The most pointless piece of crap EVER!

Why on earth would you pay 10'000 yen on a box that takes your super sharp RGB signal and converts it to S-Video and shitty composite? Why oh why would you? S-Video cables and Composite cables are easy to find for game consoles and a hell of a lot cheaper than this crap. The mind boggles!.

 

I can see your frustration. If you have the money for that then you could afford a TV that does not require it. WTF!?

 

I would not say it is the most useless thing ever but It certainly seems very expensive for what it is.

Megadrive does not output S-video natively, could be used there.
Drakon also uses one that he made himself to test RGB outputs ( because he does not have a monitor )

But then they advertise it for DC, PS, PS2, those all readily output Composite and S-video so... yeah.. my eyebrow is raised.

 

As they say, there's a sucker born every minute.

 

@ Yakumo.
to DEGRADE the signal for older sets/vdu's.
that's the only reason i could think of?! (would have it's uses if RGB upwards wasn't available, yeah, i can see potential...for the older screens where users have RGB upwards but no signal degradation support/older screens)
not so 'pointless' when you think about it?! :witless:
[edit]
typo.

 

I guess it could be useful to some people for like 10$... but for 10,000 yens? ...

 

But it is pointless because you can just buy a composite cable for your system for a fraction of the price of this box. It doesn't serve any real point when you think about it as far as connecting your game consoles to the TV goes.

 

can't speak for currency exchanges, too early in the day for gothic architecture discussion. take your word for it! :witless:
...
one could have a spread of RGB cables for say, six systems all routed through a dupont/mechanical switch selector, but NO CVBS cables to hand for a multitude of reasons. (space/storage/general upgrade never requiring them again at time)
...
i would shudder to think of how much it would be to replace six CVBS cables in one sitting, especially if official!
...
your point is valid to a degree, but the item seems focused as a fallback or an alternative that was cabled up on RGB but the screens didn't support it.
price? not going there, really not!

 

I agree with you, but if somehow you only got s-video/composite on your TV and the "dvd player"/"many consoles" outputs RGB only or something, then maybe it could be justified, ..., somehow...

 

Yeah, I'd agree, I mean for $100 you can buy a TV that also solves the problem.

 

the most piece of pointless crap is the speed board

 

Sounds like this device is only good for consoles that have no native S-Video output. Which I would imagine is quite a small group indeed!

 

I wouldn't pay $100 for this, maybe $5-10 and even then it requires a number of factors.

 

Question: how prevalent are SCART compatible monitors in Japan?

 

very rare but that still wouldn't make me buy this box. For the price of the box I could buy S-Video or composite cables for 15 different systems I wish the company would have made something like a RGB switch box but the only one I can ever find in Japan is the Micomsoft Selecty 21 (yep, it's really called that) which sells for stupid money. There's one on Yahoo Auctions now with a start price of 20'000 yen (about 200 USD) and it only has 3 inputs

 

Wasn't there a Retro Core where you reviewed a device by Micomsoft that did the same thing? As has already been mentioned, you could use it to get S-Video from the Mega Drive - and I believe that was exactly what you did in Retro Core. So, it's certainly not something I would ever want, but I wouldn't say it's totally pointless.

 

Now if only there was a cheap way to turn composite or S-Video to RGB so I wouldn't need to keep a few TVs, just one very nice RGB only monitor. My Commodore computer has RGB in 128 mode but only composite/S-Video in 64 mode and some older game systems could only do composite at best. Upscaling to RGB won't improve video but it'd make a lot more room in my room if I can toss out a few TVs

 

Wow, I have a 4 switch composite/s-video one I got in some weird shop for $7. Works great, unfortunately the cost of shipping something like that would be more than what I paid for it.

 

yes, that's right but that device plugged directly in to the MD so it was kind of different to this.

 

I own one, and I got it for about $30 new several years ago. I've used it for getting S-Video from my Megadrive, Neo-Geo MVS, Amiga (Minimig), as well as for digitizing RGB channels sequentially using a capture box that could only do comp/S-Vid. It's come in handy on a few occasions when I had no RGB monitor around.

I'd imagine it'd be more useful for people with old Japanese PCs as well (MSX, PC-88, X1, FM-Towns) if they want to play games on their larger TVs.