Amiga to VGA

[alexatkin]

Does anyone have an Amiga to VGA adapter real cheap or know where I can get one under £14.99?  £14.99 seems a bit pricey to me considering they must be about 1/3 of that to make.

If I cant get one cheaper I might have to try building one myself and you DONT want that.  Id be willing to pay in advance if anyone fancies building one for me instead.  ;-)

Id rather have a flicker fixer but considering they cost about as much as my CPU cost in my PC, thats just criminal!

[alexatkin]

Thats strange, I checked your site earlier and it wasnt showing up.  Id much rather buy from someone I can trust (a LOT of people vouching for you on this forum) than eBay.
I could have SWORN I found one on there and I was obviously right but for some reason search didnt seem to be picking it up earlier today.  I even looked manually in adapters and I didnt see it there either.  Its working fine now though.
Either im going crazy or it just dropped off the listing for a couple of hours.  I blame OS Commerce. ;-)

Anyway thats that problem solved, can leave it plugged into the TV over composite and use my PCs LCD for Workbench.

Its a shame HDTVs only work over valid PC video modes on their VGA port.  They have all the circuitry necessary to display the Amiga in ANY mode but not from the same input.   :-(

It just doesnt feel right using a 32" HDTV to display the Amiga Workbench over composite.  Although thanks to deinterlacing it made Hires Laced usable for me to get things configured nicely, that resolution was never possible without a headache to go with it on a 14" CRT.

Im glad to be using my A1200 again, its just a shame scandoublers are so expensive but its not like they are much different now to what they always were as far as I recall.

[alexatkin]

Thats my point, I DO have a European HDTV but you would have to use TWO connectors which is unrealistic when I only have the HDMI port free.  

Sattelite is plugged into RGB SCART, Amiga is in the composite SCART (unfortunately Samsung only do a single RGB SCART but their TVs are better than the ones I could find with dual-RGB SCART), PS2/Gamecube in in S-Video, Xbox 360 and a couple of PCs I swap between the VGA port and Xbox is in component.

I dont mind swapping VGA as generally those connectors do not break easily.  SCART however breaks DAMN easily and is one reason I got a HDTV now as my CRTs SCART is totally screwed from swapping all the time.  The Amiga however ideally need the VGA AND the RGB SCART.  For a start thats £30 as both adapter cost around £15 each.  Worse still, that means swapping SCART when I play games and swapping VGA when im on workbench - damn annoying.  As it happens VGA isnt a problem as id rather run it on my 19" monitor anyway which has a free VGA socket as its using DVI to the PC.

Anyway the point I was making was that its a pain that the HDTVs cant do PAL over VGA or VGA over SCART.  Having to use two different connections for 1 computer is stupid.  However I will leave the Amiga in the composite SCART for now and use the VGA on my PC monitor for it when in Workbench - its the closest to a good solution.  However I would much rather use RGB SCART for the Amiga but I do not have a cable and I dont particularly want to buy one, the Amiga has cost me enough this month getting the 030 and keyboard adapter.
If I spend too much on it I will never get the same value for money as if I had just gotten some xbox 360 games instead, its all about value for money in the end as im living on carers allowance and VISA because I look after my disabled mother.

[alexatkin]

The problem is that to connect the Amiga to SCART I need to buy an Amiga to SCART cable.  THEN I have to get the switchbox. THEN possibly a SCART cable (I have a spare but I think it might be faulty).  It adds up pretty quickly.

Basically, I do not know if the improvement in picture quality is going to be enough to warrant spending that money but I cant find out WITHOUT spending the money first.

As for VGA, im a bit dissapointed with the results so far.
I am getting a nasty marble-life effect on the screen (each line of pixels going down on the screen is lighter/darker than the line next to it) and the only time I got close to curing that the picture got more and more out of focus (blurry) towards the right side of the screen.
This is on my TFT monitor which perhaps its being too picky but generally hasnt been a problem before.  I cant even get a resolution thats supported on my HDTV and the CRT monitor I tried is either broken or cant sync either as im not getting a picture at all on it.  I have even desperately tried every single monitor setting from Storage and a few modified ones from Aminet.  None cure the marble effect although theres a few resolutions that look stable and pixel accurate (hard to achieve on an LCD).

Im going to dig out another CRT but I dont hold much hope for improvement especially as 60Hz is fine on an LCD but headache inducing on a CRT.

[alexatkin]

Im not sure RGB WILL improve greatly.  On a CRT yes it does make a HUGE difference, but on HDTV the difference is a lot less noticable as due to the higher resolution screen it makes even RGB looks like composite due to the upscaling procedure.  OF course the Amiga would probably be more noticable as the flickering induced around contrasting pixels IS more apparent on Workbench due to all the straight lines and text.  However for games thats a different story.

I ALWAYS used RGB on the CRT because I couldnt bare composite. On the HDTV however there seemed little difference between S-Video and RGB on the PS2 especially as you can sit furthur away from the TV. Also the PS2 is so low resolution to start with.  Even worse with the Sega Saturn, that almost looks better over composite because you are blurring the huge pixels somewhat like anti-aliasing, although I moved that over to the CRT as its rarely used.

The xbox is connected over component which while not as good colour reproduction as RGB it allows for progressive scan which looks a whole lot better than interlaced.  That also im hoping to be able to phase out as Microsoft improve the 360 backwards compatibility list.

As for VGA, its rather too late as I have it now and the quality is VASTLY worse than I expected. I think its the none-buffered sync issue which for nearly £15 I figured it would have the buffered sync because otherwise its a stright through cable and ANYONE can make one of those.

I didnt look for AmiVGA because Amiga Hardware says AmiVGA is ECS only and I need AGA support.  Obviously a scan doubler is my top choice but theres no way they are worth nearly £100 just to save the effort of switching between the monitor and the TV.  Games play perfectly fine over composite, its only Workbench I want on the monitor so I can use it more comfortably.