Linards Ticmanis wrote:
jsnospam@cimmeri.com wrote:When did you all start having RGB via SCART? And did you have consumer devices that output RGB?In France SCART was mandated by their version of the FCC in 1980 or so. Over here in Germany, I think it was around 1990 or a bit later that it became fairly ubiquitous, around the time when Satellite TV took off, as it was the connector of choice for SAT boxes. Around that time most VHS machines adapted it too. One should keep in mind that usually the only alternative was the antenna socket, as RCA style baseband video connectors were quite unusual at that time over here. And of course most devices of that time used SCART for Composite signals, not for RGB. However, once the socket was there, adding RGB capability seems to add very little cost to a TV set, so it happened quickly as well; and then when DVD players came around, the necessary RGB capability was already there, so they also used SCART almost universally.
It's a case of _de facto_ standardization in most of Europe, driven by a _de jure_ standardization in the French market. Whatever approach develops volume becomes less expensive than niche alternatives. As I noted, the cost to a monitor for RGB is just connectorization. The cost shows up in every video device that must produce RGB, since computer graphics are one of the few sources that work in RGB space.
YCbCr inputs, on the other hand, never really caught on here until quite recently, and they're still only found in higher-end TVs.
And this may be a case of the US market driving things... It's always cheaper for a manufacturer to make fewer variations of a product for different markets. Many digital monitors are now "universal" in terms of video standards (though their firmware may shield some users from the capability). -michael Parallel computing for 8-bit Apple II's! Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/ "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it is seriously underused."