WTF is this SCART switch wired this way?

[ASDR]

So, I bought one of these 'Wolfsoft' mechanical SCART switches with a big selector knob on the front:



It doesn't work. I did some quick sanity checking, seemed all connected. Then I tried to figure out why it doesn't work. This switch doesn't cross over the SCART input and output pins!?

SCART cables are always wired for crossover, like this:



When you plug in a SCART cable at the back of your DVD player and your TV you want the output pins of the former connecting to the input pins of the latter.

But with a SCART Switch there now is another SCART cable involved, the one going from the Switch to the TV. There's one more crossover. The switch itself needs to also do the crossover to negate the extra one. Every switch I've ever seen does this. This one doesn't.

How is that supposed to work? Is there any reason why you'd build a switch like that?

[parodius]

So, it doesn't work with audio and composite video, but should work with RGB?

[ASDR]

RGB still uses composite for sync, so that doesn't work either. The only thing I can imagine is that it shipped with a special SCART cable that does not do the crossover. But why would you engineer it that way? Now you got a switch that only works with one special cable and a special cable that only works with that particular switch. All sockets and cables of course looking perfectly normal, basically ensuring you'll accidentally switch them up at some point.

[NewSchoolBoxer]

Couldn't you chain 2 regular SCART cables together on either the input or the output and use this? Not saying is practical or cost effective.

RGB still uses composite for sync, so that doesn't work either. The only thing I can imagine is that it shipped with a special SCART cable that does not do the crossover. But why would you engineer it that way? Now you got a switch that only works with one special cable and a special cable that only works with that particular switch. All sockets and cables of course looking perfectly normal, basically ensuring you'll accidentally switch them up at some point.

You have to think bigger. Selling a switcher that only works with your cables is a genius idea. Vendor locking costs nothing extra. Sell switcher at low profit margin to build market share and make it up on the cables.
I think device is similar to this one that is labeled "gebrauchter 2-fach", which would seem to mean "used 2-way". I guess making the only bi-directional SCART switcher in existence (because SCART is specifically NOT bi-directional) helps with marketing too.

[ASDR]

Hah, interesting, this switcher is apparently being shipped with a 1.5m cable. That cable is going to cause some issues now that it's separated from the one device it could work with... I'm not at all familiar with this company, but I guess they're now on my shitlist

Chaining two SCART cables together should not work either since the F2F coupler will also do a crossover, at least the one I got certainly does since otherwise it wouldn't work in normal setups. You basically need an odd number of crossings for outputs to go into inputs.

I'm not really looking for a solution here, I already got one (just swap three pairs of wires on the output SCART connector), just curious if there's any reason why they'd build a switch this way. It sure is bidirectional, though.