Game Consoles on Your Monitor?

steddyj asks: "With the release of the Gamecube and X-Box, along with the slew of games for said consoles, I've been contemplating whether or not to buy one, and keep running into one major roadblock: the TV in my room is on top of the hutch of my desk. This is not only the only place I have room for it, but also the best place for viewing. But, at a mere 13", having the screen 4 feet away and 3 feet above eye level makes gaming all but impossible without standing. However, my computer monitor is considerably larger and, of course, in a much better position for viewing the details needed to play modern games along with the occasional productive stuff." I know that the X-Box supposedly supports VGA out, but do you need an adapter for it? There were adapters available for Dreamcasts to output to VGA, and I'm not quite sure whether such things were relased for the PS2 or the Gamecube. Has anyone used such adaptors, if so, how have your experiences been?

"I remember a time when monitors used to include composite inputs, and my grandfather had his Nintendo (that's the original *8-bit* system) hooked up to his. But alas, those days are long gone. Does anyone else know of any hack or device that will allow me to hook a game console to my monitor? Barring this, I cannot justify the $300 for a system I can't enjoy, and I want to play Obi-Wan and Starfighter!"

Comments

Excellent Question....

[zpengo]

Many video cards these days have TV capabilities...it would be entirely possible to feed it the video line from a console (instead of, say, a VCR or antenna) and play it right on the monitor (and even record it, fiddle with it, etc.)

I've done this before, and had a reasonable amount of luck with it.

external tv-vga converter

[silicon_synapse]

There are several products that convert NTSC signals to VGA for display on your monitor. I have an external tv tuner I once had attatched to my monitor. Using that, I could attatch anything to my monitor that I could attatch to my tv. It's simple, universal among consoles, and requires no software setup.

PS2 VGA Box

[Ondo]

I've got a Redant PS/PS2 VGA Box from www.lik-sang.com, and I'm pretty happy with it. They also sell ones for Gamecube/N64, and generic ones as well. In recent headlines it has "VGA Box for the XBox console announced today", so that should be coming soon.

I'm pretty happy with mine. The advantage over a TV card is that you don't have to turn on your computer, which is significant if your computer makes as much noise as mine does. The disadvantage of at least the PS2 adapter is that it takes a memory card slot, so you can't copy stuff from one card to another while using it.

How I do it:

[Ieshan]

I use an ATI TV card in my College Dorm room, and it works great. I shoot the cable into my monitor, and can play video games thruogh the connector it has. It can record as well.

The picture is pretty darn good, all things considering. I can send you some screen shots if you like, my email is ieshan@aol.com. No, I don't actually use AOL.

I suggest doing this. Firstly, you can get rid of your little tv in favor of a cable-tv-on-your-comp, and secondly, you'll have a place to plug in your consoles.

BT848 cards

[nathanh]

I have a PSX hooked up to the composite input of a BT848 card (actually, a PixelView BT878). I use xawtv to display the composite input inside XFree86. This setup works rather well. I can play fullscreen or switch into windowed mode and IRC/browse at the same time.

There is some pixel aliasing caused by the capture/scaling process. It's not a big deal. I thought there would be frame jitter due to differences between the capture rate and my monitor refresh rate, but if there is any jitter then I can't see it.

Combined with some Loki games, wine, mame, scummvm, dosemu, and vice, I have a formidable number of games at my disposal.

Jam!!

[karnal]

I recently did a small amount of research for a cable/box to adapt the playstation/PS2 to my second monitor. I figured it'd be an easy quest -- I almost thought I'd just need a special cable for the playstations, since they seem to throw every signal under the sun out of the AV port on the back.

What I eventually did was search on Ebay, and 30$ later, I picked up a device called "Jam!!". This device takes either composite or S-Video inputs, and outputs them to a monitor. The coolest feature, though, is that you can loop your monitor through it, so that you can use your computer when you're not using the monitor for gaming (currently, I use my Jam!! box on my 2nd monitor, and I see no noticable difference in picture quality when I'm using it in pass-thru mode).

Plus, I got a free PS/PS2 a/v cable w/S-Video connectors, just for this box. If you're wanting something like this, I recommend this solution; it gives you a dedicated video out to your monitor, and doesn't require that you plug and unplug connectors if you want to still use the monitor on a regular computer.