Adding S-Video input on an Arcade Monitor

[homeworkman]

Hi, I live in Canada

I have a 25" arcade monitor in my arcade cabinet.  

I have tried using the rgb and the sync wires from the arcade monitor and made a VGA cable to hook up to the computer's video card (ATI Radeon 9700 Pro) and that works.  But now I am sick and tired of doing it this way and now I want to use my video card's s-video port for displaying instead of using the vga port.

I am wondering if it is possble to actually add an S-video input on the arcade monitor??  What is needed to do it?

It would be nice to play PS2, Gamecube and watch Directv on the arcade monitor.  I just wish there was some way I can "modify" the arcade monitor to accept S-video inputs.

Any help is appreciated, thanks for reading.



 

[crashwg]

See this thread...
http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=4;action=display;threadid=15537

[Minwah]

I'm sure you have your reasons, and I'm not sure what 'Directv' is, but I don't know why you want to do this...S-Video is just AWFUL compared to RGB.

You've done some of the hard work wiring up your VGA > RGB lead, why not just do the same for your GameCube and PS2 (& Directv if possible), and enjoy RGB quality for everything!?

[JoeB]

I don't think you'd be very happy with the output from your DirectTV.

SVideo has twice the number of lines as a regular video input (480 lines vs 240).  Your arcade monitor can only display ~240 lines or so.. so the quality and sharpness will not be there.

The reason people use arcade monitors is because the picture producted looks like the original (i.e. able to see the pixels that make up the picture).  TV on the other hand, you're trying to get rid of this! (hence SVideo, components, HDTV, etc).

[StephenH]

This might do the job:

http://www.extron.com/product/product.asp?id=qsd204&subtype=36

[Silver]

@homeworkman:

Just a quick question about your setup. I presume your VGA hack was simply a connect the r,g,b, and syncs effort: does this mean you could use your Radion 9700 with arcadeos? or is there some other software than can get it to display on an arcade monitor?

Cheers,

[PacManFan]

You need an Svideo or composite to RGB converter. They are called NTSC to RGB converters, and they pop up on ebay every once in a while.

-PMF

[homeworkman]

@homeworkman:

Just a quick question about your setup. I presume your VGA hack was simply a connect the r,g,b, and syncs effort: does this mean you could use your Radion 9700 with arcadeos? or is there some other software than can get it to display on an arcade monitor?

Cheers,

Yes, I did get arcade OS to display up on the arcade monitor with my VGA hack and Radion 9700 by using the arcade monitor or ntsc option (I forgot how they call it???) from your config file.  But my problem was configuring other things, like my sound cards and controllers refuse to work, and also I could not get any games to run.  Because I get that VESA mode not supported crap.  My brains hurt trying to figure it out any longer.

I used this other software called "Power Strip" which makes it so you can navigate in windows on the arcade monitor and you can use mame 32 or run other windows programs like browsing the web.  But for me occaisionally it reverts back automatically to 31 KHz horizontal settings after an hour or less and everything goes nuts.  Also usually at random I will get split screens and garbled images.  I had problems making it stable.  but then again that's just me, many people had no problems with theirs.  I had my own reasons and that is why i wanted to go the S-Video input route and try to use the S-video port on my Radion 9700 card rather than the VGA.