Customer Reviews

Wii/PS3 VGA HDTV AV Cable

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

GENERAL:

(PLEASE NOTE: this review is for the cable while using a PS3, I did not have a wii to test it with)

I bought this because I am deployed and I didnt want to have to buy an hdtv when I already have a 19' monitor I use for my laptop. I was pleasantly suprised at all the subtle features included with this cable. It came with a gender adapter for the cable which was a lifesaver for me because I didnt want to have to unplug the cable everytime I switched between my PS3 and Laptop. Also notable is the extension cables for the audio which even includes a headphone jack! (brilliant inclusion as far as im concerned because I can play my PS3 without waking people up!) And now the bad parts: Right away my biggest peeve was the installation. It requires you to hook the cable to a tv and your pc monitor silmantaneously when you first install it. This is frustrating mainly because they give you very little cable slack between the av plug and the vga plug. I was forced to hold the tv up with one hand and adjust the settings because I couldnt make the cords reach between the tv and monitor otherwise. And now the Ugly: Theoretically this adapter can support all the way up to 1080P. But because it is only a cable and it doesnt have its own dedicated box your images look a little washed out, the picture was also dark on both monitors I tried even after I adjusted brightness and contrast, and worst of all you have to adjust the screen with your monitor controls to make the image fit properly... something you will be doing almost every time you insert a different game or movie. 720p Gave me the best results on the two monitors I tried this cable with. (19 and 21 inch lcd monitors)

PROS:
-Cheap Solution For a Hi-Def Experience
-99% Artifact Free Image
-Inclusion of gender adapter was a nice courtesy
-Headphone jack a much appreciated add-on
-Great Value Considering you can use this for PS3 and WII

CONS:
-Image appears a little washed out, Though still noticeably improved over the regular AV cable.
-Lack of Dedicated box means you will be rescaling the image manually...often...
-Initial setup is clunky and frustrating.
-Even after adjusting you are sometimes forced to let parts of the screen be cut off.


OVERALL:

I was slightly dissapointed with the overall package. I have owned a vga adapter for Dreamcast as Well as XBX360 and both would beat the snot out of this cable. The fact that I had to manually adjust my picture every time it changed resolutions wasnt just frustrating but seemed ridiculous to me. However on the same token I am enjoying my ps3 games in high def without having to spend moolah on an hdtv. With this cable it was easy for me to switch between my stereo system or a pair of headphones which is convenient. Overall it was a decent buy for the price, but I hope some other company (or god forbid Sony themselves!) will step up and release something better in the future. Get it if you cant afford an hdtv or are short on space, etc. But if you have an hdtv handy, just spring for the official Sony Component Cables, youll be much happier I promise.

Note this cable works to perfection for I have one etc... When using it for PS3 go to display settings and select D-terminal so you can get 720p or higher display. I would recommend to stay at 720p for 1080 i and p is not suited for a analog connection. For the Wii it works wonders just like using a regular component cable for the system. All you have to do with Wii is just hook it up correctly and it should automatically be in 480p. This device is good for consumers who would like to use their PC monitors for a high-res picture.


Pros:
Works with any PC monitor that has a VGA male input. (note that this vga cable has a female output)
Can get 720p for PS3 and 480p with Wii with no hassle
Great Picture

Cons:
Sometimes when playing certain Wii games like Call of Duty World at War and Mario Kart the screen may go black when you get killed/Hit by a explosion
Image may distort if trying to do full HD on a monitor
you may have to adjust your monitor's screen to get the right picture.

SUMMARY:
Purchased this cable to avoid buying a tv so that I could play a Wii. Tried first on an old generic lcd monitor, and had many problems adjusting the image location on the screen. Factory reset finally centered the image, but image was still dim with full brightness and contrast.

Next tried on my main monitor, a Samsung 2253LW. Looked excellent. Audio connectors are short, but included it an extension (female rca to FEMALE 1/8 inch.) Could not get widescreen mode to show up as widescreen, input showed up as a squished widescreen image, this is more likely an signal/monitor-issue than a cable-issue. One flaw is during Mario Kart Wii, whenever someone uses the lighting weapon, the screen goes black, as if the cable cant deal with the flashing. Other than that no problems.

IN SUMMARY:
Pros:
Works well over on a newer, higher end monitor. No other options for vga input at this price. Picture clear, bugs don't disable enjoyable play.

Cons: If you plan to plug the audio through your computer's sound card, you will need an adapter (female rca to male 1/8".) Screen goes black during Mario Kart when lighting weapon is used (suspect flashing disagrees with the cable.)

Overall works well with a new monitor if you can deal with some minor bugs, if you don't have space or money for the tv, and have a nicer monitor I would recommend it.

First I want to say that this cable came with an extra headphone adapter cable, that is not shown in the picture. So EVERYTHING you need is in the box! Be warned, that you should use headphones that have volume control built into them because there will not be a way to adjust the volume without it.

Setting up for the Wii to work with the VGA cable took a couple of steps that could be a hassle for some, however this a Wii setup issue and has NOTHING to do with the cable. The directions are printed on the back and are easy to follow so Im not sure why people are having such a hard time with using this cable.

You must change an option in the Wii settings to get the Wii to display properly out of the VGA portion of the cable. Unfortunately in order for this option to be selectable, the VGA cable must be connected to something as well. Thankfully, I have a TV downstairs that has a "VGA" input, so I connected my Wii to the TV with the Green, Red & yellow heads and also connected the VGA head to the same TV. Powered up the Wii, went to settings,selected the VGA option, I don't remember the exact wording, and then the screen went dark. This indicated to me that the Wii had successfully switched to the "VGA" output mode. I powered down the Wii and it works PERFECTLY on my LCD monitor upstairs.

