A bundle of questions

[Lawrence Everglades]

1. Can I use a UK SNES power lead on a North American SNES?

2. Can I use that same UK SNES power lead on a North American NES?

3. Whats the highest quality lead for the said consoles for displaying directly (ie no external upscaler) on a small LCD? I think its S-video for SNES, no? What about NES?

4. Does the use of switch boxes (ie a component Y/Br/Pr one or whatever it is) degrade the picture quality?

5. Can the 360 play DVDs (as in films not games) in progressive scan, and do you turn it on from the dashboard, or does the machine do it automatically when using a capable TV and component cable and set to 480/720p? (wait, I kinda guess I just answered my own question there...) Is it any good if it does or would I be better off with a quality stand alone player (I'll only be displaying on a 19" LCD)

6. Is there any advantage over buying an imported 360/PS3 with regards to PAL/NTSC conversions, and will the online aspects (like setting up an account/downloads etc.) be affected if I were to import?

7. Does Wii support Prog Scan through component cable as standard? (should be getting a North American console)

9. If not, would it be advisable to put the Wii through an external upscaler to achive optimum picture quality?

8. Are external upscalers affected by PAL/NTSC signals or are they all multi-region? And can anyone reccommend a good quality (preferably cheap) one that can take North American NES, SNES and UK N64, PS2 and Dreamcast. And possibly GameCube.

10. If I were to use an external upscaler for said consoles, would it still be advisable to use the best quality cables (like component, S-video n' RGB scart n' all that) outputting from the console into the box?

Sorry if I'm being a bit cheeky posting all these questions at once. It actually started as three, but I thought of more and more! Anyway, as usual, any help you lot can give will be extremely and sincerely appriciated.

Thanks

[sj33]

1. Yep

2. Not sure, I'm pretty sure my UK Snes power lead never worked on my UK Nes though.

3. RGB Scart is the best connection method for old consoles, though S-Video is the next one down if that is not avaliable.

4. Depends on the switch box. In general, I avoid switch boxes for this very reason, though a very good box may be noticably lossy.
What I say only applies to analogue signals though (i.e Component). There will be no loss when using a switch box for a digital signal (i.e HDMI, Optical etc).

5. With the 360, they will run in 480p (well, 576p for PAL). When using VGA, it will upscale to whatever resolution you set the console to.
The 360's DVD Playback is quite good not as long as your not a videophile, I'd not bother with a standalone unless you need a region free player or something.

6. With a 360, you will have to use quite a powerful stepdown for an import machine, and while most 360 games are region free, not all are. There's not a huge amount of reason to import a 360, since most games either come out the same week as the US one, or are region free, and all are 60Hz.
PS3 is fully region free for games, and multivoltage, but you may want to take into consideration the region locking for Blu-Ray movies, and PS1/2 games.

But you will have all video modes, and access to all regions of online stuff, no matter what region you buy.

7. Yes. And almost all games support it.

8. Depends if you want the expense!

9/10. Not my area.

[Abhisara]

1. Can I use a UK SNES power lead on a North American SNES?

No. The UK SNES PSU outputs 9V AC, but the NA SNES requires a DC input, and in any case, the connectors are differently shaped. You can use a generic multi-voltage AC/DC power supply (min 800mA, set to 9V) which has interchangable ends, and get the matching connector tip from Maplin. See this thread for details:

http://ntsc-uk.domino.org/showthread.php?t=54714

[Lawrence Everglades]

Cheers