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[KillerWatt]

Forget all the gold plated 'dangle berries', you won't see the difference between them and a £2.99 piece of rubbish.

As far as the "phono's" go, I'm guessing you are talking the yellow, red & white.
The yellow is composite video, and that is the lowest lifeform of all as far as analogue leads go.

A SCART lead that is wired for RGB is better, with component video (red, green, and blue phono's) being about the best you will get as far as analogue goes.

Note that not all SCART leads will be wired for RGB, some are so cheap that they are wired for composite video only (along with the audio of course).

You want to match the metal between plug and socket. So if telly is gold plated, use gold plated. If the telly is tin plated, use tin etc.

Its an analogue signal, so poor quality cables will degrade signal. And with any signal, quality screening helps.


Hence, I don't use cheapo hong kong ebay nasties. But then, I agree, I don't use the stupid, over marketed, over hyped, tosh either.

With all due respect TB, numerous "Which" magazines (eg, TV, Hi-Fi, etc) have conducted god knows how many tests using god knows how many cables, and the universal opinion is that the average home user is not going to see a difference between a SCART lead costing £5.99 and a SCART lead that boasts pure gold, oxygen free, etc that costs £70.

As the original question relates to a console that only outputs in analogue, any cable costing more than £10 tops is a waste of money IMO.

[Martin_1962]

I was mainly clarifying Scruntie, make sure you knew exactly what you want.

As to differences in leads - there are big differences between cheap leads and medium priced leads.

Mind you, you can now buy a decent Scart for around £15, about 10 years ago it was about £30.

It is little to do with the materials but everything to do with shielding with shortish runs.

The cheap couple of pound specials are horrific.

The main problem with cheap leads is crosstalk between lines, followed by picking other signals up at the ends. One common problem was picking up DVB tuner while watching DVD, replace the Scart and now OK

HDMI - if the lead is mechanically sound - that is good enough - for reasonable length runs.

[TheBoy]

Forget all the gold plated 'dangle berries', you won't see the difference between them and a £2.99 piece of rubbish.

As far as the "phono's" go, I'm guessing you are talking the yellow, red & white.
The yellow is composite video, and that is the lowest lifeform of all as far as analogue leads go.

A SCART lead that is wired for RGB is better, with component video (red, green, and blue phono's) being about the best you will get as far as analogue goes.

Note that not all SCART leads will be wired for RGB, some are so cheap that they are wired for composite video only (along with the audio of course).

You want to match the metal between plug and socket. So if telly is gold plated, use gold plated. If the telly is tin plated, use tin etc.

Its an analogue signal, so poor quality cables will degrade signal. And with any signal, quality screening helps.


Hence, I don't use cheapo hong kong ebay nasties. But then, I agree, I don't use the stupid, over marketed, over hyped, tosh either.

With all due respect TB, numerous "Which" magazines (eg, TV, Hi-Fi, etc) have conducted god knows how many tests using god knows how many cables, and the universal opinion is that the average home user is not going to see a difference between a SCART lead costing £5.99 and a SCART lead that boasts pure gold, oxygen free, etc that costs £70.

As the original question relates to a console that only outputs in analogue, any cable costing more than £10 tops is a waste of money IMO.

I was actually agreeing with you!  The only thing worth doing, as said, is matching the metals so as to keep the connection good (dissimilar metals and analogue is a bad combination given time). You can get decent, cheap gold plated connected cables for similar money to decent, cheap tin ones

I reckon worth spending a little extra on decently shielded cables, but then behind my telly is probably a bit hostile - hdmi, video console cables, mce, gigabit cables, in addition to all the usual vga, component, scart, spd/if etc.

[Marks DTM Calib]

Metal match wont do owt.....the only adhvantage gold plating gives you is the lack of oxidisation and its quite hard....but its does not conduct well.

THE most important part of the lead is the cable construction....good quality well screened coax of the correct impedance is key

[KillerWatt]

I was actually agreeing with you!

Sorry mate, misread your post slightly...my apologies.

The only thing worth doing, as said, is matching the metals so as to keep the connection good (dissimilar metals and analogue is a bad combination given time).

That I do agree with, especially as very few here (me included) will have a set that would let them see the difference.
Having said that, those that will spend stupid money generally clue themselves up beforehand.

I reckon worth spending a little extra on decently shielded cables, but then behind my telly is probably a bit hostile - hdmi, video console cables, mce, gigabit cables, in addition to all the usual vga, component, scart, spd/if etc.

Again I agree, it is quite easy to obtain a decent quality shielded cable for around £10 or so that will work perfectly.

[TheBoy]

Metal match wont do owt.....the only adhvantage gold plating gives you is the lack of oxidisation and its quite hard....but its does not conduct well.

THE most important part of the lead is the cable construction....good quality well screened coax of the correct impedance is key

I know we have dreadful problems at work when some idiot put tin plated memory into a load of our servers a few years back - we had to clean the contacts up about every 6-9 months due to a corrosion that built up on the connectors.

Some bloody bean counter thought he'd save a few quid 

[Mr Skrunts]

Metal match wont do owt.....the only adhvantage gold plating gives you is the lack of oxidisation and its quite hard....but its does not conduct well.

THE most important part of the lead is the cable construction....good quality well screened coax of the correct impedance is key

Never actually saw the point of gold plating the pins when the rest of it is just cheap cable, and then making the focal point about the gold plate being about conductivity.

Thanks for clearing that up for me Mark, the oxidisation bit makes a lot more sence to me now.   

[Marks DTM Calib]

Metal match wont do owt.....the only adhvantage gold plating gives you is the lack of oxidisation and its quite hard....but its does not conduct well.

THE most important part of the lead is the cable construction....good quality well screened coax of the correct impedance is key

I know we have dreadful problems at work when some idiot put tin plated memory into a load of our servers a few years back - we had to clean the contacts up about every 6-9 months due to a corrosion that built up on the connectors.

Some bloody bean counter thought he'd save a few quid 

Yeh well, connectors pins are not tin lead either (the technology varies).....memory cards can be (or could be, they cant anymore!  ) as they are little more than PCB edge connector technology.

[Marks DTM Calib]

In fact, think deeper, servers will suffer from a lot of vibration due to the cooling etc in them....hence it will be the gold pins wearing the contacts.....not an issue with a TV thankfuly

[TheBoy]

In fact, think deeper, servers will suffer from a lot of vibration due to the cooling etc in them....hence it will be the gold pins wearing the contacts.....not an issue with a TV thankfuly

Vibration may be an issue. Often loads of disks in servers of that era, before SANs were that popular, so they'd probably add to it.


Would the (then) high frequency of the memory make a difference?  Certainly a scrub up with switch cleaner cured it for a few more months...