I have a Panasonic Viera HD TV,no HD DVD or owt though!

Is it worth getting a good (£20-£30) scart lead. Will it impove the picture or is it a con? I have a lead that cost about £ 5 at the moment

The picture is very good to me but I have been told a good lead will improve it alot?

What you recomendations?

i think they did a test on the gadget show about expensive v cheap scart leads and there was hardly any difference.

I replaced a cheapo scart lead we had in the tv in the kitchen with an ‘expensive’ one as we were having a lot of problems with electrical interference, new scart lead solved the problem.

i bought some ‘better’ scart leads a few years back when we got a dvd player. they were 20quid down to a tenner i think from argos. there was a marked difference between those and the cheap standard ones supplied.

whether there would be a diffrence again between those and even more expensive ones i don’t know.

Better in what way? Picture quality? Interference?

Some cheapo SCART leads only have 10 of the 21 wires connected.

These will only give you a Composite video signal rather than the superior RGB signal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scart

The best thing to do would be to check out a couple of magazines e.g. What Hi-Fi and the like. Some leads cost £50 and can be rubbish, but sometimes manufacturers sell one for £20 that is amazing value for money and makes a real difference. You don’t really know until you use it but the magazine reviews do at least give you a fighting chance.

Don’t assume more £ equals better, its not always true. I would always make a point of not going to places like Currys/Dixons/Comet etc as they tend to sell leads from big names that simply lood nice and shiny with weird colour leads but may not be better at all.

It SHOULD make a difference, but choose wisely!

By the way, I am not advocating buying a £200 lead made from unobtanium with gold connectors and unicorn tears.
Just make sure you get one that is fully connected and has decent shielding. <£25

Got some nice QED ones and I think the quality was better with them.

As mentioned up there – use another method of connection if you can – scart is a bit pants.

Grab yourself a Blu-ray player and a HDMI lead and then you’ll notice a huuuuuge difference. Even my wife notices…. 🙂

Thanks robdob

That brings me onto my question ….

Are expensive HDMI leads worth it ??

I’ve seen them from £5 up to £150, although I’ve still got another 4 weeks b4 my new HD TV arrives anyway.

I think cheap HDMI are better than expensive SCART.
Best thing we did when we got our new big telly was to buy a £50 upscaleing 1080p Sony DVD player and connect with HDMI.
Unless your leads are over 1.5m then I think the benefits of posh leads are minimal.

Our electronics guru at work says it’s how they are made not what they’re made of. He laughs at the mention of gold connectors.

Are expensive HDMI leads worth it ??

Thought I read it didn’t make the slightest difference as there was an error correction process in the system?