playstation 2 playing on monitor instead of tv

[jonc2006]

hi, i was wondering since its going to be sometime before any computer will be powerful enough to use ps2 emulators at full speed, so, instead of using an emulator, would it be possible to connect a ps2 to my laptop to have the games play on my monitor instead of a tv?

i dont know if such a thing exist but if it does, would it work at full speed or would this still not work due to the need of a extremely good pc? im leaning towards the games working perfectly because, correct me if im wrong, this wouldnt be using my system for performance, just the monitor would be used.any ideas?

[Shendo]

Hm if you have S-video in (usually found on tv cards) then you can use
Composite to S-video coverter to be able to connect PS2 to laptop.

[dutchMasta]

yeah, either get a tv card, or get a graphics card which supports VIVO (video in video out). there are plenty out there that do, though they aren't all that common. that's the way i would go about it anyway.

it won't look way as good btw (for your typical tv tuner/vivo card), and there could possibly be some weird artifacts, or problems like bad ratio/cropping or interlacing, but those can be fixed, but either way, it's pretty troublesome, unless they give you a decent program, which mine didn't.

i suggest using DScaler, if you do get one of these cards, pretty complex, for me anyway, loads of settings, but once you've got it sorted, it will be good (like getting the right framerate setting, best res, colour/contrast, cropping, deinterlace filter, hardware acceleration, etc.).

[ian209]

Or get ureself a VGA box, or better yet, an ATI All-in-wonder card.

[KanedA]

VGA box is a waist of money.. and ain't cheap either... also composite to s-video adapters sux... just get yourself a tv tuner card and s-video cable than download DScaler...

BTW, you could have searched this forum... it was spoiled many many times

[liquid]

I have a vga box, I bought it many years ago (back around 1998) for around $40 ...and I still use it. It's pretty convient piece of hard for running my ps2 on my old CRT monitor ^_^

[industrian]

I've used both vga boxes and tv-in cards. The latter is recommended the most.

Originally Posted by KanedA

BTW, you could have searched this forum... it was spoiled many many times

True. How many times must we say "S-Video + TV-in card + Dscaler = Wunderbar!!!" before people understand. Hell, if you need a good Dscaler config, Kazuya gave me excellent advice that I'm willing to pass on.

[Kazuya Mishima]

Originally Posted by industrian

Kazuya gave me excellent advice that I'm willing to pass on.

Proudly points at himself: yep, that's me

[sims]

Playstation2 and hires monitors just don't mix from my experience. It seem to me the majority of Playstation 2 games are ran at a sub 640x480 resolution. The heavy use of "screen smeering effects" does not help either nor the hideous jaggies.

I tried to play Resident Evil 4 through my allinwonder. Couldn't make out a thing, which after all the connections and components involved, is just not worth the effort.

[flowrent]

Does it matter how good the tuner is ? There are some who rely on the pc cpu and some that have their own chip for capturing..
Also ,whatwould be the minimum pc specs for hooking up a Ps2 to the tuner ?
D-Scaler, what it does exactly is preview mode ,you don't have to record your gameplay,right ?

[KanedA]

sure it matters how good your tuner is... but not that much (if you're not some gadget freak), sims - so you had sh1tty tuner/software or couldn't configure it right :>

[sims]

Originally Posted by KanedA

sure it matters how good your tuner is... but not that much (if you're not some gadget freak), sims - so you had sh1tty tuner/software or couldn't configure it right :>

You need to have some manners.

First of all, my capture solution costed me 300 hundred dollars. The most expensive standalone capture card you can find according to newegg is this, which is merely 149 dollars. I highly doubt you have one of this, and seeing as how you use Dscaler I'm assuming you have a card with the Conexant chipset.

Almost any card (and that means A LOT) based of former Brooktree (now Conexant) chips including bt848/878/879 will work for video only. Why those ? These chips are easy to program (there has been A LOT of software based on those) and are very chea

This is a direct quote from the Dscaler faq pages.

Software wise, I'm using ATI's very own Multimedia Center. Now I must admit, this software can be a resource hog, especially when using the PVR feature, but so far from my experience of playing around with all the capture sources, the PS2 source is the worst. I have capture TV signals, DVD outputs, handycam inputs, and by far PS2 gives the least desirable quality. Why?

