[sepecat]

Agreed- the Multiformat box will take component, which should in theory be close to matching picture quality with RGB, but TVs seem to be pickier about what they'll accept. For example I have one of the Retronic Designs Amiga RGB-to-component adapters (collecting a nice menagerie of these devices it seems) and it works fairly well for NTSC output, but because there is no explicit sync signal supplied unlike RGB and because it's an NTSC TV model, it assumes 60Hz sync/vertical refresh and doesn't switch to 50Hz for PAL output so the bottom third of the screen is cut off, and it won't handle anything other than 15 KHz modes either. That's feeding directly into the component input on the TV; of course using something like the Multiformat is for the case where HDMI output is needed for a component source, but then you're looking at 2 devices to get component output from the Amiga and then converting again to HDMI, which is way too much processing IMHO.

I'm guessing the pass-through mode was left out of the SCART product just to get it on the market faster and because most consoles it will be used with will never stray from 15 KHz modes anyway. Idk whether the hardware supports it but if pass-thru can be added in a firmware update it would certainly make the SCART unit more useful for things other than gaming. Since I'm using it with a CRT and purely for gaming with my CD32 it works well for that purpose. Anecdotally I think the vast majority of demoscene stuff is designed to work with a 15Khz monitor / TV too. I'm sure there are a handful of things that will use the 30KHz AGA modes optionally but likely very few locked to that.