Best way to play retro without a CRT

[mekanor]

So recently my dedicated retro CRT telly has started going nuts, with the sound massively clipped and distorted on high frequency sounds. This is a sad day for me as it took forever to track down a reasonable telly with a scart port in Australia and it's unlikely I'll be able to find another one any time soon.

So the big question is there anyway to play my old consoles on a modern hd telly without having them look like absolute rubbish? I know there are plenty of upscalers and the like, but is there anything that actually compares to a good CRT? I'll mainly use it for by rgb modded 64, but I'll probably branch out eventually.

[mmmonkey]

I'm a big fan of my upscaler with Scanlines, it probably doesn't truly compare to a CRT, but it is a massive improvement on directly connecting the consoles to the TV.

Have you seen http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/ which goes into a lot of detail about different scalers etc.

[Oldgamingfart]

If the sound is the only issue with the TV, maybe it would be better to invest in a set of active speakers (eg. PC speakers), and re-route the audio from the SCART.

Most of the SCART switch box units have audio output jacks, or the TV itself might have a set or RCA's or headphone socket you could use (assuming the audio isn't buggered through there as well).

[Super Monkey Balls]

You should be looking at an XRGB 2/3 or SLG-3000 and a simple line doubler.

[[nothing]]

You know, rather spookily, I was going to as the same question myself today.

Soon to be moving house, no room for for either my 32" CRT TV or my 24" CRT TV. Tried to play a few of the retro consoles through my 50" plasma, with the usual and predictable terrible results.

Now, my budget for the entire retro setup is going to be about ?300-?350 (TV included). So, basically, the XRGB is sadly not an option. I have a good idea which 22"/24" i'm going to buy, but it won't leave me with much.

So, anyone here got anything good to say about the HD Box Pro and/or the SLG-3000? Yes, the above link has a lot of information, but for someone like me (who has no prior knowledge or experience of scalers), it's all gone a little over my head and would like the opinion of anyone on here that may have used them.

I need something to make my Wii, Gamecube, PC Engine, N64, SNES and MD look as pretty as can be.

[mmmonkey]

From what I remember, the HD Box Pro only has Component input on it, and VGA output, so no go for your most of your consoles.

The SLG3000 adds ScanLines to an existing VGA signal, so it has to be used in combination with something else - i.e a scaler/line doubler.

The cheapy scaler that I'm using is this http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...#ht_6141wt_956 - I've added a DIY scanlines circuit to it, but it works fine with the SLG3000, in fact, you can buy it as a kit from arcadeforge.de - http://www.arcadeforge.de/?page_id=880

The Sync Strike is also on there, that's used to convert an RGB signal to the correct signal for the scaler linked to above. That scaler only accepts component and RGB though, do all your consoles output one of these?

If you can solder, then it's possible to build add the input converter to the scaler, and to build the DIY scanlines circuit. I don't usually like linking to my site, but details are on there - http://www.mmmonkey.co.uk

Pete

[[nothing]]

Okay.. so in terms of a budget option, is there anything I can feed an RGB Scart directly into and get a decent result (since i've gone to trouble of getting a few consoles RGB modded and suchlike), since looking over several of these boxes, they don't seem to support Scart (understandable, considering their countries of origin).