in NA. It was a surprise to me because everything used it in Europe be it VCRs, DVD players, Digital TV decoders etc.

I was surprised he didn't go into RGB in more detail. I used my Atari ST connected to the TV via a SCART RGB cable for excellent picture quality. I recall that one of the official Amiga monitors has a SCART socket on the back for similar usage.

7-pin DIN plug we used here in Eastern Europe for RGB connector on TV did the job for our Spectrum clones been 3 times smaller than SCART.

Yeah, I had a famiclone in the late 90s/early 2000s that came with SCART right from the factory, the picture on that thing was so amazing compared to the one one of my cousins had that supported only composite (red/white/yellow Cinch connectors).

I personally have no use for a CRT anymore but I love that there's an enthusiast community out there, where you discuss your custom build TV and it's components like it's some kind of pristine oldtimer in a sunlit garage in the countryside 😮

Same in poland, translation would be "Euroconnector" or often just "Euro".

Yes, I remember the quality improvement using a good quality cable and also component video on a 29" Sony Trinitron. When I replaced the TV with a 37" Samsung, the image (and sound) quality was worse.

Actually it makes sense when you think about it. These explanations are valid: 1. Oblivion. If you don't know something exists you don't know what you're missing out on. And for the American public this rings true for virtually everything which isn't widely broadcast or repeated in commercials. Not just consumer products. 2. Standardization. SCART was standardized to be used with the PAL system - which was the most common encoding system in the world during the analogue broadcast era - but would have had to be standardized for the NTSC system as well. Licensing rights and the fact the tv sets (either local brands or the increasingly more popular Japanese giants) were designed and sold specifically for the PAL/SCART market took time and effort. CENELEC who were behind SCART thought long-term. History proved them right. 3. Cost. Implementing SCART would drive up costs. And the American public are very cost-aware and reason with the bang-for-the-buck factor. I recall the Xbox360 not even having a HDMI port when launched in late 2005. The Playstation 3 did. Why no HDMI in the era of digital connections? I'm fairly certain cost and sale price were the deciding factors. Detroit cars sold thanks to the bang-for-the-buck factor. A buyer of the (contemporary) Ford Mustang saw the looks and heard the sound of the V8, that sufficed. That same buyer never saw the 1930's technology live rear axel (cheap to manufacture) and the people assembling them... Amongst other things. 4. Public need. You see the average consumer isn't a hi-fi or consumer electrics aficionado. They are/were perfectly happy being able to do something (watch a film at will in this case) and superior quality or overall connecting convenience isn't a factor for them. "where entertainment centres, big TV's, etc. were much more common much earlier." And this is why you don't understand the market. What you mention was a niche market for enthusiasts. Your average consumer (who the market is targeted towards) was perfectly happy hooking up his/her VHS to a tv set using simple RF cables. SCART wasn't designed for "people owning big tv's". " never understood why SCART was never a thing in the US, where entertainment centres, big TV's, etc. were much more common much earlier." Well, that's because you both look at it wrong and interpret it wrong. I'd say that any of the aforementioned explanations are valid on their own but combined they paint the whole picture and explains what you find odd.

@@McLarenMercedes Not invented here (the USA)? To summarise the French made it mandatory on large TVs early on so the design work had to be done and it just made sense in other European countries. With the cheapest colour portables it wasn't uncommon for the base model to have a blanked out area in the cabinet where SCART could have been fitted and the luxury model costing £20 more to have a remote and SCART.

@@McLarenMercedesNone of them are valid reasons. Everything is unknown until it is introduced to you. Was a licence needed to use scart and why couldn't the already standardised scart become standard for NTSC areas as well? Cost wasn't an issue anywhere else and given how may connections us telly's had, scart could've driven down cost by removing a few of them. The public always want the latest and newest tech and are always looking to improve their viewing experience, especially in the us.

​@@McLarenMercedes Xbox 360 didnt use HDMI because most TVs didn't have HDMI. HDMI didn't appear on TVs in the US until 2004, one year before the 360 was released, so that means barely any TVs had HDMI. The PS3 had HDMI due to Blu-Ray and Sony was really pushing Blu-ray.

SCART was about France protecting French companies from competition. It backfired on them when manufacturers modularized their television sets and decided it was cheaper to just lump France in with all of Europe, slapping a SCART connector on PAL stuff as well. Was it a neat Idea? Sure, but for the consumer it was a solution to a problem that didn't really exist. In the US most homes at the time just had a cable box hooked up to their TV, they added a VCR by the end of the 80's maybe a game console that only their kids used. All of this could be switched by dirt cheap switching boxes; the VCR already had a passthrough. There was simply no benefit to adding a connector that adds $5 to the manufacturing cost of your product, that would go completely unused in NTSC land. @Gambit771 " scart could've driven down cost by removing a few of them." Ever look at the price of old parallel printer cables? Cables with a bunch of conductors are not cheaper than a bunch of individual cables. I just bought a bunch of 3 foot 78 conductor D-SUB cables and they were $50/each; RCA cables are effectively a rounding error on your bill of materials if you buy them in bulk. I can solder the ends on and assemble 21 individual RCA cables (42 conductors) faster than I can solder and assemble 21 in a cable similar to a SCART cable.

