Connecting Consoles To PC Monitor

[Anapan]

I've heard the HD Box Pro is good - Fudoh has some good things to say about it here:
http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/ Since I own a few of the processors he reviews there, I can tell you he's more critical of them than I am, but you can trust everything he's written there.

I like my GBS 8220. I got it from http://www.arcadeforge.de/ - the cga2vga Scaler, with the SLG and sync-strike (their SLG-in-a-box before they combined them into one box). It accepts 15Khz+ RGB through VGA port, and Component YUV through component RCA connection. It's deinterlacing isn't the best, but for the price it's perfectly acceptable, and will display 240 and 480 progressive signals very nicely. If you're just doing Component to VGA, the GBS-8220 is pretty cheap on ebay. If you want to get your older consoles working with it, you'll probably need the Sync-Strike from Arcadeforge and some SCART cables for your different consoles.

I think that not knowing how good the $300+ units can get your picture, either the HD Box Pro or the SLG in a box will do you just fine. They both give a much more beautiful picture than an unprocessed signal can look on an HD display because of the low native resolution and interlacing.
Still, if you're able to get one, an X-RGB is really cool.

Composite doesn't look good transcoded/scaled to VGA unless you buy an expensive transcoder/scaler (XRGB etc) that does a lot of pre-processing to the signal. I've tried a couple of cheap ones and they're really just no good - they smear and lag the picture pretty bad. If you're using a computer, you can get a USB capture card for under $50. There's a slight lag, but with the right settings in a capture preview window you can get a decent Composite/S-video picture on your monitor that way...

[PeNguinn97]

I've heard the HD Box Pro is good - Fudoh has some good things to say about it here:
http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/ Since I own a few of the processors he reviews there, I can tell you he's more critical of them than I am, but you can trust everything he's written there.

I like my GBS 8220. I got it from http://www.arcadeforge.de/ - the cga2vga Scaler, with the SLG and sync-strike (their SLG-in-a-box before they combined them into one box). It accepts 15Khz+ RGB through VGA port, and Component YUV through component RCA connection. It's deinterlacing isn't the best, but for the price it's perfectly acceptable, and will display 240 and 480 progressive signals very nicely. If you're just doing Component to VGA, the GBS-8220 is pretty cheap on ebay. If you want to get your older consoles working with it, you'll probably need the Sync-Strike from Arcadeforge and some SCART cables for your different consoles.

I think that not knowing how good the $300+ units can get your picture, either the HD Box Pro or the SLG in a box will do you just fine. They both give a much more beautiful picture than an unprocessed signal can look on an HD display because of the low native resolution and interlacing.
Still, if you're able to get one, an X-RGB is really cool.

Composite doesn't look good transcoded/scaled to VGA unless you buy an expensive transcoder/scaler (XRGB etc) that does a lot of pre-processing to the signal. I've tried a couple of cheap ones and they're really just no good - they smear and lag the picture pretty bad. If you're using a computer, you can get a USB capture card for under $50. There's a slight lag, but with the right settings in a capture preview window you can get a decent Composite/S-video picture on your monitor that way...

How much did the one you have cost? What are the benefits of it over the HD Box? Can the HD Box use composite as well as component?

[Anapan]

I got the full set from ArcadeForge - $95.00 USD for the GBS8220 (enclosure and power supply) + $50 for the Sync Strike (SCART input to the GBS8220) + $65 the SLG3000 Plus S&H from Europe. They now sell the full set for $221. I didn't know that Arcadeforge didn't make the GBS8220 themselves at the time.
It sounds like you only need the GBS8220 - Looking on Ebay, there's one with free shipping from China for $29.
Neither the HD Box Pro, or the GBS8220 accept Composite (unless the GBS8220 can actually accept Composite video from the SCART connector? I'll try it later tonight).
The advantage the GBS8220 has over the HD BOX is that it can accept SCART with the Sync-Strike, as well as video from Jamma arcade boards, and video from older computer video cards that would otherwise not work on a newer screen. It's also got a lot of internal configuration for the input and output. I don't know much about the HD Box pro, but I do not think it would have as much control over the picture as the GBS8220 (tho I'd be interested to know).
I paid over $500 all said and done for my XRGB-3 plus various ammounts for SCART cables for all my consoles.

