Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Convenient, but not great. WS monitor users, read, September 21, 2007
My roommates and I decided that we would use my 22" monitor and buy a VGA box rather than buy a whole new tv for our game systems. While this was certainly MUCH more cost effective, on the whole we were a little less than impressed.
Pros:
VERY convenient - rather than unplugging and plugging systems to our old TV with only one input, this allows you to hook up 4 systems via composite, and one via VGA (I pass through my 360 in this way and it looks great). Also, all the sound is output through one 1/8" plug so we don't need to switch the speakers either. (Note: If you're using a VGA enabled system like we did, you will have to hook up your speakers in a different way for this system as there are no audio inputs next to the VGA port. Fortunately my speakers have both an auxiliary input and a standard 1/8" plug) Obviously this is functionality that you would expect out of a receiver, but for college students without such a thing, this was a blessing.
Colors are very bright and vibrant, at least compared to the 20 year old TV we used to play on.
Cons:
With my monitor at least, there was no real way to display the image correctly. The box outputs at 800x600 but I have a 16:10 monitor that thinks that all inputs should full the screen. As such, by default everything is a stretched out mess. There is a way I discovered in the manual menus to shrink the image horizontally, but this introduces vertical banding and it's not very pleasant to look at. While the composite video output is very soft and blurry (particularly so with a PS2, not so bad for Wii/GC), the Xbox 360 passed through looks sharp as a tack.
All in all it is not an ideal solution, especially if you are looking to use a widescreen monitor to play standard def consoles on. I was lucky that my monitor gave me some wiggle room in squishing it back to 4:3, but otherwise I would have been SOL.
In hind sight, we probably would have put the $X this cost towards a TV/receiver option, but it wasn't worth the hassle it would have taken to return it and all the shipping costs it would entail.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good product, especially for the price, but not amazing, November 22, 2008
I bought it to use my N64 (W00t, retro gaming!)on my monitor, since I don't own a TV. It has four mini RCA inputs (Standard DVD player and console outputs, one video and two audio) and one VGA input- one 1/8th inch audio (standard for headphones/speakers) out and one VGA out. It has two other features, one button to change the resolution and a button for each input to change the input selection. The resolution settings are 640x480@60Hz, 640x480@75Hz, 800x600@60Hz, 800x600@75Hz, and 1024x768@60Hz. (I don't know why there isn't a 1024x768@75Hz option, maybe that's just too much demand on the machine.) If that's mumbo jumbo to you, just press the "RESOLUTION" button on the front repeatedly until you're happy with how your picture looks.
It's much cheaper than most mini RCA to VGA converters. I was told to expect about $100, and that is what I found for most of them, which seemed absurd to me. I think you will agree that this is a much happier price. I can have my N64, Dreamcast, Cube, and DVD player all hooked up to the same box and switch between them all by pressing their respective buttons, which is much quicker than swapping out cords.
But all is not happy. The picture's quality is noticeably reduced. The color is a bit off, and it seems a bit blurred as well, but that might be because I'm used to play my N64 games from further away on a TV much larger than my monitor, which might have made the image look sharper. You definitely do not want to hook up your XBox 360 or PS3 through this thing. I mostly play old video games, and you have to accept that the graphics suck anyway, so no big deal for me. Interestingly, I have noticed more of a problem with with color in Zelda than in Perfect Dark, and more of a problem with blurriness in Perfect Dark than in Zelda. I attribute the extra blurriness to more motion in the fast moving first-person shooter Perfect Dark and concentrating on other things and so not noticing the color being off. Where as in Zelda, I'm wandering around and taking my time to figure stuff out, so I notice the color being wrong (everything seems a bit more red, which is especially odd since I'm in the fire dungeon right now) but I'm not moving quickly enough to really notice the image blur.
Also, the resolution settings are not saved for each input, which is why I wouldn't plug my computer into this box if I could help it. I don't know for sure, maybe it doesn't mess with you VGA in, but I was happy that I use DVI for my computer, and so didn't have to try the little experiment. (So all of my mini-RCA things plug into my box which plugs into my monitor VIA a VGA cable, but my computer plugs into my monitor via my DVI cable, so to switch between my computer and my VGA converter box I just switch my input on my monitor.)
Because the resolution settings aren't saved, you'd have to manually change the resolution when you go from a N64, which likes a very low resolution, to a GameCube (Or any other newer console besides the 360 or PS3) which prefers a higher resolution. You could certainly get by without changing the resolution, but the picture really looks significantly better when at its proper resolution. (On a side note, if you want to see was Gears of War looks like at 640x480, this is how you could find out.)
As to the audio, this box adds a hum to it. It's really quiet, so if you're playing video games you'll only hear it during loading screens. Also, it's not a steady tone, or that "CHHHHH" sound that is annoying at any volume that you hear when your television's trying to get a station but can't. It's got a low, gentle oscillating up-down to it, which I actually find rather pleasant. Makes loading screens more interesting for me. =D
I would buy it again for what I am doing, but if I were into PS3 or Xbox 360 gaming, or I had a Wii and was a real Nazi about picture quality, I would probably go for something a little higher-end.
Pros:
Affordable!
4 mini RCA inputs
Easily change resolution
Easily change input
VGA input
Comes with a VGA cable ( I already have a half dozen of these laying around, so I opened the box and went, "Ohhhhhh, great.")
Might be pro or con: Whether or not the box messes with your resolution settings for the VGA input. The small instructions sheet doesn't say, and I'm too lazy to figure it out. (If you really must know, shoot me a message. =D )
Cons:
Picture quality diminished a bit
Resolution settings not saved for different inputs
Some might find audio hum annoying
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Does the job well, September 20, 2008
I don't know why people review this item as 'bad' because it didn't reach the expectations of high def. on something that uses RCA CABLES AS INPUTS.
It DOES do the job: output the video signal to your pc monitor.
output audio to your sound system (or headphones!!!!)
it has a 5 way selector so that you can choose what you're gonna output to the display.
Overall, good. It did the job folks...
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