Yeah, I'm in the states too; I got my $25 SCART cable from Amigakit and the $45 SCART to HDMI from eBay. I tried the external thing and it is the same as composite.
Part Two: the guys who developed the Video Toaster were musing in the beginning that computers had become so powerful that they could direct a laser against a piece of bread controlled by a microCPU to produce a perfect slice of toast.
What is the quality of RGB->SCART->HDMI? Do you notice a lot of blurriness or flickering?