So, now that I have a cool CRT computer monitor (see this thread: http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?42731-New-Monitor-LaCie-Electron-22-Blue-IV), I'm looking for ways to play last-gen games on it. I mainly want to play Gamecube games on it (and Dreamcast, but I already have a DC VGA cable). At first I was thinking of getting a Gamecube VGA cable, but those, of course, are modified component or D-terminal cables and thus are very expensive. As an alternative, I've been looking at Wii VGA cables, which are much cheaper. I didn't even know these existed, and I'm somewhat skeptical as to how well they might work. Here's one that I'm looking at: http://www.amazon.com/Wii-PS3-VGA-H...e=UTF8&qid=1353143491&sr=8-2&keywords=Wii+VGA So, I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with this kind of cable. My first obvious question is, how do they work? I can't imagine they put an entire component to VGA converter into that cable, so I'm guessing it takes RGB straight from the console, and then gets sync from... somewhere? Not composite video, I should think. Does it get that information from the component leads somehow? I'm completely mystified by that part of it. Second, how well do they work? How does the picture compare to that of component? I have a component to VGA converter/scaler, but I'm not really satisfied with the picture. I realize that these things only work with 480p games, and that's fine - I can use my PVM for everything else. I apologize for my ignorance on this subject. Hopefully someone can enlighten me. I also apologize if this post is not entirely coherent. It's been a long day/night.
I bought one of these a while back and it didn't work on my TV at all. I think it just sends a component signal and not a RGB signal, so your display has to support Y-Pb-Pr in a VGA connection. I could only recommend a converter box. I bought a monoprice Component to VGA converter for 30 and it works great.
another option would be wii2hmdi then hdmi to vga, if ur using a CRT computer monitor it should work with a wii vga cable although its not something i've tested personally.
Just thought I'd post a follow-up to my original post, since I recently acquired an actual Wii VGA cable. I preferred this to starting a new thread, since it's my thread anyway. Well, it turns out: it works! It works quite well, actually. I did some more research on this recently, and I've come to the conclusion that the cable actually does contain a signal converter inside. It converts the component signal into a VGA signal - so the cable is essentially doing what a CRT TV with a component input would do internally. It simply converts the image, with no scaling or image enhancement involved - which is exactly what I wanted. This explains why it's so (relatively) expensive for what's essentially a Chinese third party cable. The one I have is made by Hyperkin, which can be found here. Prior to receiving this cable, I was using a GBS 8220 to convert component to VGA. The image wasn't horrible, but I gradually came to the conclusion that, although I had it set to the same resolution as the Wii itself, it was nonetheless processing the image in some way - perhaps even scaling it, slightly. This led to a less than perfect image. The Wii VGA cable is not perfect either, but it's much better than my previous solution. It's incredibly clear. There is some very faint bleeding of certain colors, but most of the time it's not noticeable. It's so much clearer than the GBS 8220 that I've discovered that several games I thought used some kind of crappy antialiasing are in fact very sharp. This was somewhat of a surprise, but very much welcome. The image clarity, combined with the fact that I'm able to play Gamecube games with deflicker off, makes it an ideal way to play Gamecube (and Wii) games. However, I would only recommend this to gamers who want to play Wii or GC games on a monitor or TV with a VGA input but no component inputs. If your display has a component input, there's really no need for this cable. The reason I went to all this trouble was because I wanted to play Gamecube games in their native resolution on a CRT. I had toyed with the idea of buying a PVM-20L5 (which accepts 480p, 720p, and 1080i video) for exactly this purpose, but they're still pretty expensive, and I already have a perfectly good 20" PVM. However, I'm convinced that this cable gives me just as good, if not better, image quality on my CRT computer monitor. So that was my reasoning behind it, but you also might want this cable if you have an LCD computer monitor with a VGA input, but no component inputs. That's probably not an ideal way to play Wii/GC games - but then again, you could do a lot worse. One important thing to note is that this cable only supports games that output 480p. This is not a problem for me, since I can force progressive in any Gamecube game I want to play. But if you're a fan of one of the few decent games that didn't support 480p and you don't have the ability to force progressive, then you may want to reconsider. I've also read that Wii games often switch between 480i and 480p during gameplay, and that this causes issues with this cable - but I've tried a couple Wii games, and so far I haven't encountered that problem. One final thing to note is that, although many games look very good with this cable, there are several Gamecube games that use a large amount of image processing, such that the original image doesn't look very good. Resident Evil is one example - although a great game, it uses some kind of image processing that makes the image very blurry. I'm guessing they did this in order to eliminate the problem many other games with similar graphical styles had: when superimposed on pre-rendered backgrounds, aliasing of 3D objects becomes very noticeable. It's so noticeable that you can often determine which objects you're supposed to use simply by the fact that they're aliased. The image processing RE uses, which is probably just a crappy form of antialiasing, eliminates this problem - but it also makes the resulting image look like crap. I think there are other games that use similar effects, so unfortunately this cable does not do much to improve those games. But for everything else, it kicks ass. Sorry for the length of this post, but I had a lot of thoughts on the subject, and I thought someone might be able to learn something from this. EDIT: one final, final note: it has occurred to me that, since this cable is essentially a component to VGA convertor, it ought to be possible to dissect it and rewire it so that you could use whatever component source you want. You would, of course, be limited to 480p or above sources, but that'd be good enough for (most) Xbox games. I'm not sure if I'm willing to put that much effort into it, but it's something to think about.
I haven't attempted that yet, and I'm not sure how difficult/easy it would be. I'll take a look at it tomorrow.
No, it looks like I can't open the case without breaking the plastic, which I don't want to do. I'm fairly certain that what's inside is a component to VGA convertor, though.
I have one of those same cables and I can also confirm that it works. Never got it to work on my PS3, but for Wii it worked great.
