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    I have an xbox 360 with vga or component (no hdmi). What's an OK way to connect it to my new TV via hdmi?

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      There are VGA to HDMI converters available but they don't all handle converting the audio so might not be suitable depending on your TVs inputs. A second hand 360 with HDMI output might be cheaper.

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        It's a USA 360 so not quite as easy
        I think I can do the sound via optical

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          OK, so I got a VGA to HDMI adapter / cable, although I had to buy a female to female VGA connector block (pack of 3 for £5 ) to join the Xbox 360 VGA cable to the adapter. The adapter assumes sound and power from PC USB port, so I'm bypassing that by using the optical output on the Xbox 360 VGA cable and sending it straight to my soundbar (no optical IN on the TV - sadly don't have an AV amp any more). The TV does have USB ports so I hope they have enough juice to power the adapter.

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            Let us know how you get on with that. I'm curious if it introduces any lag.

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              Good evening, I would like to know if anyone here can say something about the Mitsubishi eu 42 compared to the nex xp 37. In the 15khz range.

              I think the Nec is better at that although I've heard the 37 isn't as great as the 29.

              Thank you very much for sharing your opinion.

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                I need a new 32" WS TV and particularly want something with at least one RGB SCART socket for retro gaming consoles (PS/PS2/|OGXbox etc).

                I thought I had found an ideal one: a Sharp 32BB31 LED from Amazon at under £170, it had mostly good reviews but after using it for less than 48hrs I've just had to repackage and return it. The reason is that the alleged "great" PQ from some reviewers turned out to be bogus in the extreme.

                The colour rendering is awful, in particular the reds which display in various shades of magenta, nothing even approaching the primary red you would expect. Quite seriously this is so bad and so noticeably bad you could not identify things like national flags with any certainty when it includes red elements. At this time of year the prevalence of Xmas red in adverts makes for a bizarre viewing experience when almost everything red is displayed as magenta.

                I've tried all the picture setting options using different external input sources too (HDMI, RGB SCART, YPbPr) and the problem remained.

                Add to this the poor viewing angles, acceptable but not particularly good contrast and the ghastly way it displays white skin tones unless you swap the colour temperature to 'Warm' I just could not accept it.

                I've not had experience with LED panels before but this one seems to fail in many of the areas LEDs are supposed to be better than LCD ones. Maybe the particular set I bought is faulty but I'm not going to take the risk and get another example just to test that.

                So if anyone here has experience or knows of any other 32" - 36" (max) UK HD TV of any type, with Freeview, preferably under £300, good colour and RGB SCART support too please share the info.
                Last edited by fallenangle; 17-12-2022, 02:51.

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                  You will struggle mightily to find a new TV with an RGB SCART input nowadays, it's a very niche requirement.

                  Your best bet would be to buy a 32" set that has HDMI ports (which will be every new set you find nowadays), from somewhere with a decent returns policy, so that you can evaluate it and easily return and exchange if you don't like it. I say this because it's hard to find decent reviews of specific low to mid-range sets, so it's better to test yourself.

                  I would then use an OSSC scaler to connect RGB SCART sources to an HDMI port on your new TV. This will provide a considerable added benefit in that it will also upscale the SD picture cleanly to 1080p with zero (or very close to zero) lag.

                  These often pop up second hand here or on other forums for ~£100.

                  The original makers are these guys:


                  But they won't have more stock till Q2 2023 according to that page.

                  You can also buy a clone like this one, with much quicker delivery:


                  Can't speak to these clones personally but maybe someone else can.

                  Either way you choose to go you're looking at about £100 to £150 ish for the OSSC.

                  Looking at TVs here, it looks like if you are able to find something you're satisfied with in the <£200 price range, you should be able to get both the OSSC and the TV inside your £300 budget:
                  Last edited by wakka; 17-12-2022, 03:31.

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                    There’s no chance you’re getting acceptable PQ from any flat panel with a SCART socket. You need the OSSC or a RetroTink5X.

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                      Why do you say that?

                      If the TV supports RGB via SCART it is, or should be the best PQ you'll get from an interlaced only external source. I know modern TVs can mess up scaling interlaced sources but I attached a RGB SCART Freeview digital set top box to it in one of my tests and had no issue with the resulting PQ except for that serious matter of colour rendition.

                      I also tried it with a PSOne and original Xbox via RGB SCART cables and although the PSOne general PQ quality didn't thrill me it was very acceptable on that size 32" WS. I'd point out the height of that is roughly the same as the 28" Sharp 4:3 CRT is was intended to replace.

                      The surprising thing about this matter is that although I've not owned any flat screen TVs myself I have used them, LCDs, for RGB SCART gaming (the same PSOne) because the relative who I usually spent Xmas with had two different LCD sets over the years.

