SCART adapters
If you extend your digital TV set up you may well find you do not have enough SCART sockets, particularly when products require two or more RGB [jargon buster] enabled SCARTs. A SCART adapter is the answer when you have a DVD recorder, set top box, VCR and your TV has just one SCART, and you will certainly need one if you also have a cable or satellite box or a games machine. It’s a box with a number of SCART socket inputs for these products and one output for the TV.
From our tests of a range of SCART adapters, costing from £5 to £33, here is our advice:
GO FOR
- An intelligent SCART switch box that automatically routes one SCART input at a time to the TV, if you can afford it. The one we tested cost £33 with four inputs and it could be plugged on a priority basis. For example a DVD player could take preference over a set top box, so you would not have to switch off the set top box to watch a DVD. Lots of combinations possible but once set up, fully automatic.
- This is also the best solution if you want to copy recordings. Our intelligent SCART box had an internal video link between the SCART output and SCART 1 and a link between SCART 1 and SCART 2. This enabled video recordings from tuner boxes while viewing from another source.
- If you have a simpler set up and rarely switch from one product to another – say mainly watching TV and occasionally a DVD – a manually switched box could suit you, and they are cheaper. We paid £10 for a three way SCART selector that worked fine, but with this type you need to remember to switch and unswitch the box each time you use a different product.
AVOID:
- The simplest SCART adapters with no selection buttons, so only one product can be switched on at any one time or the video signals will be mixed together. If you have a number of products plugged in and on standby, the picture from the product in use is likely to be dimmed. We paid £5 for a two way, non-switching SCART adapter and £11 for its 5-way version. Because of their limitations you will not find many of these in electrical shops.
For more detailed information see below for information on how we tested SCART adapters and our findings.
Test methods
Four SCART adapters were tested to reflect the different types and prices on the market. They were:
- an intelligent adapter that automatically routed up to four products to a TV screen on a priority basis, costing £33
- a three way adapter with manual switching, costing £10
- two non-switching adapters, a two way costing £5 and a five way costing £11.
The testing included an inventory of features, technical performance tests, power consumption of the automatic selector and ease of use and installation assessment of each device and its instructions.
To test performance each adapter was used to connect a video recorder, DVD recorder and set top box to a TV. Each product was connected in turn and the effect on the TV observed. Test patterns were used to check for correct pass through of different signal formats - RGB, S-Video and composite signals.
- The intelligent, fully automatic SCART adapter was the most flexible in terms of the combinations of products it could connect and how, once set up, they would behave without you having to adjust anything.
- All the adapters successfully routed RGB, S-Video and composite video signals to the TV screen.
- One slight drawback with the automatic adapter was that when wired for video recording while watching something else, the recording was in lower composite video quality only instead of higher quality RGB format.
- The bigger drawback with the unswitched adapters was the loss of picture quality – dimmer pictures – when non-used products were left plugged in and on standby. In fact picture quality was also affected with these adapters with some product combinations eg a DVD recorder with a set top box, and with the manual switching adapter if two selection buttons were accidentally pressed.
- Automatic SCART adapters use some mains power. Ours used 1.7 watts in standby, 2.51 watts with one product in ‘on’ mode and 2.99 watts when watching from one source and recording using the internal loop through.
- Mixed set of instructions with these adapters – clearly laid out with a diagram for the manually switched device, lots of helpful diagrams of set ups for the automatic adapter, but cramped cable wiring and difficult to follow at times and no instructions at all with the unswitched devices.
- All SCART adapters are basically simple devices with the automatic ones more complex but easy to use because once set up you leave them alone.