What's unusual about this is that it didn't just have a normal SCART socket from the word go. One cable to plug in, and it works with anything: composite or RGB, stereo or mono audio, and even self-switching (well, at least until you remove pin 8 with a pair of wire cutters, on account of the annoying way some tellies refuse to display a picture from any other source). Really, it's a no-brainer. Think about it: when was the last time you saw a TV set without a SCART socket?
The real mystery, as far as I'm concerned, is why is everyone moving to Y/R-Y/B-Y component? It's a horrible kludge that only ever made sense for one purpose: broadcasting colour pictures in a way that could be displayed on existing mono sets. Nowadays, all sets are colour; and since the signals are digital anyway, it's little extra work to generate a mono signal (for that matter, the Y component is exactly just a mono video signal). RGB is the "native" format used by both CRTs and LCDs; so why couldn't we just adapt the existing SCART connector (which has always been able to carry RGB signals) to work with high-def analogue pictures? (Probably use the data pins to attempt to exchange resolution information and if nothing is forthcoming, default to a low-definition, 625-line picture)
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Unusual
What's unusual about this is that it didn't just have a normal SCART socket from the word go. One cable to plug in, and it works with anything: composite or RGB, stereo or mono audio, and even self-switching (well, at least until you remove pin 8 with a pair of wire cutters, on account of the annoying way some tellies refuse to display a picture from any other source). Really, it's a no-brainer. Think about it: when was the last time you saw a TV set without a SCART socket?
The real mystery, as far as I'm concerned, is why is everyone moving to Y/R-Y/B-Y component? It's a horrible kludge that only ever made sense for one purpose: broadcasting colour pictures in a way that could be displayed on existing mono sets. Nowadays, all sets are colour; and since the signals are digital anyway, it's little extra work to generate a mono signal (for that matter, the Y component is exactly just a mono video signal). RGB is the "native" format used by both CRTs and LCDs; so why couldn't we just adapt the existing SCART connector (which has always been able to carry RGB signals) to work with high-def analogue pictures? (Probably use the data pins to attempt to exchange resolution information and if nothing is forthcoming, default to a low-definition, 625-line picture)