VGA Boxes

Post by **metaleggman** » Fri Jan 19, 2007 10:56 pm

I was wondering if anyone has found a nice VGA Box. I want to use it to play NES, Saturn, and maybe SNES on my 13" CRT VGA monitor in my room, as my LCD HDTV shows them poorly, making me go and play them on the big CRT TV in my parents room. Plus, I wanna be able to play light gun games in my room. If anyone has had really good luck with any of these, please link me to a good one!

thanks in advance!

Post by **neohx_7** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 4:42 pm

It's never going to look as "good" as when the NTSC signal is going to a CRT TV. A vga box will allow you to play the games on a high-res VGA based display and at 13" I'm sure pixels will be small enough that the poor quality signal most consoles output won't be as noticeable. You will possibly introduce delay with a vga box, but it may not affect gameplay. When you say the LCD HDTV shows them poorly, what exactly do you mean?

Post by **metaleggman** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 8:47 pm

Well, it's not that it shows them poorly, it's just that it looks worse than say on a standard 480i CRT. It's usually just the image being noisy and sometimes a lil' bit artifacted. I know the NES outputs a very bad video signal, tbh, and it just looks better on a CRT screen. I'm guessing a powered VGA box at 13" should be good than, considering the one I'm thinking of getting is 50 dollars, it may work well.

Post by **grittykitty** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 1:07 am

i bought this vga on ebay for really cheap, and it works really cheap too. it could be a lot worse but it could be a lot better:
http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-86- ... 0-2cs.html
haha, i thought when the box said "may flash" it meant that "sometimes this vga box causes the screen to randomly flash" but apparently it's the brand name.

my problems are the blurriness and oversaturation of color. it's adjustable, but switching between inputs will make you want to change the settings again.

Post by **metaleggman** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 1:42 am

grittykitty wrote:i bought this vga on ebay for really cheap, and it works really cheap too. it could be a lot worse but it could be a lot better:
http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-86- ... 0-2cs.html
haha, i thought when the box said "may flash" it meant that "sometimes this vga box causes the screen to randomly flash" but apparently it's the brand name.
my problems are the blurriness and oversaturation of color. it's adjustable, but switching between inputs will make you want to change the settings again.

lol, that's the one I was thinking of getting! I guess I'll have to see if there is anything better.

Post by **4ppleseed** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 7:05 am

I have a Logic 3 VGA Box that I bought from my local maplin for about £40. It has 4 composite inputs and a VGA input so you can keep your PC monitor hooked up.

I think its this one:
http://www.pcwb.com/catalogue/item/L3TV002

It actually converts the signal to a more standard resolution so you can play all Dreamcast or PS2 etc games on it. I'm hoping to buy a big old 20-something inch CRT and have 4 consoles hooked up to it permanently to it.

The quality is not too bad at all but some of the conversions make the display image a little odd at times on my TFT... I'm hoping to get a more raw/arcade like image from the CRT.

Post by **neohx_7** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 8:54 am

I'll point you over to this other thread...

http://forums.emuscene.com/viewtopic.ph ... b5be2212cc

After that the XRGB series is the better choice and if its in your budget a high end scaler.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=747832

Post by **4ppleseed** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 9:56 am

That's some great info neohx_7. thank you very much. I'm kinda happy just to play on my VGA box at the moment but when it comes to looking for a serious more permanent situation for my consoles I'll be sure to read thru those posts again.

Post by **Cerulean** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 11:04 am

I bought one of those Component to VGA Mayflash converters thru ebay. It said it supported PS2(which it didn't) and much to my Dismay it burnt out within 2 days of fiddling with the stupid switches. Viewsonic is definately the better way to go.

Post by **metaleggman** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 12:07 am

neohx_7 wrote:I'll point you over to this other thread...

http://forums.emuscene.com/viewtopic.ph ... b5be2212cc

After that the XRGB series is the better choice and if its in your budget a high end scaler.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=747832

The problem is that the XRGB is much too expensive for something to use on an old 13" CRT. I've seen the XRGB2 and 3 and both, while extremely high quality, weren't necesarily something I would want considering the display being used. That forum link seems to have some good ones. Especially the view sonic line. If I ever get the money I'm definately going with teh N4 or N5.

thanks!