Shipping was fast and the packaging was top quality.

I wanted to connect a PS3 to a projector that only had a VGA RGB connector. This cable did the trick. It allowed me to connect the PS3 and set the resolution to 720p (max for the projector). These instructions were very helpful:
Instructions for PS3-to-VGA

1. Connect the PS3 AV plug to the PS3 AV MULTIOUT port
2. Connect the VGA plug to the Monitor.
* If you do not see you PS3 at startup you must connect to a TV for a one-time setup
o Connect the Green RCA connection to the Video In connection on a TV
o Connect and start the PS3 console. A black and white image will appear on the TV which you can use to complete the setup
3. With a PS3 controller, navigate through and change the settings as marked below:
* Settings
* Display Settings
* Video Output Settings
* Component/D-Terminal
* Change and press Enter to the next step
* Select 480P, 720P, 1080I and/or 1080P and press right on the D-Pad
4. You should see the video on your computer monitor. Make sure to confirm your settings within 30 seconds or the video settings will revert to their previous values.
5. Set your audio output port to AV Multi
6. Confirm your settings

We purchased this cable to use a Wii with an LCD monitor (without a TV). The cable does indeed do that, and does it well, but there were two caveats.
1. You need a television to change the setting to use the monitor. So for about two minutes when you first start up, a television is required. No a problem for most households, but we don't have one!
2. It's a challenging juggle when you first set up to have the Wii, the television, and the monitor all close enough together and at the right height to be connected all the the same time for the first couple of minutes.

It was worth it in the end, and it works just as advertised.

If you need another confirmation if this will work with the Wii, it worked on mine!

Before checking Amazon, I checked with Best Buy, Fry's, and Gamestop. They all said there is no such cable for this. So I'm so glad this thing worked!

Anyway, I initially thought it wasn't going to work. I had to change the video settings on the Wii to 480p (EDTV), which was initially disabled.

Then I had to carefully re-read the instruction sheet to know what to do to enable the settings. After that, it worked on my VGA monitor flawlessly!

Hope this helps.

Let me start off by saying this thing DOES work as advertised, you have to read the instructions, I'll explain more later. I used to have an xbox 360, just sold it last week to pick up a ps3 because most of my friends have ps3's. Microsoft has an official HD to VGA cable that you can buy anywhere xbox accessories are sold. I used it and it worked great, not quite perfect HD quality (it was slightly washed out) but for a VGA connection, very very good.

Sony is not off to a good start in my book by not offering this like Microsoft does, but then again, Sony SELLS TV's and Microsoft doesn't. So it's in their best interest to have you BUY a NEW TV to get the full HD Gaming experience. I have an HD TV, but I also have little little kids, which means everything is sticky in my house, all the time, so for the PS3, in the office it goes away from the 2 year old and his peanut butter jelly hands.

Before you buy this cable make sure that you can take whatever monitor you plan to connect it too and put it right next to a tv with RCA jacks (yellow, red, white) I mean RIGHT next to it. You have about 12 inches of cord where it splits to VGA and RCA and in order to set this up the cord has to be plugged into BOTH the TV & the Monitor AT THE SAME TIME. (did not have to do this with the xbox version, it just worked out of the box).

FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS, sounds stupid I know, but the instructions on the package will explain how to set up the wii/ps3.

Once it is configured it will allow you to play your wii/ps3 on a computer monitor. I did it with a PS3 and while it works, I'm not impressed at all. It's far from HD quality, and down right terrible compared to the one that I used with my xbox, but it works. I'm planning on upgrading one of my monitors by the end of the year (3 months or so) so this will be a short solution to be able to play until then. I plan on buying a monitor with HDMI so I can run the PS3 normally. I'd say the quality you get out of this cable is no better than if you hooked the ps3 up to a standard def TV. SO unless you absolutely NEED to use a monitor instead of a TV, this will get the job done. Just don't expect too much.

As far as all the other reviews of problems, you have to pay attention to what type of monitor you have and how it works. if your monitor is set to 1280 x 1024 then the most you can get out of it is 720p. So if you set the ps3 to 1080p it's not going to work, and it isn't the cable's fault, it's the monitor. this is why the box tells you too hook it up to both screens at the same time so you can check and test different resolutions.

the only problem I have is that the screen does go black for about 1 second every 5 or 6 minutes. Not a huge pain, but mildly annoying. again I can live with it until I get a new monitor but as a long term solution this doesn't cut it.

It "works" in that it allows me to play Wii games over VGA, but my screen blanks for 1 to 2 seconds every three minutes or so. It's essentially a piece of crap. Go for a VGA to HDMI solution for only slightly more.

I got this and tried to hook it up to an NEC computer mointor when I had a bunch of friends over. It didn't work. After spending about 20 minutes reading over the instructions, I got it to work. If you ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT get this to work, please try what I did:

I went out to the little TV in the living room and plugged in the GREEN cable to the yellow video port on the back. Turned on the Wii and went to the resolution settings. Switch to EDTV (the top selection). Click on CONFIRM. The TV should split into two video screens.

Next, bring the Wii to your computer monitor. First, turn on the Wii, THEN turn on the monitor. You should get your signal.


The contrast is a little bland and the colors aren't amazing, but worth the price if you want to avoid buying an HDTV, or don't own a TV like me.