Hook ups and consloe set up

[ChuChu Flamingo]

I feel much the same way. We have taken a step or two forward, and a whole bunch of steps back for picture quality.

CRTs have best blacks, colors, motion handling, and no input lag (unless it is a HDCRT, but those are under one frame at most,). Their cons are: size of screen (couldn't really go past 40''), convergence (certain parts of screen have the wrong colors), and geometry (things are not straight on screen when they should be).

Let us just hope that technology advances and plasma/lcd/oled fixes their short comings (input lag on native resolution, blacks, colors, and motion handling). Finding good CRTs is getting harder and harder, and it will be nice to have a alternative to them (XRGB3/SG3000/DVDO Edge).

[pureevil]

what about a sega saturn whats best hook up for that?

[ChuChu Flamingo]

SCART cable would be. Just make sure it says RGB.

SCART can carry a lot of different signals. Just make sure to get the right scart cable as European/Japanese/US have different pin outs.

[Anapan]

The main hook-up with SCART is it's completely incompatible with most North-American hardware except a few Amiga CRT monitors (some 1084 type NTSC ones have a SCART socket - before I got my new TV I imported a European 1084 because I couldn't find a NTSC one). I found that of all the available options to make SCART work on an NTSC system the cheapest solution for me was a CSY-2100 SCART-to-Component Transverter and RGB cables. A great picture can be gotten on a direct-view CRT screen (I hear that some LCD/Plasma/LED screens won't show a 240P picture through component connections). They are readily available from several Cypress Technologies resellers' online shops - the cheapest I found came from an online shop in Australia. The most common and by most accounts best solution is a Micomsoft X-RGB(x) upscaler that will take SCART RGB and upscale it to modern connection types that are on all currently available TVs. I've never been able to justify buying one since in my area at least there are a lot of large, heavy CRTs being liquidated as people move to cheaper housing. Altogether I spent under $250 for a 46" CRT, a SCART splitter, all the necessary cables for my devices and the CSY-2100. Compared that to a new flat-screen 1080P LCD and a X-RGB and I'm sure I made the right choice for my retro-gaming console setup. I bought my cables from European and Australian sellers on Ebay and a couple off of Rob Webb's online shop. I only had one really cheap PS1 cable turn out to be composite video only - most are labeled as RGB. Rob's shop is comparatively expensive, but sometimes he's the only guy who has the right stuff and I've never had a bad experience or bought a defective product from him.
I've never even seen a Japanese SCART cable for sale, but I've heard of people using pliers to change the pins to the correct configuration - I'd love to read a guide on how to make a converter cable for the different SCART standards.