Scart confusion

polesana

I've just bought a freeview box and the man in the shop said I would need a scart lead to go with it. They were £15 each which seemed quite a lot as the freeview box was only £30. I looked online and found scart leads for £1.79. My question is: is it ok to buy the cheap ones? or do the expensive ones work better? sorry if I'm being thick but I'm not very practical with techie things

iviv

They're trying to pressure you into paying way over the odds for a Scart cable. Many less technical people will take their word for it and buy the cable there and then, thats about 95% profit.

polesana

I am definitely one of those "less technical people" but luckily I am also notoriously tight-fisted (as you will see from my sig the FREEview box lived up to its name)! :rotfl:
Thanks for the advice it is much appreciated

Dough_Monster

A scart plug is a scart plug - they all do the same thing, so paying £15 for a cable won't make your connection anymore efficient.
I don't imagine that the lifetime of the cable would differ much anyway - & you could get 15 cheap ones for that price anyway.

cowbutt

The more expensive ones probably are a bit better, but probably not enough to notice, compared with something with a reasonably thick/heavy cable and well-built plugs. Aldi and Wilkinson's SCART leads have worked pretty well for me.

As iviv alludes, the profit margin on cables is pretty healthy (both for the retailer and OEM) whereas the margin on the actual boxes is pretty minimal.

iviv

Well, technically they can, but only a little bit.
Gold plated connections are more efficient as they are more conductive and could increase quality. But to the naked eye, the increase probably won't be noticeable.

Edit: What he said ^^^

Sput2001

Dough_Monster wrote: »

A scart plug is a scart plug - they all do the same thing, so paying £15 for a cable won't make your connection anymore efficient.
I don't imagine that the lifetime of the cable would differ much anyway - & you could get 15 cheap ones for that price anyway.

Not necessarily so.

Not all scart leads are fully wired. If, for example, you're looking for an RGB connection (which quite a few freeview boxes can output) then some scart cables won't be able to cope.

I've also read horror stories about mega-cheap scart cables falling to bits in a DVD player, leaving pins behind etc. and leaving the player unuseable.

It's not worth paying megabucks for a scart cable at all, particularly for a Freeview box (some scumbag in Comet once sold a £30 cable to my mum, for her VCR!!!:mad: ) but it's worth spending three or four quid. And it's worth checking that it's fully wired.

Inactive

iviv wrote: »

Well, technically they can, but only a little bit.
Gold plated connections are more efficient as they are more conductive and could increase quality. But to the naked eye, the increase probably won't be noticeable.

No, they will not make a scrap of difference unless they are plugged in to a gold plated Scart socket, highly unlikely.

Any old cheapo Scart Lead will do fine for the OP's needs as long as it is fully wired.

BenL

The cheapo scart connector on the freeview box or in the tv would probably write off any gains from paying over the odds for a cable.

Didn't the freeview box come with a scart anyway so you would not need anything extra?

Marty_J

iviv wrote: »

Well, technically they can, but only a little bit.
Gold plated connections are more efficient as they are more conductive and could increase quality. But to the naked eye, the increase probably won't be noticeable.

Edit: What he said ^^^

Copper is a better conductor than gold, so you'd be better off with bare copper connections. I don't know what sort of metal they use in cheap scart leads, though I would think it was probably nickel or something, which is probably the same thing they use in the gold plated ones. If one really wanted to go all out, they should use silver contacts, but it's doubtful there would be any visible or audible difference between silver and copper.

As for the OP, I wouldn't recommend buying really expensive scart leads unless you particularly enjoy telling people how much your cables cost, and you plan on doing this more than you plan on watching TV. Personally I wouldn't go for the cheapest ones I could find either, but you might be happy with them yourself.

vyseyboy

Marty_J wrote: »

Copper is a better conductor than gold, so you'd be better off with bare copper connections.

Until they get (readily) tarnished / oxidised.

Sorry, but as a pedant, I couldn't let that pass!