Growing up in the UK, everyone I knew used it for VCRs, DVD players and digiboxes. It always made a notable improvement over the RCA jacks, and I longed to get the SCART cable for my PS2 (never did). Famously bulky and stubborn with their wires joining the connectors at an aggressive 45° angle; I never had one go bad on me.
I've read that it could even do HDTV in theory because it had YPbPr lines, but this was was never seriously attempted/rare in practice.
As an American I never knew about it until it was mentioned one day on a forum on the internet I was reading.
Other than the crazy size of the cable, seems like quite a big improvement over our random assortment of cables we went through over the years with composite -> s-video -> component.
It remains fascinating to me that even today if we boarded flights to each other's countries, there are still many small things that would need explained.
I would first be shocked to see the smaller two-pronged electrical plugs in the flesh. Then I might be in trouble with the law if I walk across a road. And finally lose my mind over the fact that asking for 'tea' gives me something else entirely!
The fact that parts of Europe have a "freedom to roam" (if I remember the term correctly) is just insane to an American. How could you _not_ be trespassing?
Here in Belgium almost everyone used scart cables for game consoles, vcr and dvd players. We had 2 scart input but 3 scart devices. PSX vcr and dvd. So we had to switch from time to time. There were even scart switches, but they all sucked.
Ah least with a switch you wouldn't get electric shock while plugging-in the scart cable (which was a major issue for me, and not just static electricity).
In Sweden SCART was the default - your VHS deck or satellite TV box would come with a SCART cable. I don't think our 1995 TV even had composite or S-video ports, you had two SCART and RF[0]. For connecting up PCs or video cameras, we used a SCART to composite adapter plug (with a little switch to choose if it was in or out).
