New TVs with SCART!

[BeebMaster]

I thought SCART was long-gone, so imagine my surprise when I opened my newest TV set to find it has a SCART socket on it! It doesn't even mention it in the spec!

It's a Cello C2220S V2:

https://fergusontv.com/product/22-full- ... ite-tuner/

IanS put me onto Cello about 4 years ago as a British manufacturer of televisions, and I bought the previous Ferguson branded model of this same set, F2220S, but it has no SCART. I got a second one a few weeks before the pandemic set in, and then it looked to be discontinued. I kept trying to see if it came back in stock, and then a couple of weeks ago I saw this new Cello model. The price had gone up a bit, the first Ferguson one was only £99, but I thought, well, best get them before they stop making them again, and there was a discount voucher, so I got two.

When I opened the first one at the weekend, I found the SCART, so I've been experimenting with it today.

Here it is with Master 128 Station 201, using RGB to SCART lead. As it's a television, not a monitor, there's no swivel, so I have to tilt it with the nearest suitable object, a Seagate SCSI drive:

It also has 15-pin VGA, but I couldn't get it to work with the A4 but will try again at some point. Instead here it is with the A5000 and 15-pin VGA lead, though you can hardly the see the A5000, apart from the label just above a ribbon cable. It's on top of Station 112 here, and tilted with the nearest Care Electronics ROM cartridge:

Now at Archimedes corner, with my VGA switches for the A305 and A420/1, and tilted with the nearest Carry On film videotape:

Sadly the hard drive in the A305 seems to have died since Sunday, it makes a funny squeaky bleep a couple of times, and the hard disc light does two flashes and a jittery burst repeatedly.

Finally, it even works with Domesday, using SCART to SCART from the LV-ROM player, propped up on the nearest television set:

Most chuffed I am.

[paulb]

I thought SCART was long-gone, so imagine my surprise when I opened my newest TV set to find it has a SCART socket on it! It doesn't even mention it in the spec!

Shut up and take our money!

When I opened the first one at the weekend, I found the SCART, so I've been experimenting with it today.

Seems like a good product, but also odd that SCART isn't mentioned at all, unless "MINI component" is what they call it. The Ferguson site doesn't show the ports, which rather gives an impression of "subject to change without notice".

[steve3000]

Oh, that is a nice find! How is the image in use - particularly the Archie desktop, is the Acorn logo well resolved, can you see the green/orange dithering?

What other ports does it have? Any chance of a photo?

I'm looking for a suitable replacement for my 12 year old Samsung P2270hd which has one of every port you can think of (and I've fully populated all of them!), but it's getting old now and the CCFL backlight is fading. Won't last much longer

[tom_seddon]

The spec sheet here promises 1 x SCART port: https://celloelectronics.com/product/22 ... ite-tuner/

My previous small LCD TV died in early 2020, so one of these would make a nice replacement. Thanks for the pointer!

--Tom

P.S. I wonder if these newer models will suffer from the problem described here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17448&p=241855#p241855 - I guess I'll find out

[Multiwizard]

Now that's a nice handy TV/monitor...


Greetings, Wim...

[paulb]

The spec sheet here promises 1 x SCART port: https://celloelectronics.com/product/22 ... ite-tuner/

Weird! I must have looked right through it. I looked to see if other models have SCART, but many do not. I did find these:

19” Traveller 12-Volt TV with built-in DVD Player & Satellite Tuner (C1920FMTR)
22” Traveller 12-Volt TV with built-in DVD Player & Satellite Tuner (C2220FMTR)

The LED models do not seem to have SCART input. I found one LED television manual mentioning SCART connectors in the table of contents, but the actual content was missing from the indicated page. Also, for the following model, the product page mentions SCART but the specification does not:

32″ HD LED TV With DVD Player and Freeview T2 HD (C3220F)

It is all very frustrating for the potential customer, especially since searching for SCART has to be done via an external search engine, dredging up all sorts of false positives like the hastily re-edited manuals or documents indicating "N/A" for the feature. But I would say that the Traveller models might be where SCART is mostly hiding.

[IanJeffray]

Can you confirm that this Cello doesn't have any stupid image processing logic? My favoured small 24" Samsung TV I use for the Beebs has absolutely horrendous processing which can't be disabled - make the flashing cursor sort of "pulse" bright/dim rather than properly flashing off. And for games, it's near unusable - sharp moving objects just become a blur.

[BeebMaster]

I can probably do a video.

It could well be that the spec is subject to change without notice, I haven't even opened the second one yet to see if it is identical! I wonder if their customer services would be able to confirm. I agree it's probable that the 12v portable ones are more likely to have SCART if they are more likely to be used as replacement TVs in caravans where there might still be a proliferation of external set-top digital boxes, and even VCRs etc.

Here's round the back with the ports:

The Ferguson ones I have have composite Yellow/Red/White coax connectors where the SCART is on the new ones.

[BeebMaster]

I did a video using BBC B Station 128. This is with the audio coming through the TV set, not the Beeb, as I have one of those RGB to SCART with Audio leads which lets you redirect the output from the speaker to the SCART, plus ambient sound of me, out of shot, clacking away on the keyboard.

