Probably a silly question to most of you but..... A friend of mine has a SONY DAVS880 set up with a sony TV and at the weekend we were having trouble connecting it. Currently he has it connected via the S-Video cable which goes into the side of his TV (not very pretty). Obviously this also means that he has to manually switch to AV channel on the TV. I told him he should really have the Scart connected so that when he presses play the TV changes to AV automatically. The only thing is there is no Scart on the back on the DVD player....only RGB. So he's got himself an RGB to scart lead (which currently isn't working - that's another issue) We've been told that these leads only work 1 way and he's got the wrong was (sounds fishy to me!) anyway, my question is...even if he get the RGB lead working going to the Scart socket.....How will the TV know when the signal is coming if there is no pin 11 (or whatever number it is) connected?

Does this mean that with this system you'll always have to pick up the TV control to turn over to the AV channels?? I still find it wierd that this model (which is very expensive) doesn't have a standard Scart socket.

You are a bit confused.........scart is a connection type (socket type if you like) just as phono or 4-pin din plugs.

RGB is a 'signal type' which is generally transported over a scart cable.

Svideo is another sugnal type which can also be carried onver scart but also over a 4-pin plug and cable.

Sony, i notice, dont seem to have scart sockets on their DAV series boxes just phono plugs (left/right audio and composite video) and Svideo 4-pin sockets. These din plugs are more for the Japanes/US market whereas Scart is European.

You can only get the TV to switch directly to the DAV if their is a signal to tell it to do so - you dont have scart so you cant do this.

You can get a cable that has a 4-pin on one end and a scart on the other. Plug this into the rear of the TV - this is likely to be supported by AV2 on the TV (AV1 will usually support RGB and composite whereas AV2 supports Svideo and composite).

This will give a much tidier solution than you have at present but you will not get auto switching.

Rgds,
Scorp

Also, the Sony has no RGB out - the reg green and blue connectors are component not RGB.

I have mine wired up with an S-Video to SCART lead (which are indeed directional, you weren't being BSed). However there is no pin 8 signal, so you can't get it to autoswitch.

Sorry I'm abit confused by your first statement as I always believed RGB stands for Red, Green, Blue? So, if the Sony DVD has "component out" surely a "component to scart" cable will be the best connection?

but the red, green and blue plugs are not carrying red, green and blue, its just to make it easyer.
-Chris

Component video is similar to RGB video, and the phono style plugs it uses are normally colour coded red, green and blue. But it is not the same as RGB as the video is encoded differently. You can't put a component video signal into an RGB input.

Some TVs support componet video input - plasmas and LCDs in particular - but it is not common in reguar CRT TVs in the UK. American TVs use it rather than RGB.

Unfortunately not. Whilst it is true that RGB is a type of component video connection, the standard meaning for the term "component video" is YUV, otherwise known as Y-Pr-Pb.

In this scheme, the Y-channel is luminance (brightness) and the other two are separated chroma (colour) channels. This is not the same as RGB.

In theory, a conversion between YUV and RGB is lossless and simple, but in practice things don't always go that smoothly.

Do some background reading: it sounds like you need to understand what's going on. Specifically:

Composite video contains the entire video signal combined onto a single signal. This can degrade the signal, and separating it out at the other end isn't too easy.

S-Video (Y/C) carries the luminance (brightness) and chrominance (colour) information on separate conductors, which leads to better picture quality.

RGB and YUV are covered above.

SCART (Peritel) is a connector type, which can carry many different signals:

Video: RGB and composite simultaneously, or S-Video; with composite in the other direction
Audio: Stereo in both directions

S-Video is alternatively carried on a 4-pin mini-din connector without audio; composite it often carried without audio on a single phono (RCA) lead. In both these cases, a phono (RCA) audio lead is required (twin for stereo).

I don't believe there is a standard for carrying YUV component video on SCART, so your "component to SCART" must either convert to RGB (non-trivial), combine to S-Video (Y/C) or combine to composite (bad news).

The automatic switching to AV input is done via singalling pins on the SCART connector. Without a SCART on the player, that's not going to happen unless the TV is clever enough to recognize a signal.

In your friend's situation, I'd buy an S-Video + 2RCA to SCART adaptor and connect up appropriately. Check the TV's SCART input can handle S-Video (Y/C) first, though.

Hope that helps.

Troon, although I understood what you have explained, I was trying myself to get this info over to posters who are struggling to get to grips with formats etc.

I found a few sites and was thinking about a cut/paste job but you beat me too it.

Your explanation is so concise yet relevant in each area it is almost de rigeur reference.

thanks for taking the time out to put these notes together.

Rgds,
Scorp

ps Troon is a great golf course!