Component vs SCART
 

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "Graham." saying
something like:

Actually you could have connected the DVD to the VCR input of the Sky box.
It isn't always appreciated that when the Sky box is in standby the VCR
SCART has full RGB pass-through to the TV SCART

Daisy-chained that way I wouldn't be able to record Sky (it's an old
basic digibox with no HD).
The telly has an input from each and the Skybox feeds the telly and the
DVD.
It doesn't matter too much as shortly HD boxes will knock the SD Skybox
and DVD box off the shelf and I've no shortage of HDMI inputs on the TV.

Component vs SCART
 

"Roderick Stewart" wrote in message
.myzen.co.uk...
In article , J r powell wrote:
The last time I had any
involvement with the making of television programmes, the Floor
Managers (sorry, "Assistant Directors") were calling things like "turn
over", or "roll up", or occasionally "roll tape", even though by that
time it was mostly being recorded by ethernet straight into a central
server and there was no tape involved.

Ethernet? I'm guessing the 100mbps variety, in which case it can't have been
uncompressed SD video you were recording, as this requires more bandwidth.
What sort of compression scheme was in use, out of interest?

I think it ended up as AVI files with a bit rate of 48Mb/s, which is
approximately the same rate as Digital Betacam. Presumably they're now working
in HD, so goodness knows how they're handling that, and frankly I no longer
need to care. As a "civilian", I no longer watch waveforms, but programmes,
and
precious few of those.

It's a shame they can't record everything in an uncompressed digital format
(this requires more than 1GB of disk space for every minute of uncompressed
"analogue quality" SD video incidentally), then get all the editing done and
apply multipass compression at high bitrates for the final product, before
deleting the original uncompressed files.
Compressing on-the-fly in real-time always yields inferior results.

This also begs the question of why the BBC don't apply the same multipass
technique to non-live content on their "emission-level" MPEG streams.
If CBR was used, and the bitrate kept the same across all platforms, it should
be feasible.

jamie.
--

Component vs SCART
 

" wrote in message
...

The last time I was at that little group of dwellings was years ago,
and the customer had a telly with satellite built in. The only thing
was, the satellite appeared on the screen as composite rather than
RGB. No amount of fiddling about would alter this.

Most unlikely if it was a flat panel.
Integrated digital flat panel TVs (whether satellite or terrestrial) invariably
use a digital link between the internal decoder and the hardware which drives
the screen.
If any analogue output is generated from the internal tuner(s), it's sent to the
SCART connector(s) and nothing more.

jamie.
--

Component vs SCART
 

Bob Latham wrote:
In article
,
wrote:
On Oct 3, 7:38 pm, Bob Latham wrote:

One man's meat. I find it most irritating and have gone to great
lengths to kill this feature.

Great lengths? What were they? Twenty seconds with a pair of cutters
does it for me.

Its going back a few years now but I had the tv circuit diagram out
because cutting pin 8 stopped something else working (not sure but was
16:9/4:3 switching?).

Yes, Pin 8 handles the Scart assertion, and the WSS (depending upon the
voltage) Pin 16 handles RGB or Composite selection.


--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

www.paras.org.uk

Component vs SCART
 

On Oct 5, 7:04*pm, "j r powell" wrote:
" wrote in message

...



The last time I was at that little group of dwellings was years ago,
and the customer had a telly with satellite built in. The only thing
was, the satellite appeared on the screen as composite rather than
RGB. No amount of fiddling about would alter this.

Most unlikely if it was a flat panel.
Integrated digital flat panel TVs (whether satellite or terrestrial) invariably
use a digital link between the internal decoder and the hardware which drives
the screen.
If any analogue output is generated from the internal tuner(s), it's sent to the
SCART connector(s) and nothing more.

jamie.

No this was as I said years ago. The telly was a widescreen CRT
monster. Remember those great heavy cheap sets where you thought it
would break under its own weight if you lifted one end? I can't
actually remember but it might even have been analogue satellite that
was built in. I do remember though that it was perfectly obvious that
they'd cobbled in a normal satellite receiver, with no serious attempt
at integration. On switching to satellite the OSGs were completely
different. The telly had been a 'bargain' and the man was very proud
of it. Apart from the fact that the satellite was composite the
picture was very poor anyway. I can't remember anything about the
aspect ratio situation. I can't remember where the Sky card went in
either.

There were some terrible attempts at producing DTT-capable sets as
well, in the early days. One particular memory was a set where to view
DTT you had to select AV3 on the input menu. I found that out by trial
and error. There was nothing in the book. I think the great Sony came
out with sets that had two aerial sockets, one for each tuner.
Theoretically useful, but I never made use of it. Then there were sets
that didn't have the EPG, and loaded the channels in mux order.

There again, there was a DTT receiver that had an RF-out from the
modulator and separate loop-though sockets. Best as I can remember you
had to combine the two outputs with a splitter.

Bill

Component vs SCART
 

On Oct 5, 7:35*pm, Mark Carver wrote:
Bob Latham wrote:
In article
,
* wrote:
On Oct 3, 7:38 pm, Bob Latham wrote:

One man's meat. I find it most irritating and have gone to great
lengths to kill this feature.

Great lengths? What were they? Twenty seconds with a pair of cutters
does it for me.

Its going back a few years now but I had the tv circuit diagram out
because cutting pin 8 stopped something else working (not sure but was
16:9/4:3 switching?).