The original video was 350MB for 1min 40!!! (After which the camera switched off, as the battery - newly installed prior to taking the video - was flat! I'll have to use the mains adapter if I do this sort of video regularly. The other annoying thing was that the external shutter switch I use doesn't start and stop the video but takes a still picture!) I crunched it down to about 30MB using ffmpeg -vb 2500K which is my usual compromise, but I can upload the full one if necessary:

https://www.beebmaster.co.uk/Downloads/ ... RTTV14.mp4

I was bit concerned yesterday that the 4:3 cropping was a bit keen, shown here in one of the other pictures I took in mode 1 with the background colour changed. As you can can see, the actual displayed screen appears to only start at the first pixel where the text begins on the left:

But in fact, this is authentic behaviour, which I don't think I'd really noticed very much before, as shown on this similar picture done using a Cub:

[SKS1]

You've been spoiled by RISC OS, which sets up the border colour, where the old [Ed: Acorn] 8-bit stuff doesn't

[BeebMaster]

I was actually going to say Speccy, where you could have a separate border colour to the background colour, but I thought I'd better not...

[flaxcottage]

When I was looking for a LED replacement TV for my main VDU for my Master I found this one - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08 ... UTF8&psc=1

It is very light and has a lovely clear picture through SCART that auto scales from 16:9 to 4:3 for a BBC. It also has composite video, VGA for my Arcs and HDMI for my πs so covers all my retro computers. Best thing about it is, as soon as I bought it, my main VDU started working again!

[roland]

When I connect my Electron to a tv with scart then the upper line is only displayed for the lower half. I tested this with two tv sets. I cannot find a setting on those tv’s to move the picture a bit lower, just like the old fashioned tube displays can.

Any idea how Incan fix that from the Electron?

[BeebMaster]

Electron! I haven't even tried the new TV with the new Elk yet, which I also haven't even switched on yet! So I will do that very soon.

I did notice the TV needed a TV255 for Beebs otherwise the picture wasn't vertically centred.

[tom_seddon]

I don't think there's any such option for the Electron, though I'd love to discover one if there is, as mine suffers from this too on my CRT. *TV does nothing, and from memory, the user guide's best suggestion is to use VDU28 to chop the top line of the screen off! (So now you've got 31 lines, and software graphics mode scrolling. No thanks.)

--Tom

[rmbrowngr]

I have this problem with my Electron. With my old Sony portable CRT, I went into service menu to resize the picture to fit. For the Samsung LCD tv monitor (which has lots of inputs) I have, there is no way to resize the picture. I bought and used initially a Scart to hdmi off eBay, which works well and I see all the picture. Then I bought a Raspberry Pi RGB to HDMI, which is pixel perfect!

[BeebMaster]

Looks OK with my new Electron which arrived a few months back and has only been switched on for the purposes of this picture for the first time today!

It needs TV255 really but as noted, the Elk doesn't do anything with *TV - yet another thing I didn't know about the Electron. I used to always think of it as just a BBC without Teletext, but really it's a BBC with a lot less!

[daveejhitchins]

I used to always think of it as just a BBC without Teletext, but really it's a BBC with a lot less!

Pah!

Dave H.

[lushprojects]

I thought SCART was long-gone, so imagine my surprise when I opened my newest TV set to find it has a SCART socket on it! It doesn't even mention it in the spec!

It's a Cello C2220S V2:

https://fergusontv.com/product/22-full- ... ite-tuner/

IanS put me onto Cello about 4 years ago as a British manufacturer of televisions,

Is this also the "white whale" of a new TV without terrible "Smart TV" features - i.e. no Internet connection? That would really interest me.

Does it have fast responsiveness to the remote?

[BeebMaster]

Yes, it has no internet! Perhaps that should be a key marketing feature! Remote control response seemed pretty good, quite possibly a bit better than the two Ferguson ones I already have (and using the same infra-red channel or however it works, as the remote for the Cello was also operating the Ferguson TV at the same time!) So if you have multiple ones next to each other, that might be a problem. Or a quick way of setting them all up the same!

The "user interface" has been redesigned but I was able to find everything I need easily enough, brightness, volume, mute, aspect ratio, input source etc.

[lushprojects]

Yes, it has no internet! Perhaps that should be a key marketing feature! Remote control response seemed pretty good, quite possibly a bit better than the two Ferguson ones I already have

Thanks. I might have to invest. The current lock on the market from the big brands of Smart TVs with slow, buggy, UIs and invasive data collection really gets on my goat!

[IanJeffray]

invasive data collection really gets on my goat!

Nobody's forcing you to hook up any TV to t'interweb though. Just - don't?

[julians]

Nobody's forcing you to hook up any TV to t'interweb though. Just - don't?

There are a number of 'televisions' for sale now which don't even have an aerial connection or tuner - I've used quotes because I wouldn't consider them televisions, even though the manufacturers and retailers market them as such.

Julian.

[BeebMaster]

I haven't actually tried the latest model as a television, as I bought them as monitors really, but the previous Ferguson one definitely worked as a TV, with a digital tuner, and also a satellite tuner. Tuning it in to the co-ax cable from the satellite dish was considerably less successful than just using the Sky box though, but I did get some channels.

[lushprojects]

Nobody's forcing you to hook up any TV to t'interweb though. Just - don't?

From what I've read some have a UI that either nags you or behaves obnoxiously if not Internet connected and others will automatically connect to open networks if they can find them. Of course this is just stuff on the Internet so take that with a grain of salt.

I haven't really looked, but all the Smart TVs I have used have terrible laggy UIs and slow start-up times that I detest, so that on its own is enough to put me off them.

Might be worth a read for people with similar interets: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/commen ... cted_from/

[rharper]

The spec sheet here promises 1 x SCART port: https://celloelectronics.com/product/22 ... ite-tuner/

No SCART in the specification now.
Ray