Odd that the desktop should be poo but the vids should be fine tho..... SVHS is always better than scart where poss - like you said tho, annoying having a lead on the front of the TV!!!! I would be interested to see what the difference would be using a scart>s-vhs adapter like this tho;



Or s that what you were doing?

If the pic quality is noticibly different on the direct S-VHS input (on the front) rather than the scart or scart adapter, then I would say your TV probably doesn't have RGB scarts, but rather the more common "euro scart" plugs......