When my Granddad recently bought a video/DVD unit, the shop assistant tried to sell him a scart lead with gold-plated terminals and it would have cost over £50. Needless to say, he didn't buy it, but if he had, do you think we would have noticed the difference?

I don't.

Depends how good your TV and DVD players are.

It no good buying cheap products and then connecting them with expensive leads or visa versa.

A general rule of thumb is to spend about 10% of the player on connection costs. So say £30 for a SCART for £300 player.

It's a rip off - and gold can react badly with non gold connections.

The whole business of selling expensive leads for average gear is like the Emperor's new clothes...

(Listen to the Danny Kaye record for the full story...)

And if you are buying leads the common retail outlets such as Dixons and Comet probably wont give best value for money either.

De Ja Vu huh Jim!

This topic pops up every other month.... time for DS to have some 'sticky' subjects perhaps?

Oh and I also agree with Jims comments on gold scart leads.... no scart socket is gold (or very few are) and most gold scarts are low qulaity gold... putting 2 different metals together (such as gold scart plugs and nickel silver scart sockets) can cause a metalurgic reaction that causes corrosion and poor signal transfer.

Sadly most people assume gold is best... well it would be if the sockets were too.....