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[–] 17 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

SCART was ahead of its time. You could control connected devices with it like HDMI CEC. You could wake up devices through it. You could daisy chain devices together with it. A TV could sent its TV signal down to a SCART connected device from its tuner! No equivalent for this exists today, unless there's TV that do HDMI OUT! By the end, it could do 1080p!

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago

    Also, the TV didn't just send the currently-tuned channel 'down' the chain, it also allowed connected devices to inject their own, synced, video back into the TV, so you could be watching a show on BBC1, say, and the VCR could overlay a box in the top-right corner letting you know it had started a scheduled recording off Channel 4. Or, if you used a device like a Selectavision, if you tuned into a scrambled channel the Selectavision would notice, decode it, and send the descrambled version back up to the TV, all without the user realising it. Those clever Frenchies.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Was it able to shock me with one end connected or is it just a false memory.

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  • I think some old double insulated devices have power supply issues that meant that the ground/plug-shell would be energized at half mains voltage. You wouldn't notice since the rest of the TV was wood/plastic, not metal, but if you touched the metal on the back you would get shocked.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago*

    It probably had a good reason to shock you! /s.
    By design, SCART carries low voltage, not enough to shock someone. The device it was connected to could have been faulty or badly grounded and leaked higher voltage into the connector though. So its plausible.

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