Same, the difference back in the 80's/90's was like night and day, but even today I'm often surprised at how good my Amiga looks when I plug it into an old CRT TV with SCART, no fuzzy antialiasing of the pixels, just crisp clear visuals like you would expect from a computer monitor.

@@krashd I've got my Amiga pluged into a CUB Monitor through RGB. No sound on that monitor though so it needs separate skeepers. An RGB display really does make all the difference to this eara of machines.

I was surprised that he used the SNES as an example of a console that didn't support scart, since it was pretty much the only Nintendo console that did support SCART. And I agree, seeing the SNES in RGB mode is gorgeous.

It was mandatory in most of europe yes, for every tv sold

up until blu-ray came about, everything had to have SCART connectors (in the EC/EU) and typically it was all they had. Never seen any device with component or composite in/out before blu-ray, and even then there was a very long time where TVs still had SCART connectors along all the others because it was still mandatory for a long time after HDMI proved itself. Even though SCART is no longer mandatory, a lot of stuff still includes SCART adapters in the box, because it will be a very long time before all the SCART-only devices disappear

​@thesteelrodent1796 Most DVD players up the range from the major manufacturers had component video, even in the first generations, because of plasma TVs which the AV enthusiasts bought. HDMI appeared on DVD players and recorders in the UK before Blu-ray in 2006. The players had HD upscaling already then because HD-Ready was the latest thing then.

SCART was the HDMI Port of the 90th and early 2000th. Our first HDTV had a SCART connector and Component connectors for picture. VHS on HDT does not run well at all. It was only a try. The Video recorder was retired.

I have two Toshiba TVs from 2010 and they still have SCART on the back ^^

it has to be said that the PAL standard came a lot later than NTSC irrelevant to most people now, but that's part of it

I'm in the UK and my 40" Toshiba is only about 8 years old and has two SCART inputs. It's a shite TV but having the SCART sockets on the back makes up for it.

my samsung tv has a break-out cables to scart to kind of overcome the big connector on the TV i think that has been the norm for flat tv's here in western europe for 10-15 years orso

Oh, I didn't even know that RGB was a thing. Now I don't know what my adapter actually does. I guess the USB-situation is not different from SCART. You can see which way the connector goes by looking at it, or you try both ways. I think the orientation for USB-Sockets are standardized, so you should not need to look at the socket.

Maybe someone from France could explain whether SCART was intended for Minitel. Irrespective, in some aspects the French were very forward looking.

You might want to make this a sticky, as I'm sure many people will comment something about RGB, as I also did before reading this.

@@MrDuncl SECAM was a big contributor to the need for SCART for the French. Unlike with PAL, mixing two SECAM signals doesn't result in a valid signal so it was difficult to modify the signal after the fact, such as for overlaying subtitles. It also simplified manufacturing costs for consumer equipment like game consoles; they didn't need to support SECAM at all, they could just output a pure RGB signal.

Fun fact, the "trident" USB symbol embossed on the plug should be uppermost when a Type A USB plug is inserted correctly. I know, ""Why didn't someone tell me twenty years ago". The problem is when the socket is mounted sideways, then I think all bets are off.

Once again, DRM only hurts honest comsumers. Actual pirates can just mod it out for literal CENTS... but oh no it would be a shame if consumer could enjoy high qualiy movies. Also personal copys of purchased media should be a right...

I mean, that doesn't really change now since HDCP exists.

@@awii.neocities It's just a gimmick, bypassed without issues using some HDMI splitters/switchers etc.

@@override7486 I forgot to bring up Widevine too, which cannot be bypassed except for getting decryption keys

@@override7486 oh and I also forgot widevine too

I mean, we still had component cables anyway. Sure, it doesnt have all the fancy bells and whistles of channel changing and whatnot, but the quality outside of resolution (using analog) was/is just as good

Believe it or not, after much practice I developed a method to do it. Just locate the recepticle with your fingers, slide the connector sideways until it sets in place and gently push. If it doesn't want to ser in place, turn the connector a try again.

Nothing worse than trying to reach over the back of a giant, heavy old tv to blind plug in a cable with no obvious indent to guide you in.. So much time spent scraping the plug across the back of the tv praying that at some point it will "fall in", lol

Agreed. You could pull a muscle in your shoulder trying to reach and plug in the SCART blind. And the connector could work its way out and the TV signal goes mono colour etc.

yeah, not impossible though, with a bit of patience and feeling around, unlike av or component, since those were color coded.

