Would this work? Connecting a Mega Drive / Genesis to a flatpanel through VGA.

I think this would work, but I figured it won't hurt to ask.

Would pairing a SCART to VGA cable:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hama-SCART-...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1282062224&sr=8-1

with a Mega Drive SCART cable and a SCART coupler allow me play my Genesis on my Panasonic plasma TV (NTSC)?

I'm aware this would only handle the video, but I can just pull the audio from the Sega CD unit that is attached (both are model 2).

The manual for my TV says it will accept signals of 15Khz and greater. My big concerns are that I don't know what the TV would do with a resolution that low (Dreamcast works, but that's a good deal higher) and if syncing would be an issue.

If there's a better approach, I'm all ears.

I also did see the following which could be an option I suppose:

http://www.ambery.com/rgbcgatovgac.html

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

It is unlikely that your TV accepts 15.6kHz RGB over the VGA port. The manual is probably referring to the composite/S-Video inputs.

As for what your TV will do if it can cope, it'll treat it as a 480i signal and upscale it, probably badly. There've been a few discussions here recently regarding upscaling and the boxes that do it - do a search for XRGB and read around.

 

In my manual, the 15Khz comment was under the category about the VGA port. The Dreamcast signal is very sharp, so I was hoping any upscaling it was doing was of the "nearest neighbor" variety.

I'm aware of the XRGBs but they're a good deal pricier and are harder to obtain without a middleman.

Thanks for the response though.

 

In that case, yeah. Give it a go.

Be aware that the Megadrive's sync signal is pretty shoddy, so you may run into problems there.

 

Cool, thanks again for the fast responses!

 

No problem. What TV is it, out of curiosity?

 

Panny Plasma, 1080p. The first of the Vieras I think. 2008 model.

I have an XMD-3 also, so at least I'm getting S-Video out of it.

 

Actually, I've found that it's not uncommon for modern HDTVs with VGA ports to accept 15khz RGB. I was able to connect my Arcade JAMMA boards (like CPS2) to my TV's VGA port just fine. I think I connected Composite Sync to what VGA would use for Vertical Sync. Either way it worked fine. So give it a go since the monitor supports 15khz.

On a similar note Mortal Kombat with its odd resolution and refresh rate around 53hz or 56hz or something like that my old regular TV wouldn't sync to it and would roll. But when I tried a HDTV (it was a big CRT Toshiba) it didn't have that issue.

 

Most modern TVs do a pretty good job at upscaling. The Toshiba Regza that I have works very well for Mega drive as long as you aren't using composite since the composite on the Mega Drive is bloody awful. I have to use s-video though for retro consoles because the TV has no VGA in for PC connection, only HDMI. Odd choice IMO. Still the XRGB3 sorts that problem out. 21 pin RGB in with HDMI out . Not a cheap solution mind you.

Yakumo

 

Yeah, the composite on the Mega Drive is pretty atrocious, so that's why I'm giving this a shot (S-Video is good, but I why stop there?). I've ordered the cables and will let everyone know what happens. Maybe in the future I'll splurge on an XRGB3.

 

I've yet to see an LCD set do a decent job with a SCART RGB signal without external hardware. My mate's brand new 42" Samsung still butchers his Wii's RGB signal, but he's not about to splash out a couple of hundred on an XRGB-3 or similar, and I don't blame him. He barely plays the thing anyway.

It all comes down to how picky you are. Most people are happy enough with the way their HD set copes with analogue signals and really that's all that matters.

 

Actually, my Plasma has horrible component in (the colors aren't aligned properly and it happens on my friend's TV who has the same model). The HDMI and VGA are sharp, which is why I'm trying this approach. If it all fails I'll keep my Genny hooked up to my 4:3 CRT via s-video, but I figure this is worth trying out.

 

I don't think I'm that picky, but I never play older consoles on HDTVs. I picked up a Sony PVM exactly for the purpose of using older hardware with it. Initially for JAMMA boards but it works great for all the old stuff. Even using Composite doesn't look bad.

 

We're talking about something that <1% of all gamers care enough about to bother properly sorting, I think it's just honest to call that "picky". Realistically, the number of people who keep a CRT around specifically for old games as well as a HDTV, or who buy expensive external scalers, has got to be pretty small.

The majority of people who play their Wiis on HDTVs will be using the composite cabling it came with. This stuff just does not enter people's heads. And why would it? It's nerdy as fuck.

 

So for the record, this did not work. The TV just said "No Signal". Oh well.

 

Whole bunch of reasons why this might be, and not all of them involve your TV being incompatible with 15.6kHz RGB. What kind of sync is being fed, and where?

 

Somewhat related to this. I just got a SCART RGB cable for my Genesis (model 1) today and tried it out. At first I couldn't believe the difference in picture quality. My Monitor does do well with Composite. But apparently the signal the Genesis outputs is pretty different. The Colors look different. Things are much sharper, less of that sort of blur you get with composite. It's very nice. I actually hooked up the Composite again to really see the difference and to make sure I wasn't just remembering wrong.

 

The cable leads into the PC/VGA input on the TV. On the TV I tried switching sync between the "H & V" and "On G" options. Neither did anything.

 

That's interesting. Is there any risk of shorting something out or causing some sort of damage if your TV doesn't support 15khz RGB? Also, how would you wire the two together? I mean, the R, G, and B signals and their grounds would obviously be the same (right?), but VGA has both horizontal and vertical sync - so which one would you connect the RGB sync to?

My TV (LG 32" LCD) doesn't have S-Video, only composite (as well as component, coax, VGA, and HDMI of course). I tried connecting my PC Engine to it over composite and it looks pretty bad. It's usable, especially if you look at it from a distance, but it's nowhere near as good as a CRT.

I have a 27" CRT for exactly that purpose. Although, I'm thinking about getting an XRGB at some point. I might move all of my gaming stuff into one small apartment at some point, and in that scenario it would be a lot more convenient to only have a single, relatively thin screen. I don't think I could stand to play games over composite with my TV's crappy scaler in a long-term situation. I wonder if S-Video over an XRGB would look decent.

On a side note, I imagine one day - a day when most older games are played either on emulators or as downloadable games on services like VC, XBLA, or PSN - TV's will no longer have analog inputs, and devices that convert analog signals to digital signals will be very rare and highly sought after by nerds like us. Well, I guess they already sorta are, but even more so.

 

No S-Video? Man, that's a bad move on LG. I think pretty much all 16bit consoles or older look like crap through composite on any TV let alone a flat pannel. They do look a hell of a lot worse on a flat pannel though. S-Video is the way to go if you don't have access to RGB but as you say S-Video isn't an option for you

Yakumo