Playing games on older consoles with newer TVs with S-Video or better quality?

Question

I am moving into an apartment with a den, which will make a great man cave. My big screen has an s-video input, but I won't be using that in the den. I will be using my pc monitor which does not have an s-video input. I was thinking of getting a second small cheap pc monitor or tv, but s-video inputs seem very uncommon (if anyone knows of a great cheap model, let me know!). Then I looked at s-video to vga/hdmi converters. There is a good selection of these, but they are all made by brands I have never heard of. To make matters worse, there aren't any serious reviews from gaming websites!

If anyone is knowledgeable about getting old systems to run on modern displays with at least s-video or better quality, please share your knowledge, I need ideas and recommendations :)

Answer 1

S-Video is long dead and buried so it's hard to find anything that supports it. As far as new equipment goes you're options are very limited. The only brand name device that can convert S-Video to HDMI you might be able to find new at retail is a 2013 Yamaha RX-A1030 (RX-V1075) AV receiver, but that's probably way outside your budget. I can say though that it should work well as I have the 2010 model use it to connect my old game consoles using S-Video. It actually does a pretty amazing job on composite video as well.

But realistically you're pretty much stuck with some made-in-China converter box that some random company slapped their logo on. I haven't used any of these, so I can't recommend any, but they're going to be your only option. There probably aren't going to be that many different devices that can do this, just a lot of different companies logos on boxes made in the same factory.

You'll want to check that any converter box you get can do two things. The first is that the box is going to need to convert to 480i to 480p or better. Most displays don't support 480i over HDMI or VGA. The second is that it works with old consoles, which have compatibility problems with modern devices. If customer reviews say that it works with a NES or SNES it should work with any of the consoles you mentioned.

Answer 2

It may be not the direct solution for your problem, but there is this company in japan with great products for video capture, one of them is the XCAPTURE-1 you can get almost any input, and send to almost any output (recording at the same time if you want to). It's the most recommended capture device on broadcasters community(that don't go inside a PC). Great review http://www.sixfortyfive.com/streaming/xcapture1.html

They also make this scaler, FRAMEMEISTER, it will be a more direct approach, With almost none lag, and with hdmi/dvi output. http://solarisjapan.com/collections/micomsoft/products/xrgb-mini-framemeister-compact-up-scaler-unit

but I have little knowledge about the product, nor I know enough japanese to talk something about it besides the images. =D But the guys at My Life In Gaming seems to like it a lot. http://kotaku.com/how-to-get-the-sharpest-images-possible-out-of-your-old-1627089358