Scart leads .. quality unimportant?

[Rupert]

I'm shortly to embark on a fairly laborious exercise, whereby I upload little bits and pieces from old VHS tapes to my HD recorder. I propose then to copy all these bites to a disc for posterity.

My Panasonic VHS machine has all the usual scart connections and my Panasonic HD recorder has a scart-in connection. My cats seem to love the outer sleeves of my old scart leads (kind of rubbery and chewy) and it looks as if the metal of some of the 21 cables within are showing, maybe even severed!

I probably need to buy a new scart lead - 0.75m should do it - so what do we think about the quality required? There are scart leads everywhere at varying prices from a few pounds to twenty or more.

 

[MajorFubar]

It's an analogue signal sent as either a composite signal or as separate RGB components, so at least a decent quality lead is worthwhile, but to be honest I never found any benefit from spending more than £15 on one, which got you a fully-wired cable. If your recorder has an option for 'SCART RGB' on the input, make sure you buy one that's fully wired (the description should say as such). Cheap ones were often only wired for composite, and the ones wired for RGB cost a bit more. RGB always gave slightly better picture because the RGB components signals were sent down separate wires in the cable rather than being matrixed/dematrixed to/from one signal. So if there is an option on your recorder to select 'SCART RGB', then select that for best picture quality.

 

[chebby]

I trust these guys and bought all of my TV and FM aerial cables and fittings from them...

http://www.aerialsandtv.com/onlinecableandmisc.html#SCART_Cables

... phone them first.

 

[Rupert]

Thanks chebby, I'll give them a call.

 

[Rupert]

Thanks MajorFubar ... the scart socket on my HD recorder is simply marked 'AV in'. Looking at the specification section of the manual it tells me the following:

AV input (21 pin): Analogue Video input (PAL/NTSC) 1Vp-p (75 Ohm); Analogue Audio input (L/R): Standard 0.5 Vrms, Full scale 2.0 Vrms at 1 kHz (>10 kOhm)

I don't seem to have any choice but to use this socket, so hopefully it'll work OK. I haven't even turned the VHS machine on in years, so I think I shall return it to 'factory settings' and hope that the tracking (don't hear that word often these day!) is stable.

Thanks again for your comments.

 

[Rupert]

Thanks iMark, really informative!

I too used to have a Sony HD recorder (RDR-HXD600) which I replaced a year ago with a Panasonic DMR-BWT740, capable of recording in HD/Blu-ray quality.

My S-VHS machine is a Panasonic NV-HS880 which was a top model at the time (funny how we always tried to do that - buy a top model I mean - only to find in only a few years that it's nowhere near 'top' anymore!). I don't think I've ever suspected that the heads might be dirty, so I'll get it going again this coming weekend and see what the tracking's like. If I need a tape head cleaner I should be able to buy one at my local maplin store. All the VHS tapes that I actually hung on to have been stored horizontally in a drawer in the living room, so hopefully they'll still be OK!

Like you I used to swear by IXOS scart leads; they're still available (www.ixoscables.com) and still seem quite expensive, but I think the higher quality items from Maplin should be adequate for the task in hand. That rubbery sheathing on most scart cables attracts one of my cats like a magnet .. he chews them like a dog chews a bone! I may either buy a new cable and only plug it in when I'm about to use it, or I might try the flat variety which, you never know, may not have the same kitty appeal!

Thanks again for your input.

 

[iMark]

I have just been converting some old VHS tapes to our HDD/DVD recorder myself. Here are a few of my observations.

I copied some tapes from the 1990s for some friends of ours. The tape quality must have been rather poor because after 10 tapes, the picture from the VHS became very sketchy: the tape heads were dirty. So yesterday I bought a VHS cleaning set (a tape and some fluid) and that seems to have cleaned the heads again.

The quality of the scart cable really makes quite a bit of difference. 15 years ago I bought a very expensive scart lead (Ixos) to connect my first DVD player to my big Sony widescreen TV. I now use it for converting VHS to DVD. With a rather poor analogue source like VHS you want to transfer as much information as you can. Back in 2005 I did a couple of tests with transferring VHS and there was a remarkable visible difference between the cheapy cables and the Ixos cable.

My equipment: a JVC VHS machine, the HR-S5711 and a Sony RDR-HX-710 HDD/DVD recorder. I record the tape to the HDD on the Sony in standard quality. I use Line 3 on the Sony to connect the scart lead. (No need to record at a higher quality than SP because VHS doesn't contain more information.) I then do the editing and titiling and transfer ("dub" in Sony parlance) the material to DVD. (I use DVD-R discs because only then the Sony will retain the original image scaling.)

The Sony has been playing up though with fast dubbing. It will give the dreaded C13:00 error message "The disc is dirty". It doesn't do this when dubbing to DVD at normal speed. So I stick to that. In hindsight HDD/DVD recorders are cobbled together consumer electronics and the DVD burners in them use all sorts of proprietary standards. So a replacement burner is simply not avaialbe. Just use the machine while it lasts!

The quality of the DVD's is a bit better than the original source material. Apparently Sony has put some extra image boost hardware in these machines. I chose the Sony back in 2005 after reading about this in German magazines.

All in all it has been a succeful project for our friends, except for two old tapes that broke. The quality of the original tapes makes a huge difference. Also storing tapes makes a difference. But it is very rewarding to digitise old tapes before they crumble away to oblivion.

I have also transferred some tapes directly to the computer by using a break out cable in combination with an Elgato EyeTV Hybrid USB stick. I get better quality recordings with the Sony recorder than on the computer.

 

[iMark]

You're welcome.

I think I paid 150 guilders for the Ixos cable, back in 2000, that was before the introduction of the euro here in NL. In today's money that would be EUR 68,07 or GPB 49,50.

I don't know if it's worth investing that much on a Scart lead. On the other hand, you will only do this once and you might as well get the last bit of picture quality from the old tapes. With digital cables I have come to the conclusion that there is no degredation as long as the digital (or optical) cable doesn't lose any bits. With analogue scart cables you can actually see the difference.

I have never investigated this, but maybe there is a second hand market for these expensive cables.

As long as your tapes are of a reasonable to good grade from a reputable manufacturer like Sony, TDK, Memorex etc the old tape shouldn't damage the recorder too much. I noticed with some of the tapes that fast forwarding went with a lot trouble and noise. So maybe I shouldn't have tried to play those tapes.....