In uk.d-i-y, Dave Plowman wrote:

I'd be most surprised if the VCR looped through RGB. And has your set two
RGB SCARTS?

Not sure about the first, as the VCR (very recently bought Panasonic) has
naff-all documentation. It's vaguely plausible that it does, as I've told
the Freeview box to push out RGB rather than composite video, and there's
a signal visible on the TV; however it's also possible that the menu lies
and the RGB is an "also" rather than an "either".

As for the second (pops downstairs to retrieve the TV's Book Of Words...)
well, it seems that the set (also a Panasonic) does not have two RGB Scarts.
The first one, to which the VCR and transitively the Freeview box connect,
is RGB-capable. The second is not RGB-capable, but is S-Video capable, so
I *think* the DVD player is sending a plausibly-decent signal to the TV
through that route. It's possible there could be some marginal benefit
from swapping these two inputs round, with the DVD player going to the
RGB-capable one and the VCR to the other one; but then I might get a
less good signal from the Freeview box, which has to feed into the VCR for
recordability. Ah, choices, choices... and it'll get more funky still if
I do revive the satellite receiver!

One can't help concluding there's a tension between providing minimal-cost
caters-for-most-cases-adequately connectivity which doesn't confuse the
consumer population at large, and providing flexibility and a high-quality
signal path for a variety of devices (well duh!). SCART connections seem to
have acquired quite a few bits of added-on Flexibility, stretching the pin
assignments beyond the initial design with its simplistic "look at me! I've
asserted +5V on the look-at-me line, so look at me!" idea... but I don't see
anything else (Firewire/mLAN?) becoming a universal, self-configuring,
self-describing, digital, easy-to-interconnect consumer AV interconnect
standard just yet. Unless (shudders at memory of amusingly-shaped vegetable
and over-prominent teeth) You Know Better?

Stefek