Also, the TV didn’t just send the currently-tuned channel ‘down’ the chain, it also allowed connected devices to inject their own, synced, video back into the TV, so you could be watching a show on BBC1, say, and the VCR could overlay a box in the top-right corner letting you know it had started a scheduled recording off Channel 4. Or, if you used a device like a Selectavision, if you tuned into a scrambled channel the Selectavision would notice, decode it, and send the descrambled version back up to the TV, all without the user realising it. Those clever Frenchies.
Yes, SCART’s features are fucking clever but it got unwieldy thick because by the spec, each cable had to be separately shielded. Even the widescreen control signal that’s mostly DC. Why not use differential pairs to reduce thickness and cost, modulate the audio and control signals together for fewer wires, and add a 5V rail to accomodate little demodulating converters (if you want separate audio devices) and eventually power PVR/tuner dongles? Most people use TV speakers anyway, that’s the whole point of a single connector of an A/V standard. Not to mention how easily it fell out, almost every other connector holds better, and the ports are hard to feel on the back of the TV. If it’s a giant 32" one nearly flush against a wall, good luck lining it up whenever you yank a controller cord and the vibration makes it fall off! And while a small STB can hang off RCA jacks, SCART sometimes disconnects by the weight of the cable itself. Or it gets angled so the video passthrough stops working and you only find later your VCR recorded just audio.
I think it’s because of these problems, the biggest one emerged: SCART never became a worldwide standard. Nowadays, TVs are made for a world market, so even North America finally enjoys PAL-compatible sets (while most Europe-market ones and many VCRs were 3-standard since 1990), but unfortunately SCART is basically gone, not to mention very few capture cards were made with real RGB input because RCA component is stupid (why 3 connectors when no consumer ever mixes color channels? (mixing requires external sync, which is only on pro equipment and an extra cable anyway) why not decide between YPbPr and RGB before writing the standard?)
clever Frenchies
Don’t say that. SCART is awesome despite its flaws but the same people also cursed half of Europe with fucking SECAM. Imagine needing a 64µs, 5MHz-bandwidth delay line just to decode color at all (unlike NTSC/PAL’s QAM, SECAM’s FM allows just a single chroma channel per line, alternatingly carrying U and V axes), and a frequency-modulation+pre-emphasis system in every console/camera/DVD player to encode it, plus no color killer option (disabling the colorburst) for sharp B/W like on the Apple II!
In PAL, information between subsequent lines was used too but only to correct recovered carrier phase between colorbursts, which was optional (cheaper sets kept NTSC-style hue controls) and could be handled by a locked oscillator rather than a whole-ass delay line (before shift registers (digital sequential-access-memory), every color set had fucking piezo transducers and physical waves travelling through precisely cut quartz, WTF?!).
Also, the TV didn’t just send the currently-tuned channel ‘down’ the chain, it also allowed connected devices to inject their own, synced, video back into the TV, so you could be watching a show on BBC1, say, and the VCR could overlay a box in the top-right corner letting you know it had started a scheduled recording off Channel 4. Or, if you used a device like a Selectavision, if you tuned into a scrambled channel the Selectavision would notice, decode it, and send the descrambled version back up to the TV, all without the user realising it. Those clever Frenchies.
Yes, SCART’s features are fucking clever but it got unwieldy thick because by the spec, each cable had to be separately shielded. Even the widescreen control signal that’s mostly DC. Why not use differential pairs to reduce thickness and cost, modulate the audio and control signals together for fewer wires, and add a 5V rail to accomodate little demodulating converters (if you want separate audio devices) and eventually power PVR/tuner dongles? Most people use TV speakers anyway, that’s the whole point of a single connector of an A/V standard. Not to mention how easily it fell out, almost every other connector holds better, and the ports are hard to feel on the back of the TV. If it’s a giant 32" one nearly flush against a wall, good luck lining it up whenever you yank a controller cord and the vibration makes it fall off! And while a small STB can hang off RCA jacks, SCART sometimes disconnects by the weight of the cable itself. Or it gets angled so the video passthrough stops working and you only find later your VCR recorded just audio.
I think it’s because of these problems, the biggest one emerged: SCART never became a worldwide standard. Nowadays, TVs are made for a world market, so even North America finally enjoys PAL-compatible sets (while most Europe-market ones and many VCRs were 3-standard since 1990), but unfortunately SCART is basically gone, not to mention very few capture cards were made with real RGB input because RCA component is stupid (why 3 connectors when no consumer ever mixes color channels? (mixing requires external sync, which is only on pro equipment and an extra cable anyway) why not decide between YPbPr and RGB before writing the standard?)
Don’t say that. SCART is awesome despite its flaws but the same people also cursed half of Europe with fucking SECAM. Imagine needing a 64µs, 5MHz-bandwidth delay line just to decode color at all (unlike NTSC/PAL’s QAM, SECAM’s FM allows just a single chroma channel per line, alternatingly carrying U and V axes), and a frequency-modulation+pre-emphasis system in every console/camera/DVD player to encode it, plus no color killer option (disabling the colorburst) for sharp B/W like on the Apple II!
In PAL, information between subsequent lines was used too but only to correct recovered carrier phase between colorbursts, which was optional (cheaper sets kept NTSC-style hue controls) and could be handled by a locked oscillator rather than a whole-ass delay line (before shift registers (digital sequential-access-memory), every color set had fucking piezo transducers and physical waves travelling through precisely cut quartz, WTF?!).