Scart Lead

From WikiAV

The scart lead is one of the most common and well known leads, it is a standard which combines various different types of signal, including composite video both ways, stereo audio both ways, s-video, RGB and several switching signals.

For more information on the scart plug please see the Scart page

[edit] Leads

Scart leads come in many different varieties, the main difference between leads is quality.
The prices of scart leads vary widely from under a pound to over £100 for a lead that basically does the same thing.

The difference between different lead is quality, the quality of the connectors, the quality of the cable and the overall construction quality, all these things can affect the signal quality.
A cheap badly shielded lead can let in a lot of interference this degrades the signal quality causing interference on the picture and on the sound. A decent well shielded lead will block interference and noise giving you a high quality signal.
The same applies for long cables, the longer the cable is the more interference it will pick up, for these reasons if you are running a cable over a long distance you need to use a good quality cable.

There are 2 general rules for deciding how much to spend on leads, the first is to spend 10% of your AV budges on leads, this means that if you are spending thousands on really decent equipment don't connect them together with rubbish because that's what you will get out.

The second rule and not so common rule is to spend 90% of your budget on leads, unsurprisingly I heard this saying from a company selling very expensive leads.

For a wide range of scart leads see a star solutions