Dianes Posted August 29, 2004 Share Posted August 29, 2004 Hi, Sorry if this has been answered before, but I tried doing a search to no avail. I don't usually look at this section because we don't as yet have a TV in our French house. However, we are planning on getting one soon. We know we have to get a French TV, but is it possible to use a British bought DVD player with it, as we have a spare one we can take over.Thanks,Diane (Dept.22/Hampshire) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick Smith Posted August 29, 2004 Share Posted August 29, 2004 Apparently so - but on the other hand we only paid €99 for a very nice JVC, so if yours is a little older you may get better features on a new one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jackie Posted August 29, 2004 Share Posted August 29, 2004 I would have thought so too but we have had problems with our UK type video recorder playing back via a SCART lead through the French TV. Picture is fine but no sound. I seem to remember somewhere seeing something about changing the sound channel leads in the SCART lead over, Anyone know anything about this? Maybe a DVD would have the same problem!...............John in 79 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard-R Posted August 29, 2004 Share Posted August 29, 2004 YES you can use an DVD player purchased in the U.K. with a French T.V. We have 2 one we moved here with and one we brought (home cinema) on the internet from a U.K. store. Top end DVD players in France seem to cost about 30%-$0% than in the U.K.????? Same also with T.V's The ones you can buy in the supermarkets are models that are a couple of years old, which is why they often seem very cheap.Richard (Aude) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul_Gyn Posted August 29, 2004 Share Posted August 29, 2004 [quote]I would have thought so too but we have had problems with our UK type video recorder playing back via a SCART lead through the French TV. Picture is fine but no sound. I seem to remember somewhere see...[/quote]Your sound problems with a scart socket probably owe more to the crappy nature of scarts, I suspect, than to a mismatch. The scart is the truly camel of the video world (the camel, you will remember, is a horse designed by a committee). Many's the happy hour I've spent grovelling around the back of a set trying to feel my way to insert a scart plug with no real idea whether the plug was the right way up, only to find that I was fumbling either on the wrong side entirely, or three inches too high up the case.They are the invention of the devil and you really would be hard-pressed to devise a connector with more built-in fault potential : you put it in a little askew and the pins slip back into the body of the plug; you allow a loop of cable to hang down and the plug flexes a bit and off goes either the sound or the picture, or one of the colours. I have cheap ones: I have expensive ones. They all behave as badly as each other. Why manufacturers couldn't use F-connectors and RCAs for the sound (or better yet, BNCs and XLRs) escapes me completely.paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hegs Posted August 30, 2004 Share Posted August 30, 2004 Scart connectors are confusing as they actually support three signal standards through the same physical connector: RGB, S-VHS and composite video (probably got a fancy new name by now). For all practical purposes you can forget about S-VHS unless you have a camcorder. However, it is really important that you make sure the French TV you buy supports RGB input via scart, for a couple of reasons:1. RGB is completely independent of colour encoding schemes, and thus national standards between the UK and France. When the three colour lines (Red, Green, Blue) are squashed into a single signal this is done by an encoding scheme. France and the UK have different standards for this, SECAM and PAL respectively. If your French TV is multistandard, it should be able to decode UK (PAL) composite video, but if you are using RGB it doesn't matter.2. Because with an RGB signal the {Red, Green, Blue} signals are not squashed together then unsquashed, the quality is significantly better, especially when you are watching a DVD. You might find only one of the two SCART inputs supports RGB. It is sometimes hard to find out without reading the TV manual. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick Smith Posted August 30, 2004 Share Posted August 30, 2004 To reply to Paul - I've had 2 SCART leads recently that were just duff. I spent ages trying to find other faults until No1 son simply replaced the lead and all came good. Smarmy bugger. Then the same thing happened a while later - but I was ready for it that time, no fooling me twice, oh no. Well, not often, anyway.Apparently you need the ones with the thick cables, but gold-plated ones just cost more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Trollope Posted August 30, 2004 Share Posted August 30, 2004 [quote]Your sound problems with a scart socket probably owe more to the crappy nature of scarts, I suspect, than to a mismatch. The scart is the truly camel of the video world (the camel, you will rememb...[/quote]And it's French ................. Syndicat des Constructeurs d'AppareilsRadiorécepteurs et Téléviseurs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul_Gyn Posted August 30, 2004 Share Posted August 30, 2004 "............If your French TV is multistandard, it should be able to decode UK (PAL) composite video, but if you are using RGB it doesn't matter............" Actually if the TV is multistandard (i.e. SECAM/PAL) - as most French TVs are these days - it will happily display the picture via a scart despite its origin being a UK-sourced machine. The different sorts of PAL (PAL-B/G, PAL-I) are a factor of the broadcast signal: the difference being the broadcast band (III or V in the case of B or G) and the spacing between the frequency of the sound signal and that of the vision when modulated on a carrier signal : variously 5Mhz, 5.5Mhz, or 6Mhz. The UK's PAL-I is, of course, different to anywhere on the continent, which is why you cannot automatically expect a french multistandard set to work back in the UK just because it says SECAM/PAL on the front.However, the composite signal ambling down a Scart cable is not a modulated one. so there is only one sort of PAL composite.Whilst I agree with HEGS that RGB gives a better picture I wouldn't regard it as a deal-breaker until you are talking b-i-g screen sizes. - yes, you can tell the difference when you can switch between RGB and VIDEO and compare-and-contrast (as the exam papers used to say), but if the only picture source you have to compare it with is the off-air signal, then composite video looks mighty fine!It's rather like agonizing in a hi-fi shop over the different sets of loud-speakers; you very quickly get used to whichever you choose once they are sitting in your living-room. regards paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul_Gyn Posted August 30, 2004 Share Posted August 30, 2004 Dick..... am I going mad or have you changed your picture between my reading today's posts and posting a reply ??? paul(you're none of you strong enough to have to suffer a picture of me) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick Smith Posted August 30, 2004 Share Posted August 30, 2004 [quote]Dick..... am I going mad or have you changed your picture between my reading today's posts and posting a reply ??? paul (you're none of you strong enough to have to suffer a picture of me)[/quote]Yeah. I sort of got 25 years younger...I blame Miki and his senior stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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