Like I said, the source resolution on the PS2 is not that high to begin with. For comparison, the max resolution of over-the-air analog TV signal is 720x480. Which you can see from my pics below. DVD come in at 720x480 and below. Resident evil 4 for PS2, a game which many consider good as far as graphic is concern, is definately running at something below 640x480. I wouldn't complain had it looked good (being ran at about the same resolution as DVD afterall), but at the start of the game where everything seem to almost be made up of brown (the forest village), it's pretty damn hard telling what is what from all the alias, smear effect, shimmering going on.

In conclusion, you might want to do a little research before making a claim which you can't support. Afterall picture quality is all subjective to the observer. Maybe you might be used to low resolution stuff considering you use your capture card for playing Playstation2, but I've seen all the capture sources and only base my conclusion from their results.

[KanedA]

Sorry to hurt your feelings dude... I didn't want that... but I can't see any RE4 pics here can you post them??

[Kazuya Mishima]

Originally Posted by sims

First of all, my capture solution costed me 300 hundred dollars. The most expensive standalone capture card you can find according to newegg is this, which is merely 149 dollars. I highly doubt you have one of this, and seeing as how you use Dscaler I'm assuming you have a card with the Conexant chipset.

Expensive doesn't mean better. I have a cheap Conexant card and it looks better than yours. Have you seen Industrian's shots? They look waaayyyyy better than yours and he has a not so expensive card. He is using component, did you try with it?

Dscaler works with Radeon All in wonders. Ohh and btw, the All in Wonders are not known for their high VIVO Quality.

Originally Posted by sims

Software wise, I'm using ATI's very own Multimedia Center. Now I must admit, this software can be a resource hog, especially when using the PVR feature, but so far from my experience of playing around with all the capture sources, the PS2 source is the worst. I have capture TV signals, DVD outputs, handycam inputs, and by far PS2 gives the least desirable quality. Why?

The image you get it's not card related, mostly anyway. It will depend heavily on the Decoder Software and the ones included with the cards are the worst you can use. What Dscaler does is Upscale the image and in a very good way, apply filters, take out the shimmering, take out most of the aliasing and give better contrast and more sharpness than on tv. The default graphics look horrible even with dscaler without a proper config.
Properly configured it looks way better than on my Sony Wega. That's what Kaneda meant.

Originally Posted by sims

Like I said, the source resolution on the PS2 is not that high to begin with. For comparison, the max resolution of over-the-air analog TV signal is 720x480.........it's pretty damn hard telling what is what from all the alias, smear effect, shimmering going on

More resolution doesn't mean there will be less shimering and smear effect but i guess that's what you think from that post above. It depends on the contrast and the textures being used, plus the mount of polygons.

All of the Ps2 faults you see are resolution related and that's not the case. Have you tried a xbox with the same config and the same Ati multimedia software? It will look almost the same as the image you get with the Ps2.

Originally Posted by sims

the max resolution of over-the-air analog TV signal is 720x480

The standard tv resolution it's up to 640x480. Dvds are the ones that have more resolution. Hdtv is the one that exceeds that standard.

Originally Posted by sims

In conclusion, you might want to do a little research before making a claim which you can't support.

Indeed

Originally Posted by sims

Afterall picture quality is all subjective to the observer. Maybe you might be used to low resolution stuff considering you use your capture card for playing Playstation2, but I've seen all the capture sources and only base my conclusion from their results.

Really, you should try Dscaler with a proper config. Do you need one? It works with All in wonders too, not just Conexant chips.

[sims]

Originally Posted by KanedA

Sorry to hurt your feelings dude... I didn't want that... but I can't see any RE4 pics here can you post them??

The first 4 pics are taken from the tv tuner source. It's regular analogy over-the-air tv signal running at the default 720x480 resolution set by the media center software.

I posted the advent children shots to show what a similar resolution the resident evil four was running at. It was around 500x300.

The last 3 shots are from the lord of the ring dvd source running at 720x480.

Kazuya Mishima, why don't you post some shots to prove your point.

