Dreamcast to XRGB-mini

The best way to hookup DC to a TV/LCD screen is directly through a VGA cable or VGA box, without any converter.
Dont expect a good picture quality with a 20 dollars converter.

In fact you will send a proper an clean picture to a bad converter, and from a bad converter to an XRGB...

 

From what I understand, the XRGB-mini will take the 31KHz signal from the VGA box in the minidin/RGB port if you combine the vertical and horizontal sync signals into composite sync. If that is correct as I have heard, the best way to go about doing this is modding a VGA box to have a 15KHz/31KHz switch, add a sync combiner circuit to the VGA box, and then add a port with RGB out (I would use some sort of mini-din connector). Then you would have complete compatibility and direct output to the Framemeister.

If you did it that way then you would be relying on the TV's internal upscaler to upscale the 480p to the panel's native resolution. For those of us who own Framemeisters, that would be silly.

 

Hanzo seems like a good hardware, but here's another really good high quality VGA cable, all shielded and filtered made by an electrical engineer: https://www.facebook.com/Cabous.Dreamcast.VGA.cables

He made me one and it's really great. I don't have an upscaler and scanline generator though, I plan on making my own scanline generator one day, and my tv seems to not do so much of a bad job at upscaling. I can't see problems as long as I'm not touching the glass with my nose, way better than s-video in any way.

 

I'll have to look into that. If it does, building a circuit to change the sync would be easy enough. All my stuff should be here today, I'm going to see how this transcoder box looks from vga to hdmi.

 

i just ordered a 8220 cga/ega/vga scaller £18.something from hong kong with free shipping

planning to add a RGB scart socket to it and use it with a DIY scanline generator
on a LCD monitor

but the dreamcast vga > scaller(in your case xrgb) > SLG > TV/Monitor should work nicely

 

480p DC picture look good on 1080p TV, try it, no need to upscale, that's why XRGB3 owner only use the passthrough input instead of B0 ( upscaler ).

There are no difference between a cheap chinese made VGA cable and this cable from an electrical engineer, you wont get a better picture, i tried it with different boxes, always the same picture.

What make Hanzo better than other cable/box is the scanliner and 15/31Hz switch.

 

xrgb mini is on my way. Suppose getting my vga box modded is the best option.

 

that all depends on the TV and the quality of the onboard upscaling also if you change tv's / monitors you may not get the same results

VGA on Dreamcast was awesome when i used to use a 21" Fujitsu E213(model number from memory could be wrong) CRT - was a beast of a monitor but looked great for gaming. and i got it for free lol
tube broke while moving tho so it is no more.

scaler also gives you the option to use other video signals(and indeed other consoles) some DC games just don't like VGA

 

If you don't upscale then you'll be getting a small 640x480 pixel box in the middle of a large 1920x1080 screen. I doubt many people want to play their Dreamcast like that.

So you either have to use the internal upscaler of the TV or an external upscaler like the XRGB. Using the internal scaler of your television may be good enough for you, but picture quality and lag times will vary from TV to TV, and the author of this thread already owns an XRGB-mini. I don't understand why you have a problem with us discussing the best possible way to view the Dreamcast. In addition, my television doesn't even have a VGA input so I have to convert it to something else with something anyway!

I didn't spend $400+ on an upscaler because I wanted to settle for things that "look good"--I want them to look their damn best.

 

Well im talking about my experience, i have a Samsung TV, i tried my DC with a vga box, with an xrgb3 and a cheap vga to hdmi.
The best option for me was the VGA box.

As you said, it probably depends of the TV and the internal upscaler.
Btw most of people here never tried anything and are supposing that it will look better if blablabla.

Have you tried a 480p DC game on a 1080p TV ?
Usually people dont spend money on an XRGB for upscaling DC games.

Do some test, take some screenshot if you want, and keep us up to date.

 

Yes, but people who already own an XRGB (e.g. me, and the OP) might be want to use theirs... no? :wink-new:





Anyway, I've built the circuit into my VGA box, and I have made a DIN8->SCART cable, but I haven't yet modified the plastic case or soldered up a DIN8 connector to the board yet, so it hasn't been tested at all. I was going to do that today but I'm running a fever and feel like crap. If I feel better tomorrow after work I'll finish it up and if successful, post screenshots.

 

Great idea! I've been playing with my Sophia over the weekend and even though it's just composite AV, it doesn't look that bad.
Clearly I haven't used my XRGB for a while and have forgotten what perfection looks like! :topsy_turvy:

 

BTW it has been confirmed on another board that this mod will work. Indeed, the XRGB-mini will take a VGA signal (31KHz RGB instead of normal 15KHz RGB) as long as you combine the sync signals (RGBHV -> RGBS). If you were seriously crafty you could possibly fit the sync combiner circuit into a SCART connector and design a straight-up VGA->SCART cable for use with the XRGB-mini only. However, I think it's just best to modify the VGA box itself since you'll want to add the 31KHz/15KHz switch for the games that don't support VGA, and also because I can't think of another video source that would benefit from this besides the Dreamcast anyway, since most VGA sources can just be set to a higher resolution and plugged directly into the TV anyway.

 

Success! Now I just need to drill the plastic, shorten/resolder the leads, mount the connector in, and add a 31KHz<->15KHz switch to the VGA box, and I'm done!

My verdict is: If you like the way the XRGB-mini upscales the Wii, then you'll like its performance on the DC.

Screenshots, including scanlines (click the image to enlarge):

 

Awesome work! Are you planning on throwing together a set of detailed instructions on how to do this VGA box mod for the XGRB-mini?

 

That's impressive, what about ingame picture ?
Can you compare a VGA picture with your setup ?

beharius sells VGA Boxes with 31/15khz switch.

 

Never been a fan of scanlines but to each their own.

 

Since my VGA to HDMI box didn't work (sync issues), I did some research and found out the same thing. I'm going to use an Extron160 to convert RGBHV to RGBS and then run it into the mini.

I'll post my setup and results as well once I get my BNC cable in.

 

Tell that to my shitty VGA box with awful image, ofc it may be because it was a cheapmade knockoff from china. Using the shielded cable and a cheap vga2hdmi converter I get reasonable image quality using the TV scaler (samsung), better than the same TV with S-Video.

 

Hello FamilyGuy,

You may have a deffective vga box then, i had different Chinese made boxes and cable, and no difference at all.

It looks like samsung tv has a good scaler since my TV and computer screen (both Samsung) give me a good picture with 480p input.

I had a cheap vga2hdmi and the picture was not that good, i should have bought a better converter.