Yes, Pin 8 handles the Scart assertion, and the WSS (depending upon the
voltage) Pin 16 handles RGB or Composite selection.

Well, I always used to just cut pin 8 and I never had a problem. If
they had to select WS manually so be it. Incidentally I have a
Panasonic CRT set here and it has that annying fault that used to be
so common: if there's an RGB signal present at the scart it mixes with
the tuner output so you can't watch normal telly. And of course you
can't adjust the picture when it's from the RGB source. The only
solution when a customer's set does that is to switch the source to
composite. Let's face it, when you show then the benefits of RGB they
just look at you gone out, half of them, and say there's no
difference.

Bill

Component vs SCART
 

wrote:

Well, I always used to just cut pin 8 and I never had a problem. If
they had to select WS manually so be it. Incidentally I have a
Panasonic CRT set here and it has that annying fault that used to be
so common: if there's an RGB signal present at the scart it mixes with
the tuner output so you can't watch normal telly. And of course you
can't adjust the picture when it's from the RGB source. The only
solution when a customer's set does that is to switch the source to
composite.

Yes, a common problem. That's why a software revision quite early on in the
life of Sky Digiboxes was added to mute the RGB output from the digibox, when
the 'tv' button on a Sky remote was pressed.


--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

www.paras.org.uk

Component vs SCART
 

" wrote in message
...

Well, I always used to just cut pin 8 and I never had a problem. If
they had to select WS manually so be it.

Line23 WSS is very common now, negating the need for Pin8 WSS, but...


Incidentally I have a
Panasonic CRT set here and it has that annying fault that used to be
so common: if there's an RGB signal present at the scart it mixes with
the tuner output so you can't watch normal telly.

....that's because pin16 signalling is never meant to be on without pin8 being on
as well, and it wouldn't be if you hadn't cut the wire :p
It was common for RGB to interfere/mix with internal teletext decoder output
(the old-fashioned teletext, aka the one which actually worked) on cheaper sets
as the decoder shared a single RGB path with the SCART input.
This is what the RGB muting on Sky boxes as mentioned by Mark was for (anyone
know how to disable this btw?).


And of course you can't adjust the picture when it's from the RGB source.

On most modern CRT sets you can.


The only
solution when a customer's set does that is to switch the source to
composite. Let's face it, when you show then the benefits of RGB they
just look at you gone out, half of them, and say there's no
difference.

PAL generation from set top boxes is always horribly poor and noisey though,
compared to the genuine article (1969 - 1999 RIP).

jamie.
--

Component vs SCART
 

" wrote in message
...

No this was as I said years ago. The telly was a widescreen CRT
monster. Remember those great heavy cheap sets where you thought it
would break under its own weight if you lifted one end? I can't
actually remember but it might even have been analogue satellite that
was built in.

Analogue satellite was composite only, so there wouldn't have been an issue
here.


I do remember though that it was perfectly obvious that
they'd cobbled in a normal satellite receiver, with no serious attempt
at integration. On switching to satellite the OSGs were completely
different. The telly had been a 'bargain' and the man was very proud
of it. Apart from the fact that the satellite was composite the
picture was very poor anyway. I can't remember anything about the
aspect ratio situation. I can't remember where the Sky card went in
either.

To the best of my knowledge there were only two manufacturers which sold CRT
sets with integrated Sky Digital receivers; Panasonic and LG. A legal threat
from Sky prevented the LG models from being made for very long.
A schoolfriend had one of the LG sets and it wasn't composite only. iirc it also
didn't respond to normal Sky remotes, so they'd done more than just cobbling in
a normal receiver.

jamie.
--

Component vs SCART
 

On Oct 5, 9:42*pm, "j r powell" wrote:
" wrote in message
Panasonic CRT set here and it has that annying fault that used to be
so common: if there's an RGB signal present at the scart it mixes with
the tuner output so you can't watch normal telly.

...that's because pin16 signalling is never meant to be on without pin8 being on
as well, and it wouldn't be if you hadn't cut the wire :p
No, I'm not talking about when pin 8 has been cut. This is with
unmolested scart leads.


And of course you can't adjust the picture when it's from the RGB source.

On most modern CRT sets you can.
Yes, but not on this Panasonic, which I guess will be 20 years old.


The only
solution when a customer's set does that is to switch the source to
composite. Let's face it, when you show then the benefits of RGB they
just look at you gone out, half of them, and say there's no
difference.

PAL generation from set top boxes is always horribly poor and noisey though,
compared to the genuine article (1969 - 1999 RIP).
I'm feeling cynical this week, due to one thing and another, and at
the moment if the customer's happy I'm not going to attempt to educate
them. Don't worry, next week I'll be all evangelical again.

Incidentally my ancient third-hand Hitachi will not work from the TV
scart on the Humax Freesat because it cycles between AV1 (or any AV
input) and its own tuner at a rate of about once per second. I just
couldn't be bothered to experiment with this once I found that it
would work from the VCR scart, although that means it's working on
PAL. Recently it has started to show a monochrome picture when used
from the Humax, until I have pressed AV and gone right round the
options and back. Because the house is in as state of disarray at the
moment I have put the Panasonic on a top shelf so people can see it
over the piles of furniture, hence my remarks about it above. I must
say the picture on RGB on that little set is very good, although
there's too much colour.

Bill