Topic: Review of the Nextvision N4 (gamecube on monitor)

[Sea Dragon]

Hi everyone,

I picked up my gamecube (First new console system I've had in 15 years) on Thursday night, and it's now hooked to the nextvision N4 video professor (a device that's intended to use your monitor as a TV).

The gamecube is hooked up to the nextvision, as is the VCR (through RCA cables.)

I first tried the gamecube through the AV RCA cables, and wasn't too impressed. The text seemed kind of blurry, and the colors were off. Then, I hooked it up with an S-video cable; nice improvement in text clarity and colors. I would say this is a worthwhile investment if you have an S-video adapter - it's easily as good a picture as the TV now.

VCR to the TV using RCA - quality is okay, but nothing spectacular - not quite as good as a regular TV picture. It's good enough for what I used my TV for: watching old taped reruns of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

The Nextvision supposedly supports progressive scan, but I've yet to figure out how to get it to work.

Can you run progressive scan mode with an S-video cable, or do you have to use the Nintendo component cables?

[Locke Cole]

You need the cables in order to do that, how are you going to use progressive scan with your monitor.  How big is that thing?

[Sea Dragon]

It's a 19 inch CRT.

[Scyth3r]

You need composite cables from Nintendo site in order to have progressive scan...

[Grey Ninja]

Can you post some screenshots please?    I would very much like to see this in action, as getting a decent TV Tuner has been one of my priority purchases "when I have the money" for years.

[Ymeegod]

Actually only the Nextvision N6 supports incoming progressive scan modes.  

And it's component video, composite is the same thing as AV.  The nextvision N6 sells for quite a bit more then the nextvision N4 though.

What the Nextvision n4 does from what I've read about them is take 480i mode (S-video) and upscales them to higher solutions and progressive (since most monitors can't handle 15 hzs).

The quality is so-so since the nextvision N4 really doesn't have the features found on newer TV sets like comb filter and what not.  I recall the N6 does have 3D Digital Comb Filter though.

But for the price, the Nextvision N4 isn't to bad ($80), I'm looking at the N5 ($115) myself because the N6 is just a bit to expensive for me ($300+).