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Non-NEC Console Related Discussion => Console Chat => Topic started by: nat on January 16, 2008, 05:00:49 PM
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So my brand new HiDef LCD has a VGA input and since I've been hearing nothing but rave reviews about the Dreamcast over VGA, I thought I'd do myself a favor and pick up a VGA cable for it.
So my question is... which one to get? Was there ever an "official" SEGA cable? There seem to be shitloads of different ones out there available and I'm wondering if there is a certain one I should look for or certain ones I want to avoid. I've seen some that also have an SVIDEO plug on the same cable but that's not really necessary for me.
Other questions...
I've heard some games aren't compatible with the VGA cable. Is there a list?
I've also heard some games can do 16:9. Is there a list?
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One of the only links posted today which is not of that idiot dancing (http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2006/05/dreamcast-vga-cable-compatibility-list.html) Really!
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Aw, f*ck, Bangai-O isn't compatible. I love that game.
That answers one question.... How about the rest?
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I don't think the Dreamcast does 16:9.
I feel like there was an official sega VGA breakout box, but I can't find it anywhere.
(edit: Wikipedia claims there was a first party unit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamcast_VGA )
Theoretically, all VGA boxes should be the same; they simply connect the right pins and carry the VGA signal the DC produces. But as with any cable, there may be differences in manufacturing quality.
I can't speak from experience here, unfortunately.
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I don't think the Dreamcast does 16:9.
EDIT: OK, I found a list of 16:9 Dreamcast games over on SEGA-16 posted by our good man Joe Redifer. Unfortunately, there is only a handful and I don't even know if I'll ever own any of them. Most of them don't look that interesting.
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I think I may be wrong; a quick google has various people claiming a few games are 16:9. But, like I said, no personal experience.
Edit: http://www.hdtvpub.com/productdb/games/index.cfm?search=&Platform=DC&r169=yes&OrderBy=resolution&daStartRow=1&showRows=25&searched=do
A list of 16:9 games; click the 16:9 checkbox and press search.
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I have one of these type. Works pretty good. I bought it from that dude too, haha. Mine is black though.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Sega-Dreamcast-VGA-Cable_W0QQitemZ200192002884QQihZ010QQcategoryZ41053QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
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I would opt to have one with s-video and VGA out. Much better if you plan to use on a tv and play some titles that do not support VGA.
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I heard the Spawn game and Heavy Metal: Geomatrix (which is one of the coolest names for a game ever) aren't compatible.
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I would opt to have one with s-video and VGA out. Much better if you plan to use on a tv and play some titles that do not support VGA.
Exactly, just what I was thinking. Especially since Bangai-O, one of my favorites on the system, doesn't support the VGA.
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I wonder how that works. I was under the impression that when the VGA pins were connected, that's all it put out.
I hope it works out for you nat - update us when you find out :)
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Will do.
But from what I understand, these cables that also have a SVIDEO plug are meant to address precisely that problem. You plug the DC end into the DC, the VGA end into your TV's VGA port and the SVIDEO into the TV's SVIDEO port.
I don't see any reason why the SVIDEO line can't just tap the pins on the port necessary for an SVIDEO signal alongside the VGA pins. It's like two cables in one.
So you can switch back and forth between, say, INPUT-3 and INPUT-4 on your TV depending on if your game will play in VGA or not.
That's the way I'm understanding it to work, anyway.
I'll give a full report once I get one hooked up.
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Ones supporting VGA and composite and s-video have a toggle switch to use before you power the system up. It will let the DC know you need VGA or S-video.
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But from what I understand, these cables that also have a SVIDEO plug are meant to address precisely that problem. You plug the DC end into the DC, the VGA end into your TV's VGA port and the SVIDEO into the TV's SVIDEO port.
Well, not really. The DC is from 1998, and in 1998 there were virtually zero TVs with VGA ports on them. Usually only projectors.
That's the way I'm understanding it to work, anyway.
