Last weekend I picked up my NEC XM29 Plus monitor finally. I also stopped off at Ikea and picked up some new furniture so I could get everything set up on the cheap. My goal was to have some place to put all of my consoles, the NEC, and my HDTV. Its a little messy because I just got everything set up but his is the result:
Hooked up to the NEC Monitor:
The SNES is hooked up via S-video. The Dreamcast is hooked up via a vga box a friend gave me and then vga to 5-BNC cable(shout out to Hobie for the cable). Games that utilize VGA look really good with the VGA box. I was surprised even though I had read quite a bit about the results. However 240p games such as Street fighter 3 look a bit pixelated but more on that later.
Hooked up to the HDTV:
The PS2 is currently hooked up via component cables until I finish God of War 2. The PS3 is also hooked up via component in 720p. I don't have any DLC retro games on the PS3 and mostly use the PS3 as a media center using PS3 Media Server.
To do list or the long list of boring technical ramblings:
Playstation 2:
My main priority is to figure out the best route for getting the cleanest image out of the PS2 on the NEC. The route I'm most interested in is detailed in the forcing 480i games into 240p section here. Routing the PS2 through a scan converter to get a nice 240p image sounds appealing. I know it will look nice on shmups which is what I'm primarily playing however I have no idea how that affects non-2D games. Will they look good with scanlines in 240p as well?
Also it is stated in that guide that the PS2 needs to be run through an upscaler first. He only mentions the XRGB (too expensive) and the Hori Upscaler 2 (not around anymore). I'm guessing the reason it needs to be upscaled is because the PS2 outputs 480i 15khz with sync on green and a scan converter only takes 31khz and no sync on green. The biggest problem is the lack of a clear way to get a VGA cable for the PS2. You can make your own with an LM1881 to strip out the sync on green or without (in which case you could feed it into something that will strip the sync information off the green). I have very limited soldering experience so that would take quite a bit of time but may be fun. I am trying to figure if any of the following would be suitable as an upscaler or in place of one:
An XCM 1080p Mega-Cool VGA Box:Takes a component signal and outputs VGA presumably stripping the sync info.
An HD Box Pro: Same as above
However there are varying reports as to the quality of the outputs from these two units. I'm not that picky I just want to achieve a solid image at 240p and having to deal with all this sync stripping really fouls everything up.
Lastly I was looking at this computer interface because I had read somewhere that it will strip the sync information. However it takes VGA input which brings me back to square one with the PS2.
That whole mess leads me to the scan converter which requires a 31khz vga input. Once I have all that figure out I would output the signal from what looks like RGBs. However my monitor is RGBHV so I'm not sure how the conversion works there. Maybe its a simple as 4-BNC to 5-BNC.
Alternatively I could scrap that whole mess and just get a Playstation 2 S-video cable and call it a day.
Dreamcast
Nothing needs to be done unless I get the scan converter in which case I could feed the Dreamcast's VGA into it and output at 240p. Sounds like fun but like the PS2 I'm not sure how much benefit games like Ikaruga would benefit from being forced into this mode since they look great at 480i.
SNES
Do a bit more research on getting RGB output from the model 1 SNES. SCART to VGA/RGB would be easiest for me since my monitor can handle NTSC and PAL signals.
PC
I want to build a cheap PC to run emulators, game, and maybe even play movies. I believe the scan converter would allow me to do this with ease flipping back and forth between 240p and 480i? Otherwise I will have to look at maybe an ArcadeVGA or other methods.
If you read this far thanks for having a look and if you have any tips for how to get things done please let me know. I'll update this post as I get more done.
Photos of Games