@@UHF43 Yep as someone that still uses SCART for my retro CRT setup, and don't want to buy one of those RGB switches that go for 150 euros plus. You eventually make a method. I usually use my finger to find the bottom of the port slide it down till the shield goes in a bit, then just move back or forth till it fits into place.

Sometimes though, picture get so sharp you can see through the cracks in the Matrix. ;)

My cable box has SCART but if you wanted stereo sound you could not use it. The no had no NICAM decoder, it just passed the NICAM signal that was not decrypted to the antenna output. It could not do the same to SCART. I preferred the image to the stereo sound and so I used th SCART.

I remember us getting SCART in the early/mid 90s for our little dining room telly. We had an Amiga computer in front of it, and I seem to recall three leads coming out of the Amiga and into an adaptor or something which connected to the SCART lead.

@@danyoutube7491 Both the Amiga and Atari ST used strange video connectors. However, I am sure one of the official Amiga monitors had SCART on the back.

@@MrDuncl Both my Amigas have 23-pin DIN sockets for video which you can connect to SCART via an adaptor, the picture on my 40" flat screen is superb thanks to it.

Yeah, they were annoying!

Some even went so far as to sell 4:3 cropped, 4:3 letterboxed and 16:9 anamorphic versions of the same movie side-by-side. If I remember correctly, there even were some "16:9 anamorphic but tagged as 4:3" ones---those would play correctly on a widescreen TV set to stretch the 4:3 picture, but were otherwise useless.

This tradition is still alive when people upload an originally portrait video in a horizonal format. So I have no chance to see the video on the full screen of my phone.

Yes 4:3 letterboxing was an extremely amateur thing to do, and showed which companies had competent management and which ones was garbage.

It was old masters being used, probably made for TV before widescreen TVs were available.

That might be fun.

​@@LittleCar Especially considering the fact that the early versions of the standard were practically as simple as a low-voltage line to see if the circuit breaks or not. (I've always imagined it as a highly complex system with bells and whistles and what not.) When these were new, every (obviously inexperienced) service owner warned of using a car with a CAN bus system, as they allegedly were a pain to service and unreliable. Crazy to think how far we've come in terms of an onboard computer, even if we take only the last decade or so into consideration, especially with the advent of better screens and GUIs, so that your car can essentially just say "nearside roof cabin light off, mate".

It is literally the law xD Or ok, more a pattent and license thing partialy law-enforced but still, DVB-T MPG4 license required manufacturers to include at least one RGB SCART input on their TVs, it was sadly dropped with DVB-T2 HVEC

The other way round is weird too. Beeing used to Scart since childhood days, and then coming to america finding out that they don´t have anything similar at all and use primitive white, red and yellow chinch connectors only. Make you think, so that´s our role model, the wealthiest nation in the world...? Hmm... :D

NTSC (Never Twice the Same Colour) looked crap too compared to PAL ...

here on the other side of the pond, HDMI struggled to catch on because we had SCART, and SCART was still mandatory on TVs well past the launch of blu-ray.

you did as the EIA multiport connector but few devices used it

I grew up in France (where we indeed called it Péritel) and was extremely surprised when I found out this wasn't common outside the EU. So simple!

@@alles_klar France was the reason it was so ubiquitous in Europe to start with as they made it mandatory on TVs sold.

I remember the port was sometimes labelled "Euro AV"

1980 seems way too early to be omnipresent as it was in the mid 90’s

Especially when the cable had all the pins wired so the thing was THICK and stiff as a board!

Well it could be a pain to connect component video and separate audio cables when you couldn't see what you were doing. So no matter what standard was used there were a lot of faffing about...

And I’ll bet she still asked lol. It’s frustrating being the family’s resident tech support

@@HannahFortalezza Amazingly, once the instructions were debugged, she didn't!

In my experience only the saturation (and maybe sharpness) adjustments were bypassed. Kinda makes sense, since with composite video all you have to do for increased saturation is boost the color signal. With RGB, it's more complicated than that.

I've never had a SCART connector that felt heavy in any way. The cable, though... A proper, fully shielded one also tended to be rather inflexible, making it hard to install a SCART setup in a confined space

Thats because main role of STBs (thing you call decoder which is called like that from DVB-CA fuction from cable STB that decrypts protected chanels, but with DVB-CI STBs is not needed for that) is to provide DVB tuner to old tvs without DVB tuner, and majority of those TVs are CRTs with scarts

Thumbs up for the metric/imperial option in the subtitles. So inclusive.

You can guess what DVD box set I've just bought!

@@LittleCar That's money well spent! Enjoy!

No, it was a fantastic but poorly implemented idea.

Thanks - I wasn't aware of that.

Technology is advancing quickly.