The DC outputs whatever the VGA box was set to (either composite/s-video or VGA) when it was switched on. The DC knows what cable it has hooked to it. Remember the "Its thinking" ads? Its true. Its smart. Booting with a SCART cable in RGB is also a discrete mode. The BIOS screen will run in any mode, but beyond that it depends on the game. It can only run in one mode at a time though.
There was a Sega VGA box, not sold in the US. It was 5800 yen or something stupid like that, which is way too much since the VGA natively puts out VGA. Most of the circuitry is just for switching and such. There are a load of cheap Chinese boxes though. Some have headphone jacks, some dual headphone jacks. Some are really picky and won't run with certain displays. This is why I have more than one of them. The connectors are often junky too, which when combined with the DC's already dodgy multi-out port, game weirdness, and picky monitors makes diagnosing a no signal issue a pain the ass.
Once you have it running though...awesome. Completely.
Just so you are prepared, there are a lot of stupid things about the DC and its various video modes. Many many games do not support VGA, and for no good reason I can think of. Some games can actually be tricked into running in VGA by using boot discs like the Super Game Converter. Sometimes there will be minor graphical glitches when you do this, sometimes none. The US version of Street Fighter Alpha 3 will not run in RGB, but the EU version will. The first 2 games in the 4 game Sakura Wars Complete Box won't run in VGA, but the other 2 will.
The 16:9 modes aren't exactly like what you might expect. In VGA mode the DC always puts out 640x480, so when you run a game wide, like F355 for example, you will lose those lines of resolution needed to make the image wide. It just changes the shape of objects on screen so that when you stretch the image to a wide TV it won't look stretched. This was done with pre-DC systems too, like NiGHTS on Saturn, for example, since wide TVs were on sale in Japan in the early 90s. You'll have to use that mode that zooms in for letterboxed movies viewed from TV, or laserdisc...the one that only mattes 1 out of 50 movies correctly.
Now that I think about it, the 16:9 options may disappear from the option screen when the DC is booted in VGA mode. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they only work with interlaced signals.
Just so that are prepared, what you'll see on your LCD might not be the best the DC can do since LCD TVs tend to do a bad job at all sorts of slow-ass signal conversion for low/odd resolutions. Its either going to not even close to fill you screen, or it will be stretched. Hopefully you will be able to chose. It looks f*cking great on my CRT though, that's for sure.
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I'm fine with the black bars on the sides. I can set my TV in all sorts of modes: normal (for regular TV, with black bars on the sides), wide (for 16:9), cinema (some other widescreen mode), and zoom (makes a 4:3 signal fill the screen but cuts off the top and bottom of the image).
I'm sure I can just set it to "normal" and it will be normal size with the margins blacked out.
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Yeah, but since LCDs have a native resolution, its going to have black bars all around...which actually isn't that bad at all, but what would suck is if it will only interpolate the full height giving you a blurry mess.
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Well I guess I'll find out.
EDIT: Hmmm... Googling around online it looks like most everyone with an HD LCD has had good results with their Dreamcast and VGA box. Definitely gonna go for it.
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I have a clear orange 3rd party VGA box that includes S-Video out and it works great both my my 720p LCD and my 480p DLP projector. The image looks better than progressive scan GC, PS2 or Xbox component out.
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I have a clear orange 3rd party VGA box that includes S-Video out and it works great both my my 720p LCD and my 480p DLP projector. The image looks better than progressive scan GC, PS2 or Xbox component out.
Yeah, I have a thing from Audio Authority that makes progscan component into VGA, and even that pales compared to the DC's VGA. Its not the most popular feature of the DC, but I use it whenever I can. What's really killer is two DCs, each with a VGA display, system linked with VOOT and Twinsticks. I've only ever pulled this off once though. My friends and I had it set up for a few days like that.
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The Dreamcast becomes more and more awesome to me every day.
If I didn't have such a nostalgic attachment to the Turbo it would probably be my favorite system.
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I bought a vga box for my dreamcast years ago, took it home and tested it out. Went the next day and bought a new monitor just for it. I still have one of my dreamcasts hooked up to it today. Money well spent. :D
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I used one of these for years in college since I didn't want to lug around a TV just to play my Dreamcast.
