So I got a new TV, free from a buddy's grandmother. 46" Vizio (an "affordable" brand here in the 'States). It's nice, has a pretty good picture and thin bezel which helps it fit in my tiny room (I also recently moved from a 2-bedroom house to having a single bedroom for ALL of my stuff...) I had to replace some components on the PSU, hence it being free, since it was hit by lightning and ceased working. But it's all done and installed now. Unfortunately, it doesn't have S-Video and I happen to run a few of my consoles on S-Video (Sat/MD/SNES/GCN). The TV has three lovely HDMI ports but only one Y/Pb/Pr set that has a shared Y/Composite jack. I could just keep the old TV, but it's an old LG 42" 720p and heats up this tiny room in no-time, especially now that it's summer. And it overscans like a mothertrucker, almost unusably so for whatever dumb reason (even the service menus only gain me another couple % of adjustment) I have a cool Pelican System Selector Pro that I'd normally use (programmable Composite/YPbPr/S-Video, LR audio, Ethernet and Toslink switcher) but that still doesn't solve my lack of S-Video and not to mention my shared Component +Luma jack... I see a few cheaper Composite+S-Video -> HDMI switchers out there but I have trouble trusting them. Does anyone have experience with this issue? Most importantly, can anyone recommend any particular bargain-bin Chinese-whatever converters? Also, save the argument that I shouldn't be playing retro consoles on a giant LCD. I have a nice CRT but absolutely nowhere to put it right now (so, technically, "get more space" is the best solution to the problem... but not gonna happen any time soon). Also also: no I cannot afford a Framemeister, unfortunately. -Alec
I bought that for my saturn to use s-video on hdmi a few years ago: Works quite well and is a clear improvement over composite, although I can't compare with native s-video. It upscales to 1080/720 iirc. It was called: AV 3 RCA Composite S-video R/L to HDMI Converter SUPPORT 3D
Just wanna stress that I'm in no way a videophile like some people here, but it's decent enough to play BOMBERMAN!
Neither am I. I did fine playing retro stuff on the old LCD TV (good enough for now!) so as long as it doesn't end up being a total heap of junk with a properly disgusting image quality, I'll be pleased for now until I can get a better situation lined up.
Good to hear. I'll plan on one of them soon to try out, unless anyone else has another great idea. Thanks FamilyGuy! I appreciate the input.
If you can't get a Framemeister, you might consider getting a GBS 8220. Does your TV have a VGA input?
Got my eye on a converter from there guys. They make the Wii to HDMI thingy and they have an S-Video/Scart to HDMI adapter designed just for games for a fraction of the Framemiester's cost. But it also seems to lack a lot of the features. http://www.coosis.com/
No VGA unfortunately. Gosh, I feel so castrated with this thing, haha. GoH, that's also looks good... http://www.coosis.com/products-page...-rca-w-s-video-to-hdmi-080-ultimate-features/ I assume that my yankee ass could snag a scart->composite adapter block http://gzhls.at/p/489507.jpg and be good-to-go? And, down the road, implement RGB, etc. HMMMMMMM.... edit: Looks like that Coosis is the only unit I can possibly find that has a switchable output "aspect ratio" (basically adding bars on the sides of the picture). My TV will not let me squash a 720/1080 image into 4:3 (but it -will- display a 4:3 automatically as 4:3, and also let me stretch it). Thus, with one of the cheaper more common converters it will stretch my comp/s-video image to 16:9, and then (in my case) my TV won't let me squash it back. I think I'll plan on nabbing that Coosis to try out when I get my next paycheck.
Eh screw it. I ordered the Coosis and put it on a credit card (totally responsible!). No idea when it will arrive, the company is UK based it seems, but they only charged 7+ bucks for shipping... Who knows? I'll let everyone know when it comes in and, likely, make a proper review post/video. As far as specs go, it seems promising.
It seems like the cheapest upscale option but the fact their UK based means my debit is going to hate it.
Something to be aware of is that sometimes these units add quite a bit of lag. If your tv is already adding 40-50ms then one of these type of boxes can push the the lag well over 100ms. I don't want you to miss time your jumps