I have a PAL Sega Dreamcast with an original Sega PAL RGB SCART cable. RGB works fine with my TV but not with my LCD-Projector. When I connect the Dreamcast to the projector the image comes up for a second an then the screen goes off with a no signal message from the projector. TV: Philips 21PT1967 LCD-Projector: Sanyo PLV-Z4 I should mention that the Sanyo PLV-Z4 has no SCART connector. But it's possible to connect any RGB capable device to the VGA port with a simple adaptor cable. In the main menu you can choose between SCART RGB or Analog RGB. It worked for all my consoles except the Dreamcast. I think it's a sync problem. I think the Sanyo PLV-Z4 uses a composite signal for sync because composite does not work with this cable (my TV shows nothing when I switch to composite). But maybe I'm telling garbage and this is just wrong. btw, I've also tried it with a 3rd party RGB cable -> same results:-( Has anyone an idea how to solve this problem?
only thing i can suggest, is to buy a dreamcast vga box (approx £10-£15 on ebay) and that should hopefully solve the problem, and also give you a stunning picture from the dreamcast, pretty much most games for the dreamcast support vga mode, and you really do notice the difference from rgb not an ideal solution for your problem though, but just a suggestion!
I already thought about that. Unfortunately one of my favourite games, Snow Surfers, does not support the VGA box. Furthermore I have only one VGA port on the projector and I use this port already with a SCART RGB cable to connect PC Engine, SNES or N64. My backup solution would be s-video.
well you could always go for a cheap k/v/m switch, normally designed for pc, but can be used for more than 1 vga input into 1 output, but yes, failing that s-video should work, and still offers a better image over composite (although not quite as good as rgb scart) but is still very inferior to vga, when i first hooked up my dreamcast to my 37" lcdby vga, it was like playing with blinkers off, the picture difference is amazing, breathing a whole new life into some of the old dc games (shenmue and res evil code veronice are good examples) also with regards to snowsurfers, im pretty sure the american version (ripping riders) was vga compatable, or failing that there was a vga patcher for the dreamcast when using 'backup' games that may work on snowsurfers
The fact that your projector is displaying the image for 1 second means it is getting the signals but it is failing to detect a continous signal to switch over. These are just ideas they may or may not work so use at your own risk... Most consoles output Composite Video rather then Composite Sync via a SCART cable, the DC does have both, it could be trying to strip out the Composite video and over doing it. Looking at the back of the DC from left to right, with pin 1 being the most left and pin 16 the most right. Pin 10 is composite Sync and Pin 13 composite video, try using a multimeter on your DC lead to see which one is used. This did work for me with a Sega Saturn on a Plasma TV. The DC also has coupling caps on the RGB lines to clean up the signal, however I have seen values on home made RGB leads ranging from 100uf to 470uf, the most common being 220uf. You could try changing this and seeing if it works.
I opened the connector, there is a small pcb inside: Update: I've checked the connector. The pins with description are connected inside my rgb cable: 1 ground 2 right audio 3 left audio 4 +12v 5 6 7 select rgb 8 9 10 c sync 11 12 13 14 blue 15 green 16 red composite video is missing. As far as I can see, pin 10 on dreamcast goes to pin 20 in the scart connector. Pin 20 should be composite video, here we have c sync. That's the reason why I get a black screen on my TV when switching to Composite Video. I think I need a new cable with composite video and not c sync.
