SCART (Peritel; Euroconnector) pinout

SCART (from Syndicat des Constructeurs d"Appareils Radiorécepteurs et Téléviseurs) is a French-originated standard and associated 21-pin connector for connecting audio-visual equipment together. It is also known as Péritel (especially in France) and Euroconnector. SCART makes it easy to connect AV equipment (including TVs, VCRs, DVD players and games consoles). In essence, it gathers together various common analog signal-types into a single connector. The signals carried by SCART include both composite and RGB video, and stereo audio input/output, as well as support functions. The voltage levels are rather high, around 1V, so the signals have good noise immunity.

SCART is bi-directional regarding standard composite video and analog audio. A television set will typically send the antenna audio and video signals to the SCART sockets all the time and watch for returned signals, to display and reproduce them instead. This allows to have "transparent" set-top boxes, without any tuner, which just "hook" and pre-process the television signals. A VCR will typically have 2 SCART sockets, one connecting to the television set, and another one for the set-top box. When idle or powered off, the VCR will forward the signals from the television set to the set-top decoder and send the processed result back to the television set. When a scrambled show is recorded, the VCR will drive the set-top box from its own tuner and send the unscrambled signals to the television set for viewing or simple recording control purposes. In addition, SCART allows a connected device to power on and power off a television set, more precisely: to bring it in and out of standby mode, in the same way as a remote control would do.

Different pin-configurations exist. Which confirations are available depends on the video device used. Sometimes one can choose the configuration (like composite or S-video) by changing a software setting.

Two status signals define (partly) which video signals are active. A video device can use these status signals to automatically switch between internal or external audio/video signals.

Two pins provide switching signals.
Pin 8, the function switching pin, carries a low frequency (less than 50Hz) signal from the source that indicates the type of video present.

0V-2V means no signal, or internal bypass
4.5V-7V (nominal 6V) means a widescreen (16:9) signal
9.5V-12V (nominal 12V) means a normal (4:3) signal

Pin 16, the fast switching pin, carries a signal from the source that indicates that the signal is either RGB or composite.

0V-0.4V means composite.
1V-3V (nominal 1V) means RGB only.

The original specification defined pin 16 as fast blanking, a high frequency (up to 3MHz) signal that blanked the composite video. The RGB inputs were always active and the fast blanking signal "punches holes" in the composite video. The SCART connector uses this to overlay subtitles from an external Teletext decoder. 0V-0.4V means composite with a transparent RGB overlay. 1V-3V (nominal 1V) RGB only.

There is no switching signal to indicate S-Video. Some TVs can autodetect the presence of the S-Video signal but more commonly the S-Video input needs to be manually selected.

Many TV sets have 2 SCART sockets. One is usually uses previous pinout table and the other uses following pinout table. The first can switch from a composite input to RGB input. The second can switch from a composite input to an S-Video input, pin 20 being either composite in or luminance in. Usually the second socket outputs a selectable composite signal on pin 19

Signal Levels

A formal interface description is given in the CENELEC EN 50 049-1:1989 standard or in the IEC 933-1 standard.

Some tables:

SCART S-Video Connection

SCART Composite Video Connection

SCART (Composite) Decoder Connection

SCART EasyLink Connection (additional)

EasyLink enables bi-directional communication between a television set and a video recorder. This way a video recorder can, for example, copy the channel settings of the television set. Who knows the details?