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Marek

Connecting console to TV

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OK, don't laugh at me for noobness. A year ago I didn't even know what RCA cables or S-video were, so that's kind of my level of knowledge. I never bothered with this shit.

Here's my situation: I'm about to make my first official foray into console gaming. I used to play console games on my friends' consoles but now I'm getting a Wii at launch and a 360 early next year.

I have an old TV. The back looks like this. It has two SCART ports and two things I don't fucking know.

tv.jpg

Another piece of information I have on this TV is that it doesn't accept s-video signals, cause I tried that with my laptop's TV-out and it just gives black & white video. So it needs some type of lower tech input, I guess.

I have this SCART to who-knows-what (composite?) magic cord lying around:

cable1.jpg

I also have this SCART to s-video (and something else) converter in my big box of electronics crap:

cable2.jpg

Questions:

  1. Can I connect a Wii to this TV using these materials?
  2. Can I connect a 360 to this TV using these materials?
  3. If the answer to 1 or 2 was no, what do I need instead?
  4. I plan to buy a Siemens Samsung digital TV in approx. half a year. Should I just not bother with this old TV and buy a Siemens right now?

Any help appreciated. Thank you.

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The other two connectors on your TV are for additional speakers. It's a very old speaker plug system thingy.

the composite/s-video to scart connector does not convert the signal, if your TC can't handle s-video data that connector won't do you any good.

I doubt you will be able to hook up either wii or xbox360 and get proper video output on your tv

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Ysbreker: the reason I'm not rushing out to buy an HD TV is that I need a little more time to research and set aside the money. :)

I'm confused now:

3:56 Lawrence you can connect both those consoles to your TV

3:56 Gwarek thank you sir

3:56 Lawrence they both come with RCA (Composite) cables, which you can plug into the adapter you have

3:56» make sure the adapter is set to output and your laughing

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The yellow thing on that adapter (I have the exact same one) carries composite video signal, which is not as good as s-video. Your TV will almost certainly support it, though. If the consoles have a composite video output, which would seem reasonable, you should have no problems.

AFAIK European consoles (most audio/video appliances) should come with a SCART cord of their own, which should work too.

EDIT:

Oh, note that SCART inputs are not made equal. Usually if a TV has two SCART inputs only one can handle RGB signal, which is higher quality than either composite or s-video. It's an old TV though, don't know if it supports that signal at all.

FURTHER EDIT:

Why do you have a Finnish TV, Marek? Is it a Finlux? That company went out of business a while ago.

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It's possible that mainland Europe is different to the UK I guess, but every console comes out here with Composite Cables, to ensure the maximum number of people can use it out of the box.

Either way you are guaranteed to be able to use both consoles without buying any new cables or adapters. If they come with Composite, use the adapter, if they come with SCART..... you have SCART inputs, heh.

note: I hate SCART, worst connector design ever.

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Yeah it's a Finlux, well spotted! My folks bought it years ago at discount rate. It had really good image quality at the time, but it always failed to recognize new channels. I'm still not even sure how this works. My dad once paid a professional to do it after some of the channels got moved to different frequencies and it took that guy hours.

SCART is indeed hideous.

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Finlux was the only Finnish TV manufacturer, so that didn't take much of a guess.

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If the others didn't answer clearly enough, then yes. You can definately connect your Wii to the TV with the Composite(the three yellow, white and red sockets)/S-Video to Scart one. The Wii comes with a Wii-to-Composite cable.

But with your current TV you might want to buy a Wii to Scart cable for better quality. Don't know when it's out, though. And as someone would mention, Component cables would give you better graphics still. But your TV won't support it.

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Cool, thanks. Quality is not a huge concern since this will be a temporary arrangement until I buy a better TV.

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It might be worth trying the s-video thing again, making sure you try both sockets - as already mentioned, some TVs (e.g. mine) with two SCART sockets do indeed only support RGB input on one of the connectors; but on mine, only the other connector supports S-video. I don't know how common that is, but maybe you just had it plugged into the wrong one.

SCART connectors are a nightmare to plug in, but at least they provide support for an RGB signal, which is about as good as it gets on consumer TV hardware. It's an interesting idea to have one connector with every signal under the sun going through some of its pins, but the fact that it's possible for both devices on the cable to just not bother connecting half the pins makes it far too confusing.

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Finlux was the only Finnish TV manufacturer, so that didn't take much of a guess.

Well, Nokia did also manufacture televisions in the early 90's, but that was so long ago.

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I find it strange that many of you seem to dislike SCART, while being needlessly confused by the alternatives. What could be more versatile and easy-to-use than a single connector that offers stereo audio, video in two forms, and trickery like widescreen switching?

The process for getting the best picture quality without SCART would be something like:

Post confused message on the Internet, get typically mixed messages from denizens who don't seem too clear themselves, get more confused, complain about SCART for a while, end up marginally more informed than you were to start with, buy a bundle of cables that probably aren't what you want....

