No S-Video port!? Easiest workaround/converter/solution?

So I got a new TV, free from a buddy's grandmother. 46" Vizio (an "affordable" brand here in the 'States). It's nice, has a pretty good picture and thin bezel which helps it fit in my tiny room (I also recently moved from a 2-bedroom house to having a single bedroom for ALL of my stuff...) I had to replace some components on the PSU, hence it being free, since it was hit by lightning and ceased working. But it's all done and installed now.

Unfortunately, it doesn't have S-Video and I happen to run a few of my consoles on S-Video (Sat/MD/SNES/GCN). The TV has three lovely HDMI ports but only one Y/Pb/Pr set that has a shared Y/Composite jack.

I could just keep the old TV, but it's an old LG 42" 720p and heats up this tiny room in no-time, especially now that it's summer. And it overscans like a mothertrucker, almost unusably so for whatever dumb reason (even the service menus only gain me another couple % of adjustment)

I have a cool Pelican System Selector Pro that I'd normally use (programmable Composite/YPbPr/S-Video, LR audio, Ethernet and Toslink switcher) but that still doesn't solve my lack of S-Video and not to mention my shared Component +Luma jack...

I see a few cheaper Composite+S-Video -> HDMI switchers out there but I have trouble trusting them.
Does anyone have experience with this issue? Most importantly, can anyone recommend any particular bargain-bin Chinese-whatever converters?

Also, save the argument that I shouldn't be playing retro consoles on a giant LCD. I have a nice CRT but absolutely nowhere to put it right now (so, technically, "get more space" is the best solution to the problem... but not gonna happen any time soon). Also also: no I cannot afford a Framemeister, unfortunately.

-Alec

 

I bought that for my saturn to use s-video on hdmi a few years ago:

Works quite well and is a clear improvement over composite, although I can't compare with native s-video.
It upscales to 1080/720 iirc.
It was called: AV 3 RCA Composite S-video R/L to HDMI Converter SUPPORT 3D

 

Hey, that's VERY affordable. And so far a winner. But my ears are still listening!

 

Just wanna stress that I'm in no way a videophile like some people here, but it's decent enough to play BOMBERMAN!

 

Neither am I. I did fine playing retro stuff on the old LCD TV (good enough for now!) so as long as it doesn't end up being a total heap of junk with a properly disgusting image quality, I'll be pleased for now until I can get a better situation lined up.

 

You'd be fine with that converter then.

 

Good to hear. I'll plan on one of them soon to try out, unless anyone else has another great idea. Thanks FamilyGuy! I appreciate the input.

 

If you can't get a Framemeister, you might consider getting a GBS 8220. Does your TV have a VGA input?

 

Got my eye on a converter from there guys. They make the Wii to HDMI thingy and they have an S-Video/Scart to HDMI adapter designed just for games for a fraction of the Framemiester's cost. But it also seems to lack a lot of the features. http://www.coosis.com/

 

No VGA unfortunately. Gosh, I feel so castrated with this thing, haha.

GoH, that's also looks good...
http://www.coosis.com/products-page...-rca-w-s-video-to-hdmi-080-ultimate-features/
I assume that my yankee ass could snag a scart->composite adapter block
http://gzhls.at/p/489507.jpg
and be good-to-go? And, down the road, implement RGB, etc.

HMMMMMMM....


edit: Looks like that Coosis is the only unit I can possibly find that has a switchable output "aspect ratio" (basically adding bars on the sides of the picture). My TV will not let me squash a 720/1080 image into 4:3 (but it -will- display a 4:3 automatically as 4:3, and also let me stretch it).
Thus, with one of the cheaper more common converters it will stretch my comp/s-video image to 16:9, and then (in my case) my TV won't let me squash it back.
I think I'll plan on nabbing that Coosis to try out when I get my next paycheck.

 

Eh screw it.
I ordered the Coosis and put it on a credit card (totally responsible!). No idea when it will arrive, the company is UK based it seems, but they only charged 7+ bucks for shipping... Who knows?

I'll let everyone know when it comes in and, likely, make a proper review post/video. As far as specs go, it seems promising.

 

It seems like the cheapest upscale option but the fact their UK based means my debit is going to hate it.

 

Something to be aware of is that sometimes these units add quite a bit of lag. If your tv is already adding 40-50ms then one of these type of boxes can push the the lag well over 100ms. I don't want you to miss time your jumps

 

Some are designed to remove lag

 

More details on this please.

 

Actually that's all I know maybe somebody else can elaborate

 

It has arrived.
Last week they emailed me to say that they've discontinued the one that was listed on their site and they have a new version that omits the S-Video port, instead coming with a SCART adapter that has composite, S-Video, and L/R audio on it (quite common). It's also smaller and probably simpler. They said it wasn't yet stocked in their USA warehouse so mine was shipped from China, and I still only had to pay the $7 shipping (despite them sending it EMS/DHL) and it arrived about 3 days after it was allegedly dispatched. Pretty darn good service, if you ask me.

I played with it a little this morning. So far it's good. My first complaint is that I can't have both Composite and S-Video plugged at the same time, at least from my AV switch (Pelican System Selector Pro). The signal goes nuts (took me a minute to figure this out, I first thought the thing was broken!) I was really hoping I could just tuck this thing back in the cabinet and never have to touch it, but I guess if I want to play something using Composite I'll have to dig it out.

I get some rainbow fringing... but not always. Seems mildly unpredictable. Some static scenes that seem like they'd be a great candidate for some rainbow action are fine, and others are completely saturated. Usually cut-scenes. I haven't played Saturn in so long, I don't remember exactly how its video compression looked on an LCD TV... Maybe it's acting normal. I'll have to lug the whole thing to a CRT in the future and compare.

There doesn't seem to be any input lag to speak of. I took timed it with a video to be under 30ms (~27) between button press and weapon fire on Darius Gaiden.

Video:

NOTE that the flickering and grid-like appearance is just my camera and the TV not getting along super well (Canon 7D). I muted the audio.
Sega Rally looks great. The short loading of RE is fine. Then Grandia... has a bunch of random spots that are ugly as hell. Last is Darius Gaiden, which also looks great.

 

Yay or nay on this?

 

I'd say Yay. The "scaling" (aka add black bars where you want 'em) works great and I am happy with the image quality. Once again, I have no idea if the occasional rainbow fringing is the fault of the device, but probably not since there's so many games that look flawless. I don't think there's a cheaper device out there that will do the "scaling" for you, if you need it for your TV.

I'll still be testing all of my Saturn collection over the next few days when I have the time. Then I'll also throw a Gamecube and a SNES on it through S-Video to see how they perform.

You can even change output resolutions if you want to go to a monitor. It'll do 720, 1080, 800x600, 1024x768, and 1280x1024.

EDIT: Whoops, forgot to add images of it.

 

What GoH meant by removing lag is probably to minimise it?