[rsynnott]

> Usually they'd have multiple SCART connectors, but only a single RCA connector

I'm in Ireland as well, but I remember that as a high-end TV thing, mostly, though it did get more common towards the end of the analog connector era, especially for flatscreen TVs. Your generic 21" CRT TV usually just had a single SCART connector and a tuner connector, tho.

I suspect that the reason RCA (especially _component_ RCA) became more common in the flat-screen/early HD era was largely that, while SCART supported component output, the UX tended to be really bad, and there was no way for the TV to signal support to the attached device. So, virtually all set top boxes and DVD players could output RGB component via SCART, but this was never turned on by default, and the user wasn't necessarily aware of it.

[Macha]

Two SCART was pretty common, for e.g. a VHS player and a sky box. We definitely had switcher boxes we needed to use to connect game consoles, (or dvd players when they became a thing) up though.

I think some VHS players also had some form of pass through/switching capability of their own? It's been a while.

[rsynnott]

Yeah, most VCRs, except for really cheap ones, had the pass through ability. You could theoretically chain an arbitrary number of devices, though at the best of times controlling any of this was virtually impossible.

You’d normally want your sky/cablelink box connected through your vcr, so that you could record off the box, not connected separately to the tv.