What's an RGB Scart?

Question

I want a portable LCD TV with 2 scarts, to connect freeview and a DVD. I found a Toshiba that has a1 sacrt and 1 RGB.
What is a RGB scart & will this TV do the job?

Answer 1

An RGB SCART is one that carries the RGB signal to the TV, they normally have all pins connected. The Red, Green and Blue components of the video signal are carried as distinct separate signals thus giving a much sharper and better quality picture.

The other type of SCART commonly found is the Composite VIDEO (or just Video) SCART, these generally only have a few pins connected. They used to be common when VCRs were around, they carry a single signal that has the Red, Green and Blue signal combined together. The combination reduces the effective bandwidth of the overall signal and the resulting picture has to be 'de-combined' in the receiver to re-produce the picture. This process results in a less-sharp and more out of focus picture.

RGB SCARTS are only advantageous when you have an RGB source. So if you connect a DVD, freeview or Sky you'll be better off with the RGB SCART, if you only connect a VCR you won't see any improvement as VCRs don't transmit an RGB signal. If you want to connect both an RGB DVD and an RGB Freeview then you'll need a TV with two RGB SCART sockets, however if you can put up with the lower quality picture you can still use the second SCART as well. Alternatively you could use a SCART switch connected to the RGB SCART socket on the TV and connect both items to it.

Answer 2

There are three main standards in the UK for transmission of video signals between units with SCART sockets.

SCART is a European standard connector for hooking up video equipment. It provides both audio and video links in both directions and can be used with 3 different video standards:

These are :

1) Composite Video - sometimes called CVBS - this is the most basic standard uses two wires to send a video signal (ground & signal) All information in the video signal, colour, sync, brightness is sent together. As they are bundled together there is a loss of signal quality to do with the bundling / unbundling process and interfernce between different parts of the signal.

2) S-Video or SVHS - Uses 3 wires, brightness, colour and ground. By splitting the colour out from brightness information a better quality picture is obtained as there is less interference and less processing within the TV.

3) RGB - Stands for Red, Green & Blue. The TV draws the video picture by illuminating Red, green & blue dots on the screen. It is possible to mix any colour from these 3 primary colours. e.g When all three Red, green & blue are turned on you see white.
This gives the best quality picture as the signal is transmitted to the TV in its native form, requiring minimal electronic processing. The RGB standard uses 8 wires to transmit information to the TV, Red signal, Green signal, blue signal & composite sync. Each signal has its own ground wire.

If your TV manufacture says that 1 scart is RGB and the other one isn't it means that one of your SCART sockets support the higher quality RGB signal while the other SCART socket only does composite video. (Done for cheapness)

My advice is plug the DVD playing into the RGB socket as this will give you the best quality picture from the better quality source. Be sure to set the DVD player output to RGB in its setup menu.

Connect the freeview to the second SCART socket as the freeview signals tend to be of poorer quality at source than DVD players.

Be sure to use good quality, modsetly priced SCART cables with all pins connected, some cheap cables are not wired for RGB and will only give a composite picture.

Answer 3

RGB = Red, Green, Blue. RGB is a type of component video signal used in the video electronics industry. It consists of three signals—red, green and blue—carried on three separate cables. Extra cables are sometimes needed to carry synchronising signals. RGB signal formats are often based on modified versions of the RS-170 and RS-343 standards for monochrome video. This type of video signal is widely used in Europe since it is the best quality signal that can be carried on the standard SCART connector. Outside Europe, RGB is not very popular as a video signal format – S-Video takes that spot in most non-European regions. However, almost all computer monitors around the world use RGB.