Generic Computer Woes...

[Cyrus]

Well either I'm blind and imagining things or the S-Video really does have a better picture after all, just not by much. I got a universal S-Video/Composite cable from that GameStop/EB Games store SNCube suggested for $17 after taxes.

Was it worth the effort? Probably not, but this is as close as I can get to taking quality screenshots and recording half decent videos of PS2 games. The biggest problem is still that the stupid software of the GameBridge takes screenshots in 16:9 format so if your game is set to standard 4:3 the picture ends up screwed up. I don't know how many games have that option of widescreen 16:9 ratio but at least SC3 does.

[sweener2001]

on a pc through a tuner card, the s-video will only look slightly less crappy than composite on a television. but s-video on an actual set is just great looking.

i don't know how much these things cost, but there are boxes that you can plug your console and monitor into, and you can play your playstation directly on the monitor, without going through a card. and i think the nicer ones even let you switch straight to the pc without unplugging anything. i have no experience with these boxes, but i hear that they're pretty neat.

[Cyrus]

on a pc through a tuner card, the s-video will only look slightly less crappy than composite on a television. but s-video on an actual set is just great looking.

i don't know how much these things cost, but there are boxes that you can plug your console and monitor into, and you can play your playstation directly on the monitor, without going through a card. and i think the nicer ones even let you switch straight to the pc without unplugging anything. i have no experience with these boxes, but i hear that they're pretty neat.

Well the picture from more than 1 foot away is just fine with S-Video on a monitor, it's hard to tell what's wrong (what appears to be diagonal scanlines ). The GameBridge tuner was ~$45 and the cable was ~$17 so for ~$62 that's not bad I suppose because the next video card I get is unlikely to have any extra features anyway, this thing can carry over assuming it's shitty drivers work in Vista.

One thing I wanted to ask though, the PS2 cables do work on the PS3, right?

On a side note PCSX2 can supposedly emulate SC2 now but not 3... hurray? Oh well, it would probably take a 5GHz Core 2 Duo with dual GeForce 8800GTX cards and 4GBs of RAM to emulate it at full speed anyway. -_-'

[snkcube]

One thing I wanted to ask though, the PS2 cables do work on the PS3, right?

Yes they should. As I posted earlier, both use the same AV output.

[Gil_Hamilton]

i don't know how much these things cost, but there are boxes that you can plug your console and monitor into, and you can play your playstation directly on the monitor, without going through a card.

Depends on the box. The good ones cost a good bit of cash. The bad ones don't, but they aren't nearly as pretty either.

[Ichinisan]

It's an AIW Radeon X800XT, the most powerful All-In-Wonder video card availible for AGP AFAIK so that's what I went with...

Power has very little to do with TV tuner lag.

I know Adaptec sells one called the GameBridge that explicitly targets people wanting to play console games on their PCs(actually 2, the GameBridge TV has an actual tuner, the plain GameBridge is AV inputs only). It's supposed to be pretty good about lag(obviously), but I can't personally speak for it.

I have several of each model. There is no delay unless your computer can't handle full-speed USB2.0. The audio, however, suffers. It warbles frequently as if there's not enough USB bandwidth for both video and audio. I just use some adapters to route the audio to the line-in audio port on my computer and bypass the Gamebridge for audio.

Thanks a million for pointing out that product, it turns out a nearby store has a lot of those in stock so I'm probably going to go pick one up today but I don't know if I should get the one that just takes console input or the one which is a full TV tuner:

http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.ph ... &id=CC.344

$23 for just console and $40 for a TV tuner with it. The thing is if it doesn't increase the video quality and only gets rid of lag I probably don't need the TV tuner but then again I won't know unless I buy it.

I got the tuner version for $25 from Outpost.com/Frys Electronics...but now it doesn't show up. I purchased more of them from Woot! for $15. Awesome price for a tuner with remote, even if it does require a fast PC and has audio issues.

Frys/Outpost still has the non-tuner version for less than $10:
http://shop1.outpost.com/product/494560 ... IN_RSLT_PG

On a side note I spoke to someone who works for ATI and he says the 1 second lag thing is a known problem and is standard on the All-In-Wonder cards. All the more reason to buy that GameBridge TV tuner. Now I just need to find a store which sells PS2 S-Video cables.

Fixing your DMA issue will probably help with the lag, but the image quality will still be shit. S-Video will also look like shit on an ATI AIW, though still noticably better than composite.

i don't know how much these things cost, but there are boxes that you can plug your console and monitor into, and you can play your playstation directly on the monitor, without going through a card. and i think the nicer ones even let you switch straight to the pc without unplugging anything. i have no experience with these boxes, but i hear that they're pretty neat.

I purchased a "Jam!" device on eBay new and sealed. It was first revealed at E3 and won all kinds of "best new product" awards. They charged WAY too much for it at first and promised "superb" picture quality for game consoles connected to a VGA monitor. I'm glad I didn't pay the MSRP from years before. It looked like COMPLETE ASS. It was MUCH worse than any ATI tuner that I had tried before. It also degraded the pass-through VGA signal significantly. I never connected it again.

EDIT: Did I mention how much I HATE it's software?! It makes me want to kill something, imagine how you would want TV tuner software to be, this is the opposite of that. Hell, it doesn't even have any directory options and doesn't state which directory your files or stored and you can't access them through it's main program. You have to randomly guess where the snapshots/videos are.

I know exactly what you mean. Even channels are RE-NUMBERED and you have NO IDEA which channel is on which number. I've had limited success getting the tuner to work with other programs.

Well either I'm blind and imagining things or the S-Video really does have a better picture after all, just not by much. I got a universal S-Video/Composite cable from that GameStop/EB Games store SNCube suggested for $17 after taxes.

There are quality adjustments. Yours is probably still set to "smooth" instead of "sharp".

[Cyrus]

DMA is on, the stupid ATI program just doesn't detect it.

Anyway, how can I set the quality to sharp?

Also I found that there is a directory option for videos but there doesn't seem to be one for pictures. It's under the colour options which can be accessed from a file called "HomeTheaterConfig.exe" which can be found in C:\Program Files\InterVideo\Home Theater, not in the Adaptec folder.