Video Quality - SCART or SVideo?

[Gone_Away]

Guys,
 
Having just purchased a new DVD player I was wondering if there's any advantage to running it through an SVideo lead opposed to SCART.
 
Anyone have any ideas?

[suicidal_monkey]

I believe that SCART would give you the same or better picture than SVIDEO. Particularly if it's RGB SCART I seem to recall? If it's not RGB scart they're probably more or less the same I think

[Neff]

RGB is for HD, Svideo is for f.ex Powerpoint presentations. Think its "easier" with Svideo, but the RGB quality is best afaik.

[suicidal_monkey]

Looked it up on Wikipedia:
SCART can carry either S-Video or RGB. RGB is a better transmission format than S-Video. Some SCART cables only contain the connectors for S-Video. Those that carry the cables for RGB can probably carry S-Video too. If your DVD player has SCART I'd use that, otherwise if you have component-out from the DVD there's that option too

[BigFatCat]

RGB for SD-SD, you may have to set an output in the player's setup menu to force RGB through the SCART, same for Sky boxes where I can see a big difference.

I'm making use of a component cable purely for sending a progressive scan SD DVD signal to a HD TV.

[Gone_Away]

RGB for SD-SD, you may have to set an output in the player's setup menu to force RGB through the SCART, same for Sky boxes where I can see a big difference.
 
I'm making use of a component cable purely for sending a progressive scan SD DVD signal to a HD TV.

Ya I just clued into this as well.. Fortunately the DVD and TV have the component jacks. I will be able to utilize the progressive scan capabilities this way..
 
Off to PC world for cables me thinks.. Thanks again!

[BigFatCat]

Thankfully work has a big stock of cable drums that we cable tv studios with:flirty: so I bought some RCA plugs and spent an evening with the soldering iron in front of the telly.

[Carr0t]

RGB is for HD, Svideo is for f.ex Powerpoint presentations. Think its "easier" with Svideo, but the RGB quality is best afaik.

CMY is for HD. RGB is quite an old standard really. Same as the colours you get on older not so good printers being RGB, and the newer photo quality colour ones being CMY (Cyan Magenta Yellow).

Have to ask though, what is the advantage of progressive scan when going from SD DVD to HD TV? I have no idea what it means, and therefore no idea how it might improve picture quality.

BTW: Does anyone know how well the XBox 360 does anything like progressive scan or upscaling or similar, if at all? I was planning, once the joy of The Burning Crusade has worn off a bit when i've got to 70 (probably 2-3 months for me), on getting a 32" HDTV, a 360, and the HD-DVD player addon pack for the 360 (Plus a Wii if I have the cash left over and can still get some games for them both). I don't watch enough or care about movies enough to shell out for a full HD-DVD player standalone at current prices (currently we use the PS2 for playing normal DVDs on an SDTV). But obviously I don't want to replace my entire current DVD collection with HD versions, i'll just watch the normal DVDs on the 360 too.

To be honest I watched Batman Begins (normal DVD played on his 360) on my mate's 100" HDTV projector, and didn't really notice the picture being bad or blocky at all despite the size. Not seen anything to compare it with, however. Another mate has a 40" TV, and says there was a world of difference when he watched the Ice Age 2 SD and HD trailers on it via his media PC, but I haven't personally seen it to compare.

[suicidal_monkey]

Have to ask though, what is the advantage of progressive scan when going from SD DVD to HD TV? I have no idea what it means, and therefore no idea how it might improve picture quality.

I believe that progressive scan means that the player outputs each frame in its entirety. Typically tv is "interlaced" where the normal practice to to update half the screen (every-other line) at each screen refresh. To make matters more confusing often interlaced video is shown at twice the refresh-rate of progressive on a given media device, so interlaced is seen at being better for action shots, progressive for clearer images in slower scenes. i.e. both standards update the whole screen in the same amount of time but progressive updates the whole thing at once, interlaced updates every-other line and then every-other-other-line.

Interlacing can improve the image on a CRT tv/monitor somewhat but with LCD technology I'm not so sure ... progressive is probably better as the lines don't fade as with CRTs

The reviews often opinionate that 720p looks as pretty if not prettier as 1080i. It's all rather tricky to get a grip on because a lot of the content displayed on 720 or 1080 has been upscaled (and/or downscaled) so you have to ask are you really watching high definition video or are you watching standard definition that has been blown up and sharpened/anti-aliased to make it look a bit better.

