I think, like most of us, since moving to an HDTV, I'd had issues with what to do about my SD consoles.
I'm not committed enough to want a big CRT in the house, so I've always wanted a solution which uses my main TV, and up until now, I've ran my Wii and PS2 via composite, via each console's "progressive scan" mode. I've been quite fortunate in that while the picture isn't amazing, my TV's upscaler doesn't garble it (I've seen some diabolical ones).
However, this has always had some issues. Firstly, the cable I need to use for the TV is this weird frankenstinian thing that hangs off the TV (not the biggest issue) and, in the last year, my TV has started to show signs it's going to bite the big one (it's nearly 10 years old), and there's no guarantee whatever I get to replace it will work quite as well.
Obviously there are expensive setups used by many people on this forum, and I will probably use one of those some day. But in the short term, I wanted to try out some cheap alternatives to streamline things.
I decided to try these, as I've seen them all over in recent years:
They took about 4 weeks to arrive (being AliExpress) but were inexpensive, and, honestly I'm quite impressed.
Both of them give my Wii and PS2 a very clean picture. Actually the PS2 can be a bit too sharp in places, exposing some of the pixelly edges to things like text, but in-game it looks pretty good. The PS2 one needs USB power, but you can use the USB ports on the front of the PS2 that rarely get used for anything.
I have a slight problem with the Wii one, in that it buzzes when there's a lot of white onscreen. I think I might just have a defective unit, so I'm going to order another given how inexpensive they are (I can't see a widespread reference to this problem online).
I was going to post pictures, but honestly, they're quite underwhelming. In this case though that's a good thing. They just look fine. Not certain about lag but I can definitely say there isn't a strong case of added latency.
So I suppose I'd say if you wanted to replace your SD cables with something that gave a baseline decent picture for these consoles, I recommend these. They're obviously no substitute for a proper setup but they're cheap and they work.
I'm not committed enough to want a big CRT in the house, so I've always wanted a solution which uses my main TV, and up until now, I've ran my Wii and PS2 via composite, via each console's "progressive scan" mode. I've been quite fortunate in that while the picture isn't amazing, my TV's upscaler doesn't garble it (I've seen some diabolical ones).
However, this has always had some issues. Firstly, the cable I need to use for the TV is this weird frankenstinian thing that hangs off the TV (not the biggest issue) and, in the last year, my TV has started to show signs it's going to bite the big one (it's nearly 10 years old), and there's no guarantee whatever I get to replace it will work quite as well.
Obviously there are expensive setups used by many people on this forum, and I will probably use one of those some day. But in the short term, I wanted to try out some cheap alternatives to streamline things.
I decided to try these, as I've seen them all over in recent years:
They took about 4 weeks to arrive (being AliExpress) but were inexpensive, and, honestly I'm quite impressed.
Both of them give my Wii and PS2 a very clean picture. Actually the PS2 can be a bit too sharp in places, exposing some of the pixelly edges to things like text, but in-game it looks pretty good. The PS2 one needs USB power, but you can use the USB ports on the front of the PS2 that rarely get used for anything.
I have a slight problem with the Wii one, in that it buzzes when there's a lot of white onscreen. I think I might just have a defective unit, so I'm going to order another given how inexpensive they are (I can't see a widespread reference to this problem online).
I was going to post pictures, but honestly, they're quite underwhelming. In this case though that's a good thing. They just look fine. Not certain about lag but I can definitely say there isn't a strong case of added latency.
So I suppose I'd say if you wanted to replace your SD cables with something that gave a baseline decent picture for these consoles, I recommend these. They're obviously no substitute for a proper setup but they're cheap and they work.
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