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WHY I ABANDONED MY TRIPLE-HEAD SETUP
After the initial novelty wore off and my gaming habits normalized I realized I wasn't really putting my triple-head setup into use. Sure, when you got the right game working it was quite a pleasure but it didn't do anything for most of the games I usually play. It doesn't help with economic simulators, nor strategy titles nor indie games and it's completely useless for retrogaming. Worse of all, afer a while...I didn't find it that fun for shooters, either.
I'm sure there are many people that would love to have this kind of setup but I don't miss it. It might be the shock of upgrading from a 4:3 but my current PC screen (24", 16:9) feels huge without being as overwhelming.
MY NEW COMPUTER
My new computer is not powerful. It uses an i3 and a GTX950, neither of which can be considered top of the line and the whole cost of the computer was close to 600€. But it's far more than enough than what I use it for and it has a lot of stuff I really like.
For starters, it makes very little noise. My old computer was noisiy. Really noisy and when it was running a game and got much louder, with an ugly chainsaw-like noise. The case was awful: It let dust in from ten different places and despite its size it was a pain to install things on.
The SDD was another nice surprise. At first I scoffed at it, why would I care about my computer booting faster? Those 40€ could go to another game or something actually important yet after trying it I can't imagine ever going back. You simply gain a lot in quality of life by being able to boot Steam and Microsoft Word instantly.
A PROFESSIONAL MONITOR
I've wanted a screen to connect my consoles for a very long time, years, even. At first I wanted a monitor with TV-inputs, but none were common and invariably had too much lag for music games. After a while, I decided I needed a dedicated screen so I started to look for one.
I came across information about PVMs and other professional monitors and I was blown away! I had seen Sonic running on them when I was a kid, at my father's job and I remember the strong colours and nice picture. Given I was going for a CRT anyways, why not spend a bit more and get one of these screens? I started to look for one and quickly found a deal: My 17" JVC TM 1750PN.
The reason I got this one is simple: PVMs are rare and extremely expensive. They don't seem to have been common in Spain and even though no geek I know around here has gotten into them I could already see the signs of "video game premium" setting in. There had to be better alternatives so I looked for other brands and found this one at a very good price: 75€.
Still, I didn't expect to be much of a difference from a normal CRT so I was blown away by the picture when I saw it. The picture is sharp, bright and incredibly colorful and there's no "fuzzyness" or interferences at all despite using A/V because I have no other cables. I'm really looking foward to trying RGB because I'm going to love it, I think.
It does have a a slight geometry issue: The picture is slighty tilted to the right, which is pretty noticiable on the NES and some MAME games (You can tell in the Mega Man 9 picture above). I'll have to ask around and see how I can fix it.
WHAT NOW?
First of all, my old 5.1 speakers died years ago and their 2,5€ replacement is beyond terrible. I'm not much of an audiophile but it's hard not to notice that 50% of the sound is noise and if I use headphones it's even worse. They don't even work a third of the time, right now only one is working, actually
I want to get a new set for both my PC and the monitor but I don't know which ones or how I'll connect everything. I thought about using my father's amplifier because the shop that sold me the monitor is also selling their old stock of speakers for very cheap (8€) but it's yet another box I have to put in my room. I'm undecided for now, but I think a simple RCA->Minijack->Minijack Splitter is the way to go.
And second, like I said, I only own A/V cables for my consoles. I have to buy a SCART Switch, a SCART to BNC cable (30€!)) and then one cable per console. Indiviaully, it's not much but at 8-10€ per cable on top of the 30€ one it adds up quite fast.
MY COLLECTION
I must be the only member whose collection has shrunk and probably the member with the least game overall: I only own 58 games!
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Of course, the "trick" here is that I play a lot of arcade games which only exist digitally or that I don't own yet but even taking that into account, I have very few games.
The many reason is that...I don't need that many. I mean, I used to have a lot of games I was never really going to play: 4 Mega Man sequels, 6 80 hours RPGs, 10 ultra-hard platformers. You know the drill. Now I only get a game when I'm 100% sure I'll play it and beat it and generally care a lot about it.
Still, another reason is simply piracy. I used to pirate a lot when I was young and I don't have a job so I haven't been able to replace my pirated games with honest copies. I'm starting too, though, as the SFC games can attest.
Well, that's all. I just fancied writing this, dunno. Thoughts?
