Top ten obsolete ports

Scart
For some reason, us Europeans decided that instead of sticking with RCA connectors, and maybe slowly moving over to component video, we'd invent a whole new way of getting video from a DVD player or other device to our TVs. Regrettably, we left the design up to the French, and the result was Scart.

Designed by a group called Comité Européen de Normalisation Electrotechnique, the Syndicat des Constructeurs d'Appareils Radiorécepteurs et Téléviseurs or Scart socket was intended to reduce confusion. Despite its utterly, utterly stupid name, the idea of the socket is pretty good. Place all the connections you'd ever need into one cable and force electronics manufacturers to put it on every piece of equipment they make -- in Europe, it's mandatory to have at least one Scart socket on every TV.

Easily the worst thing about Scart is that it's impossible to tell what output or cable can carry the type of signal you're trying to send. So while an output might allow RGB video, a cable may not be wired for it. Also maddening is that cheap cables are unbearable and will ruin your picture quality, while expensive cables are, by and large, a total rip-off. Oh, and it will fall out of the back of your TV if anything as heavy as an ant sits on it.

Scart is slowly being killed by HDMI, which is basically the digital version of Scart, and has the potential to be every bit as annoying and unreliable.