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HDMI to VGA adapter for VGA arcade monitor?

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ahofle:
I'm more concerned about CRT arcade monitors going away in the next couple years than I am with the VGA ports on laptops.  Why not just use a desktop if it comes down to that?  :dunno

Shoegazer:
Bender: Wow, genius!  That looks like a great solution.  I wonder, though, if it would allow me to take advantage of my NVIDIA graphics card for video processing, and still connect through the adapter?  Otherwise I would think many games would run slowly.  I suspect this is basically a low-end 2D graphics card with limited capabilities and not much power other than to render an image.  Still, it's nice to know there are alternatives available.

Blanka: That was totally my bad.  I misread what you typed (sorry!).  You are right, s-video and DVI (and VGA for that matter) are on their way out, due to space and money issues.  Hence my concern.

Ahofle: I would never use a desktop machine inside my cabinet - it's just not economical for me.  I own one computer (my notebook), which I use to pay bills, surf the web etc. (while on travel or in my office using the notebook screen), watch HD movies and play emulated console games (using the HDMI port to my projector), and play arcade games in my cabinet (using the VGA port to my arcade monitor).  It fits perfectly inside my keyboard shelf in the cabinet, with room to spare, and it takes literally about 3 seconds to plug in and get to MAME.  This way, I only have to upgrade one machine every two years or so, and all my solutions benefit from the new power.  It's nice to be able to always have the latest technology for use with MAME.  ;)

With that said, I'm also concerned that VGA monitors will by dying off, though as much as I hate to say it, it may be worth the sacrifice to install a flatpanel in a cabinet.  I could design a smaller cabinet, which would be more practical for home use, and the image would be capable of much higher resolution than my current 1024x768 arcade monitor (so vector games and arcade art would be much sharper and you could actually READ the instruction cards).  ;)  It would also allow for HDMI, which would solve the above port problem.  The key is in finding a 27" 4:3 flatpanel monitor, which I don't think exists today - unless someone here knows of one.

Shoegazer

Shoegazer

Bender:
if you are really desperate and $ is no issue there are some digital to analog converters out there
but I think there $200-500

by the way what laptop would you suggest for a high end mame machine?
I'm working on a bartop and looking for a laptop to put in it

Shoegazer:
Bender: Are you sure D-A converters exist for such a purpose?  I talked to a guy from a cabling/adapter company a few days ago who said it was impossible to convert a digital signal from your laptop for use with a VGA monitor, without using a VGA port.  Maybe he's wrong?

I use the Dell XPS M1530, with the T9300 (2.5ghz) CPU, as seen here:

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=dydwhf1&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&kc=productdetails~xpsnb_m1530

I'm very happy with this system - it's incredibly fast, light and small, and is one of the only 15" notebooks with a decent graphics card (NVIDIA 8600GT).  It supports next-gen technologies like a built-in *wireless* USB radio, LED-backlit screen and a fingerprint scanner.  Plus it just looks cool.  With Vista64/MAME64 it runs some of the more taxing MAME games at playable speeds, such as Mace: The Dark Age, and California Speed.  This is a very popular system from what I understand due to its high price/performance ratio.  Dell clearly hit this one out of the park.

Hope it helps.

Shoegazer

borg07of09:
im not sure if this is what your looking for but you can check it out:

http://www.curtpalme.com/HDFury2.shtm

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