Some games look great in it (Shenmue, Skies of Arcadia), but lots of them look like ass because they use low-res textures (Capcom fighting games, I'm looking at you!)
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I always wanted a Twinstick since it's nearly impossible to play VOOT with a regular controller to any level of proficiency. I hated how they took the ability to rotate left and right with the triggers out of the game (completely unnecessarily since you could use that control scheme in the first one), I couldn't get used to playing on a pad without that feature since I'd spent countless hours playing the Saturn version that way.
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I always thought that the DualShock would be good for Virtual On, but I never got around to playing Marz.
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marz is awful. avoid like the plague. it forces you to team up with a computer partner (you're not allowed to team up with player 2) and you're absolutely not allowed to go one-on-one.
As if that weren't enough of a problem, if the computer players are total f*cktards (thanks to the power of cell!) and you can't really give them instructions; they just do whatever the hell they wanna do, which is always to interfere with you. and that's just your partner.
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I always wanted a Twinstick since it's nearly impossible to play VOOT with a regular controller to any level of proficiency. I hated how they took the ability to rotate left and right with the triggers out of the game (completely unnecessarily since you could use that control scheme in the first one), I couldn't get used to playing on a pad without that feature since I'd spent countless hours playing the Saturn version that way.
Yeah, the SS version plays fine with the standard pad, but it's a bit more problematic on the DC, as the lack of buttons compared to the SS pads really make it impossible to put a good setup. (And to compound the problem, R-turbo and L-turbo are used to do different things in VOOT -- I think even the standard saturn pad setup wouldn't work in VOOT because of this.)
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Yeah, not enough buttons on DC.
VOOT is impossible to play without Twinsticks. You might be able to bumble through it, but only at the level of proficiency that would be similar to playing Street Fighter with no specials or supers. Once you get semi-good at VOOT with Twinsticks you'll understand that not only is the DC pad not even close to good enough, but the game is so much more advanced than Cyber Troopers was (mostly because of air dashing) that you'd never be able to rate even with the Saturn pad.
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so I finally got a chance to get the VGA box hooked up.
The TV seems to like the resolution just fine, it's just got the black bars on the sides. No big deal.
However, there is some kind of video artifact that is not fine. There are very narrow vertical stripes every three quarters of a centimeter or so across the whole image. They are very faint and are only visible with dark images on screen, such as the kinds of images displayed by Resident Evil: CV. This is present in all games, however, it's just more noticable in some than others. Resident Evil is so dark that they become distracting at times. What is this? Is there any fix or is this what I'm stuck with because of my LCD? :? If that's the case that's a huge bummer because the image is so sharp I almost creamed my pants when I turned it on. Seriously.
The VGA box I have has a switch to toggle between SVIDEO and VGA. The SVIDEO actually looks really good, better than I thought it would on the LCD. The image is noticeably not as sharp as the VGA obviously, but the vertical stripes are absent.
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I took a pic of the screen. Check it out. The effect is more noticeable in person but check out the wall above the desk and the side of the desk to see what I'm talking about.
(http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n132/nathall_1/re.jpg)
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Well, without looking really close at it I would suspect that the artifacting is the result of the image being scaled up to match the max vertical area of your LCD. Unless your screen is an exact multiple of 640x480 (unlikely) then as I said before the choices are black bars all around, or scaling. Unfortunately you probably don't have a choice for black bars and it looks like the scaling left evidence.
This, BTW, its exactly why I still use old CRTs. From what I've seen and heard getting any flat panel display that doesn't have some inexcusably stupid problem (like yours) is impossible. While I'm sure PS3 games going through HDMI look great, I *need* to be able to play low res consoles, laserdiscs, VHS and all that, and I'm sure I'd hate any set I bought.
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Shitty. Not what I wanted to hear, obviously. Oh, well.
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Don't take my word for it. Try another VGA box, another VGA source, messing with settings, and seeing if you can find out how to enter your sets service mode and see that lets you do anything that helps.
