trouble with VGA to RCA converter box

[JOHN HOWARD]

I recently received a VGA to RCA converter box after waiting 4 weeks for it to arrive (living in Australia has some downsides) just like the one in the picture. after wanting to test it out and setting it up, the second picture shows what I see  the box has 2 switches on the side that are for switching the converter box from NTSC to PAL and vice versa. no matter what the positions of said switches though, the image is ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---, or even worse talking to the company I purchased it from want me to send it back (which would be time consuming and expensive) so does anyone have any experience in this matter? I have also tried the converter box on 3 seperate TV's all with the same result 

[adder]

i have one of those here also, and they are awful.

you are going to have to admit defeat and just bin it. they are very cheap to buy for a reason, as you have found out.

and another problem with those things apart from the awful picture quality, is if you try to run them inbetween eg. a pc and a tv, trying to run eg. mame games, the games wont run smoothly (trying to use vsync, triple buffer, or anything wont help). that little convertor box just cant cope keeping everything running smoothly on the fly, even if you have the pc, that video device, the mame game, and the tv all set at 60hz exactly with vsync or triple buffer etc all turned on.. the video still jumps/skips frames here and there, and we all know how much the mame experience is ruined when the games dont run smooth as they should.

smash it to pieces as i have done to mine.

[JOHN HOWARD]

ok thats a kick in the pants any recommendations on what to use to get the image from my PC to the TV?

[adder]

ok thats a kick in the pants any recommendations on what to use to get the image from my PC to the TV?

welcome to my world and why i am here at these forums

it's a tricky question as there are lots of ways to achieve this goal, but it depends on the following:

(by the way if u are not into mame u might as well stop reading now )

1. how fussy you are regarding final picture quality
2. how much money you are willing to spend
3. how good you are with setting up/working on video issues (both hardware and software)
4. how much work you are willing to put in to learn and experiment etc

i think we all have our opinion of what is our ultimate goal. eg. for many people on this forum who seek perfection, the ultimate goal (i imagine) is to output an rgb signal (from the 15pin vga port) of a pc/laptop into a real crt arcade monitor, via some kind of vga to arcade monitor cable (probably homemade, might need some kind of video amplification also, cant remember), with the ability to display every possible video mode in mame (which is a huge list eg. 240x240@57hz, 256x240@60hz, and another 40 lines like this etc), everything displayed native, perfectly, no stretching or extra video processing by mame or any additional hardware, etc). so to use all these modes you need to research the program called soft15khz or similar 'modelines' software... or alternatively use an arcadevga video card i think which eliminates the need for soft15khz (i think)

anyway this isnt my goal personally, im just going to use a regular 60hz ntsc tv, regular 15pin vga out port from a pc, a vga to rgb scart cable (home made using diagrams on the internet), and use mameuifx set up in a way which forces every mame game to run at 60hz, but perfectly smoothly with no juddering/choppy gfx or sound problems. i will also use just one modeline with soft15khz (which will be something like 640x480) and then just use hardware stretch in mame (preserving game aspect ratio of course).. every game in mameuifx i play will be loaded in this way. this might sound like garbage but i have tried this experiment already using an svideo cable in the past and the games (in my opinion) look and run awesome (you cant see any visible stretching of the picture going on due to mame hardware stretch/bilinear filter/bitmap prescale, etc) and since everything is forced to run at 60hz and im using a 60hz tv, we have perfect gameplay smoothness (i turn on vsync/triple buffer of course...)

so anyway thats just an example of my goal, and everyone elses goal will probably be different/unique on some way

to reach your goal u need to get a plan of action, eg. if your budget is 'unlimited' i would simply say 'get a new crt arcade monitor which has a 15-pin vga input port on it' .. then u can play everything perfectly with nothing more than any pc/laptop, a simple vga cable, and any version of mame with probably almost default settings. if you dont want to spend hundreds of dollars on a new modern vga compatible arcade monitor then you need to get a plan going of how to reach your goal. i suppose in the end it all comes to how bad do u want it? (then it's just a matter of time, and never giving up until you get what u want (welcome to my world )

note: when i do eventually reach my goal i will probably make a tutorial and post it here on this forum, including exact mameuifx settings and so on. it will end up as a kind of tutorial you could say (step by step hopefully) for people who dont care about a true, perfect, pixel for pixel arcade image, but want second best (which in my opinion will be what my method will give). it will be for people who dont care that galaxian will be running at 60hz instead of 61 hz (but still perfectly smoothly). or mortal kombat will be running at 60hz instead of 55hz... again, still perfectly smooth of course). it will also have the advantage of being easy (just one modeline (probably 640x480@60hz) to set up and use instead of 40+) and cheap to set up (just need any laptop or pc with a 15pin vga out port, which can run soft15khz, a vga to rgb scart cable, and a regular crt tv which supports 60hz ntsc and rgb in on the scart port (most do)

(note i still have months of work ahead of me though so i dont think the tutorial will be avail until the end of the year).

[JOHN HOWARD]

Sounds like we want the same thing, I'm already in $50 into a rather large (60cm) CRT TV so I don't want to swap to a LCD, so looks like I'll be waiting for tutorial.  I'm on my placement for mech engineering bach, so drop me a line if you need a hand with any mechanical or structural components on your cab, also happy to help with any plans/ CAD drawings you may need