Thanks for the info. Are you saying a scart to HDMI connector will affect the quality and not be worthwhile? Brother's previous Sony Bravia had a scart, but yes, it seems they're now out of fashion.
I'm saying that,
at best, a SCART to HDMI convertor is
no different to plugging in the yellow composite connector to the TV's AV (composite) connection. It just costs more money and uses up a HDMI socket that might be better used for something else.
You see, the picture from SCART has the potential to be very good. Although limited to standard definition (576i), the RGB output option from SCART gives an incredibly clean signal. The three colours are entirely separate, so there's no colour-mixing cross contamination as you get with composite. Also, the three colours are full video bandwidth rather than being bandwidth limited as they are in composite, S-video, and component video. RGB from SCART is the top-of-the-pile as far as SD interlaced goes.
The issue with the SCART-to-HDMI adapters is that they do not use RGB. They use the lowest signal quality that SCART makes available. They use the composite output, same as the yellow video connector on the back of a DVD player.
Composite video is a single connection, not three as in RGB or Component. One wire has to carry everything in the picture data. The colours are combined, and once combined, they can't be separated out again perfectly. Imagine a bowl of yogurt and some bowls of fruit, say blueberries and raspberries. Once mixed, it's impossible to then separate out the three constituents perfectly. There'll always be some yogurt on the fruit, and stains from the fruit in the yogurt.
In a video system, we call this cross-colour distortion, or dot crawl. You see it most noticeably where there are adjacent blocks of solid colours such as titles or onscreen menus, but it's everywhere there are abrupt colour boundaries. RGB doesn't do this.
In your brother's case the whole thing is moot. His TV has really limited input options.
There are just 3x HDMI inputs on the 65" TV. There's a USB input too, but that's no use for the direct composite feed from a DVD player. In that situation, your options are either to buy the damned SCART-to-HDMI adapter and just put up with the crappy picture, or to swap out for a disc player with a HDMI output because that's going to preserve the picture quality far better.
DVD players with HDMI out are available. Since DVD is generally viewed as a bit 'old hat' by the public, then the quality of the players leaves something to be desired. But they are available, and fairly cheap. They're just somewhat limited to DVD only.
A better option is a Blu-ray player. This will still play DVDs but also opens up the possibility to play 1080p Blu-rays too. The difference the extra resolution off disc makes on a 55~75 TV is not small. Get a decent BD player and they'll make a pretty good job with DVD too.
New BD players are available, and with a bigger range choice than is the case with simple DVD players. Second-hand is also an option. The £40 you might spend on a Sony upscaling (HDMI out) DVD player could very well get you a much better used Panasonic Blu-ray player. That's a much smarter buy. Used Blu-ray discs are getting really cheap too. A good film on Blu-ray looks better than the 4K version from streaming.
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