Yes I'm aware of the Tekken 5 shots by kaned. But I believe that game is an exception because it was designed to run at a higher resolution than most PS2 game. Tekken 3 for arcades back in the days had a vga mode from what I remember playing on mame.

But overall the majority games for Playstation2 don't look good outside of a regular TV. Things like shimmering and alias are really obvious when not "covered up" by scanline and other tv like effects. If you've played PS2 games and their PC ports, you'd see that most games use a technique where the close part of a scene is clean while the far off part is all jumbo up. Games like Chaos Legion, Devil May Cry 3, and probably Resident evil 4 when it hits the PC.

Here's a shot of what I mean. Imagine this, add 2 times the blur, and you get an idea of what RE4 look like when I tried it. Unless someone can prove me wrong and take some shots of RE4 through a capture card and make it look nice.

[dutchMasta]

I agree with KanedA sims, if you can't actually make out a thing, then either you're blind, or you haven't configured it correctly. Or you've received a cheap rip-off, or been ripped off and actual **** product.

The cheapest tv tuner cards out there play it fine, I got a really cheap one, this piece of crap looking tv box from hong kong, where i live, which is the land of cheap ****, that has limited functionality, but works, that's all they care about (for example, ps2 modchips here, ps2 backups will work, but no homebrew/ps1 backup, etc.). It is EASILY playable, and i can see things fine. admittedly, it is slightly smeared, and playing ffx, with all the text and menus, naturally, i would've complained if it were unreadable, but that's not the case, i can read the text just fine.

btw, are there any hdtv tuner cards that has component input for a cheap price?

[KanedA]

ok, I reserve this post for my future Resident Evil 4 pics (now I'm at work ) and please post your RE4 pics sims

[Kazuya Mishima]

Originally Posted by sims

The first 4 pics are taken from the tv tuner source. It's regular analogy over-the-air tv signal running at the default 720x480 resolution set by the media center software.

Your tv pictures look like they are at widescreen resolution and i'm pretty sure they are fullscreen. The normal tv resolution is 640x480 (4:3) not 720x 480. What you are doing is stretching an image and making it lose it's aspect ratio because you think that you can add "more resolution" to an image already encoded at 640x480. If you want to add more resolution to a tv feedback use a resolution that won't stretch it (a direct multiple of 640x480 like 1280x960).

Originally Posted by sims

Kazuya Mishima, why don't you post some shots to prove your point.

Sadly my Ps2 is dead right now but don't worry since i searched all over the forum to find the pictures i posted about Tekken 5 but i couldn't find them (i remember somebody even told me about my weird aspect ratio). I managed to find some pics posted by Kaneda and Industrian, including some Re4 ones.

Originally Posted by sims

Yes I'm aware of the Tekken 5 shots by kaned. But I believe that game is an exception because it was designed to run at a higher resolution than most PS2 game.

More importantly, can you make Tekken 5 look as good as Kaneda's pictures?

Originally Posted by sims

But overall the majority games for Playstation2 don't look good outside of a regular TV. Things like shimmering and alias are really obvious when not "covered up" by scanline and other tv like effects. If you've played PS2 games and their PC ports, you'd see that most games use a technique where the close part of a scene is clean while the far off part is all jumbo up. Games like Chaos Legion, Devil May Cry 3, and probably Resident evil 4 when it hits the PC.

Have you heard a lot of people who think otherwise and still think we are at fault? Have you tried Dscaler with a proper config instead of that ****ty Ati software?

That effect that you mention is a way used by programmers to optimize the engine of the games and make them run smoothly. Reading that part of your post i repeat what i said in my earlier post: i see you have problems with Ps2 graphics, not how they look on a tv or a monitor, you simply don't like the effects they use.

This pic of Re4 was sent to me by Industrian in a pm. Does yours look like this?





Does this FFX pic looks like trash to you? Without a proper config this part looks really jagged, now look at it:

Or simply go to this url:
Pictures of your new games

Btw, i dont know how i managed to end up with different image sizes, sorry

[kurtsky]

Just curious
What would be the difference between playing on a PC monitor and a TV?
Better graphics?? Would it rely onyour video card/tv tuner?
Im using Pinnacle TV Rave, kinda cheap but would you guys think it has a way to connect to to PS2 ? Sorry Ive never tried it and Im planning to