I would also comment that the 360 isn't exactly a quiet machine! Perhaps not the greatest thing for those quiet moments during a film? I understand you can modify it to be water-cooled if you're brave

my 2c: If you can afford it it could be fun to play with, but "HD", and the recently announced extra/ultra/whatever-HD with even bigger resolutions are far from mature standards so you have to do your research to make sure your TV will cope with all the various possible inputs nicely.

[Gandalf]

The 360 noise is actually the DVD drive! Anyway, I use mine for playing DVD's at the moment as it's taking up my component sockets on my TV. Looks great and outputs 576P with no problems at all. Looks as nice as my £200 p/scan DVD player!

[Carr0t]

576P? Aah! more acronyms I don't understand!

Yeah, the TV I was thinking of getting was in fact this one:

http://tinyurl.com/ydsd3a

It only talks about 720p there, but one of my friends says he's sent the 40" version (which has exactly the same specs, just a bit larger screen) a 1080i signal and it just downscaled it. This is important (for some people) r.e. the PS3s apparent inability to talk 720p, so if your TV can't take 1080i at least the PS3 just downscales it all the way to 480p. Personally I never plan to get a PS3, but you never know.

I'd love to be able to get a 1080p TV, but unfortunately I just can't afford it, nor do I really need one. The main reason i'm getting the 32" one instead of the 40" that my mate has (apart from price, natch), is that if i'm getting a TV that is 40" or bigger I want proper 1080p or better (whenever the newer HD standards become more common), and I can't afford that. My current TV, however, is a cheapo 28" SD that weighs fully half as much as I do and is over 2' deep, so anything which frees up some space in my living room and doesn't cause the TV/consoles stand to bend so disturbingly is good...

I don't think drive noise will be that much of an issue for me. I seem to be able to tune out that sort fo thing very easily. My old PC sounded like a jet aircraft taking off (the new one is nice and quiet tho), but I never seemed to notice it at all when gaming or watching films. Plus i've wathced films at a mates house on his 360 and not noticed it.

[Gandalf]

576P is 576 lines Progressive scan.

576 lines is standard DVD resolution.

Oh, and the drive noise on DVD playback is no where near as bad as game playback. I guess the drive is spinning slower during a DVD but games that stream a lot from disk need it spinning fast.

[suicidal_monkey]

http://tinyurl.com/ydsd3a

Just make sure it has all the inputs you'll need for 360 playback (component I think?) and I'm sure you'll be happy with it

Remember that if you want HD-DVD playback on the 360 you will have to fork out an extra £130 for the HD-DVD add-on drive which will sit next to the 360? For regular DVDs though it's ready to play If you have a MCE-enabled pc you can network to it then you're laughing...

We replaced our 28" cheapo behemoth of a tv (which happily started to break down 11 months into its 12 month warranty) with a 27" Toshiba that does 720p, hdmi etc. It's so much better in so many ways! One day perhaps I will put a hi-def signal into it even! Worked pretty well with a friends 360 and DVD playback was nice, although it wouldn't play divx or mpeg4 films on a disk which my sub-£30 DVD player can do...

[suicidal_monkey]

Oh, and the drive noise on DVD playback is no where near as bad as game playback. I guess the drive is spinning slower during a DVD but games that stream a lot from disk need it spinning fast.

there is that but its still a noisy drive. Noisier than my pc's DVD drive (taking data/film modes into account)

Personally I reckon the real place to get HD content is going to be via the web, cable/satellite tv, or via an IPTV network (think Telewest on steroids) rather than from blu-ray or hd-dvd. That or off've 1.6 terabyte holographic disks:lmfao:

[Carr0t]

576 lines is standard DVD resolution.

Fair enough. I kinda just assumed that DVD res would be the same as standard def TV, which I understood to be 480 lines. What the point of 576? Thee's no screen that displays that natively is there? It's a little over SD but still below HD.

Is it that weird Enhanced Def thing, what the Wii outputs in? I thought that was just a widescreen pic that hadn't been squashed to fit on a 3:4 film at any point.

Remember that if you want HD-DVD playback on the 360 you will have to fork out an extra £130 for the HD-DVD add-on drive which will sit next to the 360?

Yup, that's been factored in. Should fit in one of the shelves of the TV desk quite nicely.