Scart to HDMI converter. Have you/Do you use one?

I am looking into maybe buying a scart to hdmi converter for some of my older games consoles.

Here is one I was looking at:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Scart-HDMI-Vide...002?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item53e86b983a

Does anybody here use one or have used one? I am just looking for a better than av cable solution for my SNES because my SCART to YUV doesnt play nice with it(the SNES) and my TV doesn't do S-VIDEO. I live a tiny apartment and buying an RGB monitor is out of the question right now. My biggest concern is that many of these have some sort of built in "upscaler" feature that may make the picture look like arse. I have no delusions that I will get proper "hi-def" signal out of one of these.... just looking for something better than my av cables offer. Thanks in advance.

 

Unless you get pro or specialty equipment (XRGB) the picture will always look like arse because cheap adapters use no-frills sampling/resampling algorithms paired with a crappier ADC than a generic LCD monitor. Typically the higher the integration the less the signal can deviate from ITU specs, and games are all over the place. Personally I would just live with composite until I could get another display or a better upscaler.

 

I bought one of these some time ago. It looks identical to that one in the auction but doesn't have a 720/1080P switch. There are some unused solder points inside, so I guess it can be "upgraded" with more connectors or switches...

The picture is ... well ... ok. It doesn't look worse than what modern entry level LCD TVs do to a picture through their real RGB SCART input.
One thing it doesn't convert is a S-Video signal. And sometimes the picture looks really bad, but can't remember with which consoles I encountered that.

When you don't care about the money then go for it, it is a quick & dirty solution to hook up RGB SCART to HDMI. I use it only when I want to have a quick setup for SCART and don't want to crawl behind my TV..

 

i think it would be far better to get a SCART to VGA adapter
HDMI is extremely unnecessary for any console that uses SCART as its primary

besides VGA is a RGB signal also so little to no signal loss

 

I second RGB -> VGA

I just did this: http://www.mmmonkey.co.uk/console/other/rgb2vga.htm

 

the converter in that article is the exact one i was thinking about
just was to lazy to actually post a link to it xD

 

Its cheaper than the one the op linked to too.

But requires a little soldering work and adapter cable.

 

How it handle 240p content?
It will try to "de-interlace"?

 

not all hdtvs have VGA in

 

my snes plays through it fine.

However, I'm no AV expert - but the picture looks great to me.

If you have specific questions and what to look out for, then I will answer best I can.

 

The scart to vga looks like a good idea and I think I will investigate further.

 

I have a switch for scanlines - I prefer it without scanlines. But the parts were cheap and I can choose between the 2.

edit:

more details on scanline mod and some pictures:
http://www.mmmonkey.co.uk/console/other/vga-scanlines.htm

 

What kind of SNES are you using? I have NTSC US system and it is the main reason I am looking into all of this.

 

Pal, but on the link to the mod he has tested it on NTSC Snes's too.

 

Interesting stuff, I'll have to try that too sometime...

 

Actually there is signal loss, the same loss there is from RGB -> HDMI. When you connect VGA to a TV there is even twice the loss so for that reason unless you are using a CRT VGA monitor I would suggest against a VGA adapter. TVs that support VGA input will often accept 15 kHz RGB as well.

Ideally you want:

analog 15 kHz RGB -> TV[ADC -> DSP -> HD display]

which is effectively the same as a HDMI converter:

analog 15 kHz RGB -> hdmi converter[ADC -> DSP -> HDMI TX] -> TV[HDMI RX -> DSP -> HD display]

The only problem is that there are two DSP steps unless the HDMI converter outputs perfect 1080p which the TV can directly draw to the display. Well, there's also the problem that the cheap ones aren't engineered very well.

With a VGA converter it's:

analog 15 kHz RGB -> upscanner[ADC -> DSP -> DAC] -> TV[ADC -> DSP -> HD display]

and that is a problem because you want as few ADC/DSP operations as possible because they are really dicey:

-ADC introduces quantization noise
-ADC reduces dynamic range
-ADC will clip a signal that isn't perfectly biased or impedance matched for the right level
-ADC takes discrete, un-synchronized/aligned samples of a game's arbitrary pixel rate
-DSP interpolates the samples (either adding false sharpness or softening the image horizontally)

Throwing a VGA converter in the chain is even WORSE than resizing an image twice--something you just don't do because of the interpolation artifacts. It's worse because resizing typically forgoes the ADC step and you're working with exact digital representations. Add in the ADC error and by the time a game pixel hits your screen the pixel's aspect (width) will be mangled and the colors will be wrong. Oh yeah, also because the TV is now sampling an image of twice the pixel frequency the pixel edges will be sloppier than they would be through interpolation alone.

It's just a mess.

 

I can't explain how bad the image will be if the device tries to de-interlace an 240p signal.
The best way is to compare it, side-by-side, with a crt tv (with proper 240p).

Can you take pictures of it running some snes games?

By the way, the CGA/EGA signal accepted by this device is the same CGA/EGA signal used by old computer monitors?

 

I am going to buy the scart the VGA adapter and currently waiting on the lm1881 chip to make the sync strike. After looking at the tutorial link I was wondering if I can simply buy a scart to VGA cable, add audio out, and attach it to a scart coupler?

 

VGA is slightly more complicated then that
VGA has data pins that tell the TV/computer screen the input resolution
and sync lines

i dont even think its possible to have a direct scart to vga cable even if i built in sync strike was included due to the afore mentioned data lines and VGA sync lines

as far as i understand it the sync strike it just to prevent the RGB sync from interfering with the VGA sync

 

VGA doesn't need the DDC lines, the only difference is that you'll have to manually calibrate the picture if the monitor can't detect the resolution or detects it wrong (by measuring the sync frequency).

"Sync strike" is only a LM1881 sync splitter, I hope people don't start calling it that. It's necessary because SCART uses NTSC/ITU level sync, coupled to composite video, not a pair of discrete TTL logic level signals like VGA. The splitter compares the composite video signal to a reference and sends out a binary signal, then filters composite sync to detect vertical sync and does the same. VGA monitors won't be fussy if you give them composite sync on the horizontal sync line, and that's technically what the "sync strike" does, there isn't any logic to reconstruct the actual horizontal sync information.