Alternatively, with SCART, the process in PAL land is as simple as:

Buy RGB SCART cable for your console of choice, generally an aftermarket item used by console manufacturers to bleed you dry (much cheaper 3rd party alternatives exist). Connect to SCART. Your TV supports RGB? You get RGB. It doesn't? You still get a picture, albeit a less nice one.

Better than mucking about with RCA connectors isn't it?

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My TV doesn't support s-video either. AFAIK that is the case with many older and cheaper TVs.

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I find it strange that many of you seem to dislike SCART, while being needlessly confused by the alternatives. What could be more versatile and easy-to-use than a single connector that offers stereo audio, video in two forms, and trickery like widescreen switching?

Technically it's great, it has a lot of useful features (you missed out things like VCRs being able to change the channel on your digital box), but the core concept of having so many wires and signal formats is really the flaw, to me. Some of them may be unconnected at either end - some of them might not be connected in your cable either. And the average person wouldn't even know. At some point it really is better to have a different connector and a different cable, just so people actually know what signal format they're using. They should at least be able to tell "high quality socket" vs "low quality socket" without trial and error or reading the manual.

Compare it to PC video file formats - e.g. AVI. It's a container format, so the fact that something is an AVI file tells you nothing about whether your computer will actually be able to play it. If every codec used a different file extension then it would be a lot clearer whether your computer can or cannot play the file, and arguably much easier to find the codec for download.

Alternatively, with SCART, the process in PAL land is as simple as:

Buy RGB SCART cable for your console of choice, generally an aftermarket item used by console manufacturers to bleed you dry (much cheaper 3rd party alternatives exist). Connect to SCART. Your TV supports RGB? You get RGB. It doesn't? You still get a picture, albeit a less nice one.

But unless you've done quite a bit of research, you just blew £30 on an admitedly overpriced "advanced" scart cable without it being very clear what it actually is, or whether your TV even supports it. And you'll never know whether you really did need to buy that cable, or whether you could make do with the crap cable you got for free with the console.

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The ideas behind SCART are fine, the cable itself is terrible.

Far too wide a connector that is really insecure, they ALWAYS come loose really easy and have horribly inflexible cables (except the flat ones perhaps).

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OK a new HD TV is on its way. This old Finlux TV is moving to my parents' guestroom, so that I can play Wii there when I'm visiting. Woo.

So, question round #2. My HD TV has the following connections:

Component

Composite

HDMI

VGA

Scart RGB

Scart A/V

Svideo

I plan to use composite component for my Wii eventually as that seems to get the best results (see: GameSpot).

Then there's two more devices I need to connect: my G4 powerbook (has svideo and DVI) and an Xbox 360.

Can anyone recommend the highest quality connections to use for those two? For the 360, will I get high quality picture if I get a cable to Scart RGB (keeping DVI/VGA free for other stuff)? Or should I use something else for hidef graphics?

For the Powerbook, should I get a DVI to HDMI cable? Or a DVI to VGA cable?

There are way too many "standards". :(

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Hmm, from the manual:

Do not attempt to connect the HDMI/DVI connector to a PC or Laptop Graphics Card. (This will result in a blank screen being displayed)

So that one's out...

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Hmm, from the manual:
Do not attempt to connect the HDMI/DVI connector to a PC or Laptop Graphics Card. (This will result in a blank screen being displayed)

So that one's out...

Huh, that's very odd. You'd think the TV wouldn't care from where the signal was coming, wouldn't you? I'd say try it anyway, with a compatible resolution set on your laptop of course. I don't think that could possibly break it anyway (please don't take my word for it).

For the 360 I'm using the VGA cables, which I've hooked up to my computer monitor and there's no way I'm going back to Scart on my SDTV. If you're not going to use the component cables that came with the console, please purchase a VGA kit.

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360 doesn't support HDMI at the moment, microsoft said they can add support for it but don't think there is enough demand as yet.

As for your choices marek:

I'd go with Component for Wii

VGA for 360 (you will only get Hi-Def out of 360 on VGA or Component)

and use someone else's cable to try your laptop in HDMI, failing that use VGA.

also to Oath: 360 comes with component?? first I heard of that!

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Yeah no HDMI on 360. All that stuff sounds like a good plan.

Although I just realized there will be Wii to RGB Scart cables in Europe. Is that equal to Component in quality? In that case I could connect Wii with Scart, 360 with Component, and have both VGA and HDMI free for PC/laptop connectivity. :clap::erm:

Edit: this random page from Google says "Component > Scart > Composite".

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also to Oath: 360 comes with component?? first I heard of that!

The premium version does, actually.

You really made me doubt myself there though. Of course, packing a nice cable in with a hi-def system would make too much sense, so I changed my mind until I looked it up.

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