What to look for in a SCART lead
A good quality SCART lead is not going to solve all picture quality and reception problems, but if you are suffering from slightly fuzzy pictures or interference, it’s well worth first checking the lead you are using.
Go for individually shielded wires inside the SCART lead. This is important because sometimes the lead will be carrying bi-directional video signals, which need to be kept apart because interference between them will show as interference on the TV screen. The individual screening is easy to spot – it makes the lead chunkier.
Go for gold-plated connectors – which you can get on a £15 upwards lead. They should ensure a good contact over many years because they won’t tarnish or corrode over time. Tarnished contacts can reduce the sharpness of the picture and even distort sounds.
Go for spring loaded retention clips on the SCART plugs make them stay in the socket more securely. Unfortunately SCART leads with these clips are not very common. But they are well worth searching for if you regularly move the set top box, say, when using a digital DVD recorder - and lose sound or colour because the SCART plug has dislodged. The clips are also useful if the SCART plug has the weight of a long cable pulling on it.
Avoid missing pins – before digital, SCART leads often had gaps in their pins, because they did not need to support top quality RGB video signals. You can continue using one of these leads with a VCR, but throw it away if you are connecting digital TV products. With a set top box it might give you a picture, but with fuzzy text and graphics and bits of colour around black shapes – all worse with a less-than-best set top box and TV. Don’t worry, none of the digital boxes we have tested have been supplied with these video-only SCART leads.
Avoid thin cables – mean the wires inside won’t be individually shielded, so can pick up interference from each other, causing interference on the picture. This might or might not happen and probably depends partly on the combination of products and their quality. But better to avoid very cheap, thin cables than run the risk of ghosting on the screen. Definitely avoid them if you need long cable runs – the interference was serious and really annoying, whichever kit we connected together with them.
And think twice about paying £50 for ‘oxygen free cable’ or something similar advertised as providing better picture quality. Such leads will have good quality copper wires, ensuring good connectivity. But our experienced viewers reported only the slightest of improvements to the crispness of the detail on DVD player test cards. Would you spot the difference?
See Recommendations for our buying advice on SCART leads.
See Tests if you are interested in what we did with SCART leads and what we found.