                      The first was a standard definition only Sony 20" 4:3 and although the contrast range was inferior to my CRTs and the colour far less vibrant it was, at the very least, accurate. The gaming experience was far better than I expected.

                      Same thing with a much later Sony 24" HD WS. Better contrast and better colour than the SD Sony TV and fine for RGB SCART gaming with a PSOne.

                      Why the Sharp LED, a technology allegedly better than LCD, I bought had such obvious colour problems I do not know but it handled everything satisfactorily but that when used with RGB SCART connected external sources.

                      It is interesting that some of those Curry TVs ^^ linked too include a VGA (15 pin DIN) connection which, from some of the specs listed, seem to support not just RGB VGA but YPbPr ie. Component, presumably at 480p.

                      What I find weird is that many also support AV Composite via RCA (yellow. red, white) when a fully wired SCART would do that, S-Video and RGB too and be far more useful for backwards compatibility, not least, for retro gaming.

                      The fact that there are those third party OSSC (Open Source Scan Converters) suggests that TV manufacturers removing RGB SCART support made a mistake in doing so.
                      Last edited by fallenangle; 21-12-2022, 00:16. Reason: typo

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                        In that case, maybe you got a dud and it's worth reordering the same model again.

                        The reason Dave and I advised an external scaler is because it's what should give the best results versus a TV's internal scaler, and it's also relatively future proof - if you buy a new TV in the future, you can take the scaler with you. You can also choose whichever TV you want, rather than being limited only to the few with onboard RGB SCART.

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                          Originally posted by fallenangle View Post

                          Why the Sharp LED, a technology allegedly better than LCD, I bought had such obvious colour problems I do not know but it handled everything satisfactorily but that when used with RGB SCART connected external sources.
                          ”LED” TVs are still LCD based displays. Only the backlight is LED based rather than CCFL (fluorescent tube basically) on older LCD TVs.

                          Passing a low resolution analog signal to a digitally driven fixed resolution LCD panel introduces all sorts of problems. Non integer scaling, poor colour due to varying signals and a different method of actually drawing the picture on the screen.
                          The old LCD TVs you used were small and lower resolution which would have helped to hide some of the problems.

                          TV manufacturers have removed scart sockets because they aren’t required and haven’t been for years. They were never used in many countries anyway and on a global scale would have been nowhere near as common as composite.

                          Stuff like the OSSC fills a niche for a small market and will do a far better job than the scaler built in to an inexpensive TV. I’d expect the input lag to be pretty high with the TVs built in scaler too.

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                            That's not quite true: there are at least two types of LED display: the first uses LEDs as the backlight for an LCD screen the other uses R, G, and B coloured LEDs directly. There are also various configurations for LED backlit LCD screens too.

                            I can not be 100% sure what the Sharp TV I bought was but it said it was a LED TV. On Amazon the TV specs for the Sharp range are completely messed up with a 32" TV similar to the one I bought but 'Smart' listed as an LCD only whereas all the others were shown as LED LCD. When I went to the Sharp web site the same TV was simply listed as a LED as on the packaging and in the downloadable PDF.

                            So what type it actually is, who knows?

                            SCART was used in the UK, throughout the EU, Australia and NZ but, of course, not as common as AV Composite RCA connections. But you'd think that with a TV sold in those areas a RGB capable SCART socket would be an obvious inclusion and negate the need for a separate AV Composite RCA socket.

                            Sharp obviously thought so which was a major reason for the choice I made and, as said, it worked fine and if it had not been for the unsatisfactory colour display issue I wouldn't not be here.

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                              Direct LED displays are stupendously expensive and only available in large sizes. You certainly won’t get an inexpensive 32” TV with that tech in it. Hopefully it will be viable at smaller sizes in future and should be the natural successor to OLED TV.

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                                Originally posted by fallenangle
                                That's not quite true: there are at least two types of LED display: the first uses LEDs as the backlight for an LCD screen the other uses R, G, and B coloured LEDs directly. There are also various configurations for LED backlit LCD screens too.


                                There are three types in total, but it's pretty irrelevant at this price bracket, where everything branded 'LED' will just be an LCD display with edge-lighting LEDs.

                                The other two types, mini LED and micro LED, use an LCD with a large number of backlighting LEDs for localised dimming or fully self-emissive LED pixels respectively.

                                The former are only in big sizes (50"+) and at least £600 to £700 in terms of cost, and the latter is expected to supersede OLED as the gold standard but no consumer sets have yet been released.

                                I honestly wouldn't get hung up on the 'LED' side of things. It's not particularly meaningful at this size/price bracket.

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