VGA -> Scart (1 Viewer)

[roccster]

I read in some posts here that a VGA-Scart cable would improve my picture quality on my Sony Trinitron TV. The question is: where can I find one? Im living in sweden so some where in Europe would be great.

brgds

/ Richard

 

[Aquarius]

Hi,
if your are able to make some soldering, it is very easy to create such a cable on your own. The cable is very easy, something perhaps a bit fiddlling but not too complicate.

But you also get the cable on EBAY. At least in EBAY- Germany, there is one guy constantly selling these cables for around 20€ . If you're interested, I can figure out.

Expect more problems with the adaptations of your VGA to the TV. You may have to use additional software like PowerStrip.

Here are some links that may help:

http://ryoandr.free.fr/english.html
http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136811
http://www.nada.kth.se/~feldt/vgascart/tv.html


Good luck !


Regards
/Gerd

 

[chenks]

i have one... and they only work with ATI cards apparently (they say that no other card outputs RGB via the vga port)

you can get the cables on ebay, they are about £25.

you need to use powerstrip to set the correct timings for your TV, it's a bit "hit or miss" really, depending on the make/model of the TV.

 

[mPod]

moved to hardware support

 

[FlipGer]

Hi,

I have one for my ATi card and it is working very well!

There is also a description for nVidia cards. More soldering is needed for those cards:
http://www.myhtpc.de/showtopic.php?threadid=5482 (german!!!)

Flip.

 

[bigj]

All vga is RGB.
The issue is that your card must be able to produce interlaced output.
Even better is if the card also will produce the composite sync, but if it doesn't it's possible to generate this in the cable by combining H+V syncs.

ATI cards will do both interlaced+composite sync, and using powerstrip it's possible to set up the exact required timing (for PAL) - so they are perfect.


I see this on CPC website:
<url>http://cpc.farnell.com/jsp/endecaSearch/partDetail.jsp?SKU=AV08270><\url>
but those no info about wiring so can't say if it'll work.

 

[andreaswith]

On the norwegian web-page hardware.no is a guide for making a htpc mentioning the vga->scart cable and settings in powerstrip:

http://www.hardware.no/guider/multimedia/htpc_trinn_for_trinn_-_del_8/16358/7

And the cable mentioned in the article is found on:

http://av-connection.com/?PNo=RADEONRGB&PVer=0&ML1=1&ML2=7&ML3=38&ML4=106

I havent tried this setup myself, but I hopefully will soon...

 

[wardrobe]

i just got mine but im going to sell it on ebay, the TV picture is good but anything that has a single pixel wide horizonal line flickers and gives the Wife a headache such as the skins and windows desktop

Not all games that i play on the HTPC will run at the res i use (720x576) thus the picture disappears when the Res changes (this might be sorted by having the game run in 640x480 and creating another powerstrip profile for it.

i think my problems are due to my turn of the century TV though rather than the cable/powerstrip.

if you dont use it for games and find a nice skin that doesnt have single lines(if your TV cant handle them like mine) then its excellent.

as ive told the mrs though "ive tried my best with a cheap VGA-SCART cable and it gave you a headache......so we'll have to get that Samsung HD LCD TV"

 

[bigj]

The single line 'twitter' is normal - since you are display 1/2 screen in one 50hz frame and the other 1/2 in the next. (1/2 ==> every other line, so in one of those frames your single line pixels aren't displayed!)

All skins *should* be designed without any single line elements - unfortunately many people run mediaportal on a progressive/non-interlaced display - PC CRT or LCD with deinterlacing done by their codec - so don't appreciate the nature of this problem (or other things like overscan!.)

Regular settop boxes/vcrs etc all have interfaces designed to deal with these issues.

Also, some hardware/interfaces - this includes the svideo out on ATI cards - have circuits that do inter-line filtering ('anti-twitter') to avoid this problem - look for the 'sharpness' slider -that's one reason why svideo out is more 'blured' than RGB->SCART and ironically it's that reason why people want RGB->SCART instead of svideo... but then you get twitter.... I guess you must just choose your poison....

Personally I find BlueTwo fine in most cases for twitter, I really dislike deinterlacing and the svideo out of the ATI9700 card I have (doesn't appear to do 576 lines so => I must deinterlace and scale video). For me bob+RGB is perfect. Better than my DVB-T STB.