PCTV Deluxe

[tsumake]

I'm thinking about getting a pinnacle systems pctv deluxe in order to play my gamecube or any other system on my laptop. Has anyone had experience with this unit? How is the s-video input quality? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, as well as screenshots . Thanks!

 

[Taelon]

Don't they sell mini flatscreen displays for the Cube?

 

[tsumake]

Yeah, but they all suck, badly. Colors are washed out, blacks look purplish because of the screen, and they have a low refresh rate which creates a ton of blurring. I've been using the psone monitor I have (the best one out IMO) but the saturation's still a bit off. There's no blurring and the black's dead on, but some colors come in a little weirdly, like the blues in Windwaker. Also, there is a lot of vertical shearing. I connect the GC via a camcorder-to-tv connector and some rca couplers. For the psone, it's a phenomenal monitor because it uses an RGB signal so games actually look better on the little monitor, that and the small size helps conceal the jaggies

Off topic, but it's a monitor I highly recommend without reservation.

 

[emazur]

If you`re using a laptop, Ill assume this is a usb device. I don`t know if things have changed with usb2.0, but with a usb1.x tv tuner the picture will not be sync with the action, I guess cuz it takes extra time and/or cpu power to pipe stuff through the usb bus as opposed to a pci device. Don`t know if this applies for you in this case, but thought you might appreciate the warning

 

[tsumake]

Thanks for the head's up emazur. The PCTV deluxe, though has USB 2.0 input. I think it'll be fast enough.