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Games that are bright like Bomberman look great. You can't see the artifacting at all in those games. I just played a few rounds of Afterburner and Space Harrier on Game Works Vol. 1 and they look f*cking GREAT. Resident Evil is by far the worst of the games I've played so far.
The VGA box I got was brand new, it's one of the ones manufactured by "DC 2000" in 2006, I guess. Don't know if they are of good quality or not. What version do you have?
Maybe I'll look into picking up a different box just for shits and giggles.
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I don't know if this might be affecting you or not, but you have a psychotically shielded video cable for this box? Part of your brightness issue might be magnetic fields leaking in.
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I bought a regular VGA cable at Radio Shack.
Here is the exact cable:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102535&cp
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I bought a regular VGA cable at Radio Shack.
Here is the exact cable:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102535&cp
Is it more than several feet from any speaker? More than 5 from a woofer? I know to put a VGA cable around speakers I have had to get a specifically shielded one to be around magnets. Basically it is just shielded a lot. That cable you purchased doesn't look like junk though. Before getting another cable though maybe you could move any speakers out of the room and make sure the cable is not running near other electronics if you can help it to see if there is any difference. You could also put a woofer magnet near the cable you currently have, and then you could see how well it protects against it. The latter option being easier, but it might not tell you everything.
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There is a speaker on the shelf above the Dreamcast, probably about a foot away. I'll try moving it and see if that makes a difference, but these lines don't look like that kind of interference. Unfortunately, they look like a video artifact manifested by the TV itself as a result of scaling the image (like Zeta mentioned). I can affect them by changing the "Phase" setting in a special VGA menu on the TV but they don't go away no matter what.
Thanks for the idea though, I'll let you know what I find.
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There is a speaker on the shelf above the Dreamcast, probably about a foot away. I'll try moving it and see if that makes a difference, but these lines don't look like that kind of interference. Unfortunately, they look like a video artifact manifested by the TV itself as a result of scaling the image (like Zeta mentioned). I can affect them by changing the "Phase" setting in a special VGA menu on the TV but they don't go away no matter what.
Thanks for the idea though, I'll let you know what I find.
I'm not talking about the lines though. I'm talking about this brightness issue you are having.
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:?:
There is no brightness issue. The only issue is the vertical lines.
I was just saying that in games that use brighter colors you can't see the vertical lines.
In games like Resident Evil, that uses very dark browns and black, the vertical lines are visible and distracting.
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:?:
There is no brightness issue. The only issue is the vertical lines.
I was just saying that in games that use brighter colors you can't see the vertical lines.
In games like Resident Evil, that uses very dark browns and black, the vertical lines are visible and distracting.
Ah, I thought you were saying that the games were not as bright as they should be and only the brightest games were looking ok (due to the fact that they were super bright to begin with).
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Aha, no, it all is centered around those damn lines. The rest of the graphics, brightness, contrast, etc all look better than I've ever seen out of the DC.
I played Ikaruga for a while today after those earlier messages and it was so.... vibrant. To be honest I always thought of it as sort of a colorless game.
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nat is it possible to try the Dreamcast on a computer monitor via the same VGA box? This may have been asked already, as I was far too lazy to read all the words in this thread.
Yes, DC VGA is truly awesome.
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If the lines are more visible in darker areas, that makes me think even more that it is a digital scaling issue (see: DVD's look their shittiest in darker areas).
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DVDs look shitty in the dark areas due to the inefficiency of MPEG2 video compression. Dark and murky scenes are the bane of any compression format.
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DVDs look shitty in the dark areas due to the inefficiency of MPEG2 video compression. Dark and murky scenes are the bane of any compression format.
In my experience WMV is the opposite of most codecs though. I loves encoding black and darker shades, but it takes more bandwith to get the brighter stuff to show up right.
Most of the problems with black areas in DVDs are from the mpeg type compression. It is great for movement, but bad for still things and dark things.
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WMV is MicroSoft's own flavor of MPEG4. I have not seen evidence of what you said, but I'll be on the lookout for it.
Anyway I don't think his VGA issue has anything to do with compression.