HDMI or Composite Out?

[simieski]

I will be using my Pi for XBMC on an old TV with scart or svga in options.

Should I:

Use HDMI and convert to Scart (will this carry sound)?

OR

Use Composite out and connect to svga in on TV and use a seperate jack for sound?

[Walker100]

You would need an expensive scaler to convert HDMI to scart. It is not worth the effort, and you will make no significant gains in image quality.
A simpler way of doing is to use the composite output into a scart adapter,
http://cpc.farnell.com/_/pgp3200/scart- ... dp/CN07072.
For the audio, you will need to use a minijack to twin phono/rca lead into the scart adapter.

[Mister_C]

I got one of these from fleabay last week:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/270851357162

RCA & Jack plug to scart all-in-one, £1.44.

I've tried it on an old (CRT) telly box and got a picture, but so far I can't get Debian squeeze to boot beyond the RPi logo. ArchLinux will boot, which leads me to think that I need to play with the config.txt files a bit first...

I can't report on sound through the tellybox yet, but pins 2, 4 & 6 give continuity to the jack plug so any problem will be down to telly or RPi.

One thing to remember is that image quality won't be as good as a proper monitor

[alexeames]

so far I can't get Debian squeeze to boot beyond the RPi logo.

Why not try the wheezy release. It's beta, but it's a LOT better than the squeeze release.

[Mister_C]

I'm normally risk-averse to betas, but I'll give that a go.

I've also seen from other posts on the os/arch forum that my fun with that distro (no HDMI - which I forgot to mention in my post - but RCA quite happy) is for deffo a config.txt issue.

Apologies to simieski for a minor hijack of the thread.