Topic: looking for a good vga adapter

[Jamie]

I'm looking for a good VGA adapter to connect my gamecube to my PC monitor. I'm looking at these three right now. Does anyone have any suggestions? I don't know much about this and I'm having trouble finding good opinions on the subject online. I want to go by the reviews on the websites but for whatever reason I don't think they're completely trustworthy sometimes. If I use any of the following, will I get a sharp, clear picture? I'm not going for pscan, I just need to be able to play my gamecube on my monitor (17 in. crt) with s-video. Will it be as sharp and clear as it is on my tv? (note- i won't be able to use my tv pretty soon because its my roomate's and he's going to be needing it a lot)

www.lik-sang.com/info.php?category=219

Ā»www.consoleplus.co.uk/product_info.php

http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?ca...kref=compcharts

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Here's my general understanding:  GameCube was not designed to support non-interlaced VGA output.  VGA adapters exist as an attempt to let you play GCN games on a pc monitor.  One of the main goals of VGA conversion is to allow you to see your p.scan games in p.scan w/out having an "expensive" TV.  But you have to keep in mind a certain condition:  pc monitors ONLY display in p.scan (which is the same thing as being "non-interlaced").  So, a given VGA adapter will be one of 2 types:  1)  It will "pretend" to be a GCN Component Video Cable and let you see p.scan games generally fine, w/ or w/out a few minor issues that you can find mentioned in some reviews.  The main downside is, non-p.scan games will show as out-of-sequence scanlines, as opposed to clean frames, which are only meant for TV display in the first place.  OR, those non-p.scan games won't show up AT ALL or be an even bigger worthless mess of video.

2)  The VGA adapter has deinterlacing functions in an attempt to re-organize the scanlines, and convert those now-progressive frames to VGA format.  It may or may not matter if the GameCube is allowed to turn-on p.scan at start-up, which would occur in option #1.  Now, if the GameCube's p.scan function is not compatible with this VGA adapter, then all the GameCube's video output will be interlaced/non-p.scan.  In that case, 30fps games (ex: Resident Evil, Zelda:WW, Mario Sunshine) will probably survive the deinterlacing/conversion, and look decent on the monitor.  But for 60fps games (ex: Metroid Prime, Mario Kart), the adapter will either force it to run at HALF the framerate (30fps) and half the detail (like it went thru a cheap Photoshop image resize), OR the game will still run at full 60fps but still at half the detail (cheap image resize effect again).  Depending on the quality of the deinterlacing function, scanlines might still show up.

VGA conversion is not a simple task, and is "never" totally successful; there's definite sacrifices in quality somewhere.  This is my opinion.

[Jamie]

Well I don't plan on trying to fake progressive scan on my monitor or anything, meaning that I have no intention of trying to get or play games in progressive scan.  I mean, I don't care about scanlines if they showed up, as long as they weren't too dark.  Are you saying there wouldn't be a way of just playing a game the way it looks on my tv screen?(well, sans scanslines, which I don't really care about).  The reviews from customers said that the magic box worked great, and delivered a very crisp image, comparable to that of a TV.  

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

EDIT:  Results will definitely vary with each game, depending on their framerate.  30fps games have pretty good odds of looking detailed and smooth like their TV counterparts.  60fps games will definitely take a quality hit, see the DOA2 screens below.  And because your're viewing things on a pc monitor, images will looks crisp anyway, regardless of scanlines or not.



Forgive me, but are you serious?  "Faking" or legitimately displaying p.scan is just about the only way of viewing discernable GameCube images on a monitor.

Are you really content with viewing non-p.scan games like these?:
http://deinterlace.sourceforge.net/screenshots/index.htm
(see top pic)

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/video2.htm
slightly extreme case case due to up-close angle, but the distance difference in ghost images definitely increases in scenes of fast motion.

If p.scan was faked (like with option #2 I mentioned: deinterlacing) you might be able to achieve images that look like this:

http://deinterlace.sourceforge.net/screenshots/Dead_Or_Alive_2_Screenshots.htm

Though modern games aren't supposed to look that pixelated.  

[Jamie]

Arg, sorry, I just wish there was an easy way to do this.  I read the reviews from customers who purchased a vga magic box on lik-sang, and they seemed very pleased with it.  But I don't want to waste 50 bucks on something I don't know is going to work or not...

If I used deinterlacing, which is an option on the vga box I'm looking at, will the framerate of 60fps games take a big hit?  Or will they still resemble the smoothness that I experience I see when playing a game on my TV?  Sorry if I sound really confused about all this...it's because I am, haha.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Quote
Originally posted by: Jamie
If I used deinterlacing, which is an option on the vga box I'm looking at, will the framerate of 60fps games take a big hit?  Or will they still resemble the smoothness that I experience I see when playing a game on my TV?  Sorry if I sound really confused about all this...it's because I am, haha.

I don't mean to discourage you, but you won't know about the smoothness until you get your hands on an adapter and try it, or you get an answer from an existing owner who knows what they're talking about.  60fps games will either end up 60fps, or 30fps.