S Cable / DVD problem

[Project Director]

I've had my Pioneer DV344 DVD player connected to my TV via S Cable for a few years with no problems. It was an old 68 cm Panasonic CRT TV I'd had for 15 years, and just last week it finally died. I have substituted another old set I have (a 9 year old Teac CRT). When I was connecting all the cables to the back of the Teac, I noticed that it didn't have any RCA inputs, just one Scart connection.

I went out and bought a Scart to RCA adaptor. The adaptor accepts four RCA inputs - Audio L, Audio R, Video and S Video. I used my S video cable to connect the DVD player to the TV via the adaptor. The problem is that I only get a black and white picture when using the S Video cable. I have also tried connecting the DVD to the TV using an ordinary yellow RCA cable, and it works perfectly. However, I want to use the S Video to connect the DVD, because I need the RCA Video input free to plug my cable TV into.

Can anybody suggest why the picture is coming through in B&W when using the S Video cable? I know the cable is OK because it worked fine on my old set up. I also know that the adaptor I bought is not faulty, because I took it back to the store, exchanged it for another and got the same B&W problem again.

[lumis]

I've noticed this a lot. For some reason S-Video has problems going through adaptors. It has happened with with DVD players using adaptors, computers, lot's of stuff. I don't think you can buy a $5 adaptor and expect it to work for S-Video.

[edDV]

Blame the French for SCART
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCART

They thought it would simplify video connections for liberal arts majors and arts thinkers. It is also full of traps that require greater technical knowledge to fix.

[Rich86]

I seem to recall that when the component video outputs on my pioneer player are activated, the s-video drops into black&white mode. Is there any chance you have the component video outputs turned on in the player?

[The_Doman]

The problem is not all devices with SCART support S-Video input!.

If your TV does not mention S-Video and there is no setting in your TV configuration to enable S-Video over SCART input it will not work.
Your only options will then be to use the composite connection (you can use the same SCART adapter for that) or possible use a RGB connection over SCART.
RGB is a very common connection here in Europe to connect DVD players to TV's with SCART.
Not sure how the situation is there in Australia.