vga adapters for game consoles.

[Sniper82]

Does hooking a PS2/Xbox to a LCD actually look better? I have a 19" widescreen and am wondering if it's worth the purchase. Also are all vga adapters about the same?

 

[w00t]

well the problem with that is the PS2 and Xbox don't support that high of a res they support like 640x480 plus since it's widescreen it's going to look ever worse.

If it was an Xbox 360, Wii, or PS3 than it would probably look good I think they all support up to 1920x1080 Full HD I remeber seeing the Xbox 360 on a Dell 2005FPW/2405FPW and they both looked good.

My older brother plays his PS2 on our HDTV Panasonic 60'' 720P-1080i and It looks like crap and that is actually a lower res than your monitor and he's not playing it in widescreen rather 4:3 format

 

[cleverhandle]

I was looking into getting an adapter a while back. I did a bit of research and heard generally poor reviews on image quality, especially with the sub-$100 units. So instead of going with an adapter, I bought a 15" LCD-TV instead, which also doubles as a second monitor for my computer. It's not perfect for either role, but it does the job.

 

[bfonnes]

Originally posted by: Sniper82
Does hooking a PS2/Xbox to a LCD actually look better? I have a 19" widescreen and am wondering if it's worth the purchase. Also are all vga adapters about the same?

I agree, I actually have a Sceptre x-9 19" that has s-video and composite as well as VGA style and DVI connectors and I hooked up a game cube through S-Video and compared to when I hooked it up to my TV through the component video connectors I had, it really didn't look that great. Text was slightly clearer, but that's about it. Only slight differences, nothing to write home about so to speak. And that was with a straight in connection and no conversion. You have to consider that the main benefit of hooking up a console to a LCD monitor would potentially be the fact that a computer display is non-interlaced and a TV display is interlaced unless it is HDTV progressive scan. So, your game system will still treat your LCD monitor like an interlaced display because it is programmed to do so, and you won't get any benefit. As a previous poster said, though, if you were to hook up a console that uses HDTV 720p or 1080p, then you might see some improvement. Although in that case you'd have to have something to convert a component output into something your monitor would support. I don't know of any computer monitors that have component video in. There are solutions to that, though, like if you had a HTPC with component in (through a video capture/tv card), then a video card with DVI out to a monitor, then I can see that working, although, I have not tested this as of yet. Me and a cousin of mine have been considering building an HTPC that might have this capability.

I haven't tried an XBOX with this yet, but I have one about a hundred feet away in our pad's basement here. Right now it's hooked up to an ancient 60" rear projection TV, but, I could try it and let you know how it looks on my LCD... if you're interested (that is, if I can tear my roommates away from the XBOX)

BFonnes

 

[Sniper82]

I think I'll just pass is it doesn't look a little better. Thx for the info

 

[bfonnes]

Originally posted by: Sniper82
I think I'll just pass is it doesn't look a little better. Thx for the info

well, it may be... I was comparing an S-video connection on the monitor to a component video connection on a TV. It's not really a fair comparison... It's kinda an apples to oranges comparison, because I regularly played my gamecube on my TV using a component video connection which is a different style and better connector.

BFonnes

 

[RaiderJ]

For the money you'd have to spend to get a good VGA adapter that supports interlaced and progressive you could just buy a TV that supports the console's native display (480i/p). The best component -> VGA adapter I've found is the VDigi VD-Z3, but it only supports 480p.