[PeNguinn97]

I got the full set from ArcadeForge - $95.00 USD for the GBS8220 (enclosure and power supply) + $50 for the Sync Strike (SCART input to the GBS8220) + $65 the SLG3000 Plus S&H from Europe. They now sell the full set for $221. I didn't know that Arcadeforge didn't make the GBS8220 themselves at the time.
It sounds like you only need the GBS8220 - Looking on Ebay, there's one with free shipping from China for $29.
Neither the HD Box Pro, or the GBS8220 accept Composite (unless the GBS8220 can actually accept Composite video from the SCART connector? I'll try it later tonight).
The advantage the GBS8220 has over the HD BOX is that it can accept SCART with the Sync-Strike, as well as video from Jamma arcade boards, and video from older computer video cards that would otherwise not work on a newer screen. It's also got a lot of internal configuration for the input and output. I don't know much about the HD Box pro, but I do not think it would have as much control over the picture as the GBS8220 (tho I'd be interested to know).
I paid over $500 all said and done for my XRGB-3 plus various ammounts for SCART cables for all my consoles.

Okay, I'll consider that one. Thanks for the help. I converted the Euros on the website to US dollars, and I got around $7000 for some reason.... I thought that price seemed off.

[Cronozilla]

Honestly, if this starts getting crazy expensive, you should just look into upscaler boxes. They go from $20-$130 depending on the inputs you want. They all output in HDMI, which with a converter can be used in a DVI slot.

For example, http://www.amazon.com/ViewHD-Multi-func ... s=Upscaler

You combine something like that with switch boxes you may already have and some couplers to translate audio connections and you'd be done.

[Anapan]

Huh. No luck finding my Composite-SCART adaptor so I can't test the GBS-8220's Composite ability. I know my CSY-2100 SCART to Component adapter does pass the signal through, but it's just a transcoder. If I have time, I'll look for it more tomorrow.

If you put the price in euros into google (minus any commas) like this it'll give you the conversion:

96.00 EUR to USD

I tried the conversion copying the price off ArcadeForge with a comma yesterday and it gave me similar results

[Majors]

I was looking for a way to connect some consoles to my computer monitor.

Anapan has the correct idea, spend moneys.

OR you can buy a $10 13" CRT from Goodwill. If you're lucky, on the next bulky item trash pick-up day in your neighborhood, you can go hunting.

This topic comes up a lot on retro forums and the answer is always: pay a lot to make it look good(correctly) or cheap out and just make it work (regardless of quality). It is a constant stuggle to have these older systems run on current monitors.

I use a GBS-8200 for some arcade stuffs, and I feel it needs a scanline generator pretty bad. I have seen in action the XRGB w/ a SLG3000 using systems running SCART output on a HD CRT, and it looks nice! Maybe others have more first hand dealing with the other encoders.

[PeNguinn97]

Huh. No luck finding my Composite-SCART adaptor so I can't test the GBS-8220's Composite ability. I know my CSY-2100 SCART to Component adapter does pass the signal through, but it's just a transcoder. If I have time, I'll look for it more tomorrow.

If you put the price in euros into google (minus any commas) like this it'll give you the conversion:

96.00 EUR to USD

I tried the conversion copying the price off ArcadeForge with a comma yesterday and it gave me similar results

Don't worry about finding it. It's okay.

[PeNguinn97]

I was looking for a way to connect some consoles to my computer monitor.

Anapan has the correct idea, spend moneys.

OR you can buy a $10 13" CRT from Goodwill. If you're lucky, on the next bulky item trash pick-up day in your neighborhood, you can go hunting.

This topic comes up a lot on retro forums and the answer is always: pay a lot to make it look good(correctly) or cheap out and just make it work (regardless of quality). It is a constant stuggle to have these older systems run on current monitors.

I use a GBS-8200 for some arcade stuffs, and I feel it needs a scanline generator pretty bad. I have seen in action the XRGB w/ a SLG3000 using systems running SCART output on a HD CRT, and it looks nice! Maybe others have more first hand dealing with the other encoders.

I don't think I'll be using this with older consoles very much. I'll just stick to old tube tv's for them. No need for upscalers, scanline generators, etc. I will probably be using it for the Wii and PS2. Anything that has a decent resolution and won't look bad.

[PeNguinn97]

Oh snap, I just became 8-bit!
Yay!