I have 4 VH236H’s for an upcoming smash tournament. As you may or may not know Smash players a very particular group…
At any rate I am looking for a device to allow me to use these monitors with the Wii. There are a few options I have found, but I don’t want to introduce anymore input lag. Does anyone have experience using something like one of the two options below in a tournament setting? If not do you have a suggestion on what to use?
I have the VDIGI Wii VGA cable. It works well, but it looks like it’s out of production. I can’t vouch for the PS3/Wii one on Amazon, but it looks similar.
You do have to switch the Wii to 480p before using the VGA out, since almost no displays can take 480i input on the VGA port. The green RCA out lets you output a black and white video signal to a regular TV in 480i mode, if your Wii hasn’t been set to 480p yet.
I believe this is because Wii VGA cables are NOT VGA cables. They’re YPbPr over DB-15 cables – some devices (mostly projectors) can take in component video over their “VGA” port; VGA expects R+G+B+Hsync+Vsync signals, while component is only three signals (Y + Pb + Pr, though it may be able to do R + G + B over the same pins; I don’t know off the top of my head). Therefore, the VGA cables will not work on most displays unless the display is built to take component in via the port – I’m pretty certain this is not the case for the Asus, but I don’t have first-hand experience with it.
You will need a proper active conversion box, like the devices you linked. I’ve only personally heard people claim that this device has no lag, but… again, I don’t have the personal experience, so I can’t promise anything. If you end up getting a device, and can properly test it (split the component signal and videotape it side-by-side with a CRT, then do a frame-by-frame to see if it’s lagging), that’d be really useful info to share (I know I’d love to hear it). I don’t know that the VH236H has been tested for lag over HDMI at 480P off the top of my head, which is another concern (the upscaler) that could introduce latency, so… I guess all I can say is good luck, and I’d love to hear your findings.
All that being said, knowing the Smash community (I used to roll deep with my local Smash scene a few years back)… they’ll complain no matter what. Unless the scene has changed, if it’s not a CRT you’ll get complaints (even if it’s lagless, people love to have something to blame their losses on). You may find it easier to ask around for four more CRT’s from people, or go down to the local pawn shop and grab some more; that way you don’t have to worry about lag, OR people complaining thereabout. It’s just the nature of that scene, in my experience.
Good luck!
EDIT: Huh, RoboKrikit’s statement changes things RE: the VGA cables. Maybe the VGA ports are more tolerant than I thought; I’m just going off of my basic knowledge of the signals, but it’s possible that more monitors are tolerant of the off-spec usage than I expected. Might be worth grabbing a set of those cables for myself, just to see what they’re doing. If the Green cable carries a “Black and White” signal, that means it’s the Y line (which carries Luma + sync info together on one line) of YPbPr, so the Wii isn’t changing to RGB outputting… and as looks like it’s a passive cable, it must be all in the YPbPr colorspace (not converting to RGB)… so I guess YPbPr over D-Sub is more common than I thought. Apologies if I provided inaccurate information. Good luck figuring stuff out, and let me know how it all turns out!
The VDIGI does output RGBHV; I’ve used it on a bunch of displays including hi-res CRT monitors and the VH236H. The connector housing is thick enough to include some electronics, and has DIP switches for modifying the RGBHV signal.
But again I can only vouch for that specific one; the PS3/Wii combo cables I see on Amazon and eBay are different. Might be worth a shot though, since you can return it to Amazon.
I apologize for not having input sooner. But I tried out some of the cables, and they didn’t work well. As the reviews said, blurry picture, and intermittent screen blanking. I don’t really see the HDMI upconverters working. But I would still appreciate the feedback on how well that does Gooseboy.
This is Tech Talk, it’s an unspoken rule that you have to read the INFO THREAD before doing anything. Besides, [S]Kyle[/S]we hate[S]s[/S] it when we have more than 5 stickied thread.
Unless I am missing something, that thread isn’t helpful to my question. I have already confirmed that the 3rd party cables on Amazon don’t work. In this thread I have found a suggestion of a cable that does work, but isn’t manufactured anymore. Your linked thread mentions some other third party cables, but the links are dead. Someone has suggested that HDMI up converters were a possibility, but that thread indicates that HDMI (especially upconverted) can introduce lag (which I knew).
Now the thread is 83 pages long, I looked through like 20 pages. If there is some crucial piece of information I am missing please let me know. All I really need to know is how to connect my Wii to the Asus VH236H without introducing lag (and I ask that knowing VGA doesn’t lag, but some other options out there do).
I’m not sure where this idea comes from that HDMI lags and VGA doesn’t lag. There’s no truth to it. And as someone who’s tried both connections on an Asus VH236H I can tell you that there’s zero difference.
Perhaps you’re confusing the fact that most televisions disable post processing when connecting through PC inputs.
The Wii2HDMI I bought from neoya.com works very nicely. Like I said, it doesn’t do any upconverting, which is preferable because I’ve found that the ASUS’s video scaler is fast. (I’ve found it to be faster than the Xbox 360’s internal video scaler.) The input lag is barely noticeable (no worse than playing Xbox 360). I was able to play demanding input response games like the Mega Man series and the Bit.Trip series without any problems. The image is a little blurry (not terrible) but that’s to be expected when you’re converting a 480p image to 1080p on a monitor that doesn’t use much post processing. A prettier picture comes with more input lag. I will say that 480i games are hideous on this monitor.
Gooseboy, thanks for the update. Though after all this I think I am just going to give the smash players CRTs. It is cheaper to buy more CRTs then this addon unfortunately.
Sorry to rez this thread, but I want to play my wii on the evo monitor I just bought. Are you saying that the wii2hdmi worked with all 480i wii/gamecube/vc games on that monitor? I didnt want to get a wii vga cord since it doesnt do interlaced. I saw this dual scaler/atsc tuner (Mygica LDA-9000 HDTV Box) which seems like it works with little to nearly no lag, but I dont want to pay $65-$70 more; I’ll probably get it later, but for now my budget is capped.
