Playing consoles on your PC - advice

[Bramsworth]

I really want to use this PC screen for my consoles, since the TV is in another room and it's used too often to be convenient for me to take over when I want to use it. Does anybody play their systems on their PC, and if so, what do you use?

I want something that's cheap yet is great quality. I've looked around and found lots of adapter boxes, but I'm still confused what's for what. All I can say is I've got systems from Genesis up to Dreamcast that all use AV cables, and I want to play them on my PC screen.

Any recommendations?

[Knuckle Duster]

You're probably looking for a VGA box depending on the monitor's input. As to any good ones, I don't personally use them so I can't recommend any.

PC's aren't screens, unless you're looking at all-in-one's which aren't very common outside of Apple's iMac line. Playing 'Consoles on a PC' had me expecting emulation questions.

[MN12BIRD]

Depends on your monitor. You didn't mention if it was a CRT or a modern LCD? If it's a modern LCD it most likely has DVI on it witch is similar to HDMI and can be adapted with a simple and cheap adapter. But then again that's only good for modern consoles with HDMI like the PS3 and once again you said you want to use older consoles. Some monitors have built in TV's or AV inputs but it's rare.

If you want to play older consoles on a PC monitor you're going to need a VGA box to convert composite or S-Video to VGA/RGB and you can get those online but I don't know how well "cheap and great quality" go together when your talking about these. I mean you can get cheap ones for $40 on EBAY but how good can they really be?

[Bramsworth]

I guess the "cheap" part is irrelevant in this case, I mostly just need to know what's some of or one of the best products for this. As far as cheap goes I was hoping on finding something on eBay that is being sold for less than its retail value :)

It's an LCD screen. I probably should look back there and see what connections it says it has. I might be going for a TV card also, it's very uncertain, but I've been recommended elsewhere to possibly go that route too. Just narrowing down which is the best and then finding one for a good deal is tricky.

[MN12BIRD]

Just be careful with the TV tuner cards. Many older ones with no hardware MPEG encoders have no lag so you can game on them BUT some of them might not work in Vista or Windows 7. If you're using XP you're pretty much safe with any of them BUT most newer models including those from both Hauppauge and ATi have hardware MPEG encoding and introduce about 1 second of lag making game play absolutely impossible. You can get around it with software hacks but sometimes they aren't stable and other times they only reduce the lag but don't completely eliminate it. The hardware MPEG encoding is great for HTPC guys because they can record high quality HD without taking up loads of hard drive space, while watching another program and all this with almost no CPU usage. The old software ones hit the CPU up pretty hard when you record. So that's great for them but it sucks for people who want to game over them.

Most of the cheap USB ones won't have hardware MPEG encoding (because they are cheap!) but once again they might not work in Vista or 64-bit OS and they might not work with older Sega machines.

That's the other problem with many TV Tuners. They don't like the way Sega Master System, Saturn and Genesis output video. I forget why exactly but it might have to do with overscan. My old USB one worked great with every AV console I had (NES, SNES, N64, Dreamcast, 3DO etc etc etc) but put an SMS or Genesis on there and it was a black and white, jumbled mess. This was a common problem I've seen with many of the cheaper TV Tuners. My ATi 650 picks them up fine (actually there is a little vibration in the bottom 1/4 of the screen) but it has the lag so I can't game directly through it.

Generally speaking I would NOT recommend a TV Tuner if you don't want to record on the PC. Just for simple viewing and playing it's a horrible idea.

[j_factor]

Assuming your monitor can take DVI...

http://i46.tinypic.com/119rxo4.jpg

http://i48.tinypic.com/29xgos1.jpg

http://i46.tinypic.com/2yvm9mx.jpg

[tz101]

Also, realize that in making the switch to VGA or LCD monitor you are eliminating the possibility of playing any light gun games.

[FoxHound]

Instead of going through all that stuff with converters..why not just but a CRT TV from a resale shop like goodwill or someone on craigslist and you got a TV all for yourself for the systems.

Just saying...