I've been looking for the Dreamcast VGA box for a while, and after discovering that Pier Solar's coming to DC, I decided to go looking again. While this one isn't exactly what I'm looking for, it look like it would work. What do you guys think? Link Now, on the same site, I found this. What is it? It is just a piece of junk metal or would it be worth it to purchase it alongside the VGA cable? If I'm totally on the wrong track, can you guys help me out?
I look for the VGA box instead. Also those are VGA connectors in the second link that you probally have to solder in to something. And you're paying to the bank of China with that cable you want to buy.
Just had a look on ebay, holy hell. I got mine in 2009 for $20! http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/I.html;jsessionid=DC75DC8A6C39FAB46CE16ECBC91D7B4D?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=dreamcast+vga+box&LH_PrefLoc=2&_arm=1&_armm=63&_ruu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com.au%2Fsch%2Fi.html%3F_from%3DR40%26_sacat%3D0%26_nkw%3Ddreamcast%2Bvga%2Bbox%26_arr%3D1 Have a look at these listings, is this seriously the going rate for them now?
To help this reply make sense, I should explain what this is. Originally a VGA box was an actual box that you plugged into your Dreamcast that you could plug a VGA cable into. The boxes typically had other features, like you could plug other crap into them as well. The ones you buy now are just VGA cables with audio that connect directly to the DC, no more box. So you plug the cable into your DC, and the VGA into your VGA monitor or TV. Then the audio cables go wherever. This is just a double-sided female VGA connector, it has nothing to do with Dreamcast. You use them if you want to connect two VGA cables together because the cable you bought was not long enough. Since these new "boxes" are just cables and you're not plugging your own VGA cable in, they offer it in case the length of the cable sold to you wasn't long enough. You can buy the same thing at Radio Shack or a computer store if your cable is not long enough. Dreamcast VGA boxes/cables are no longer mass produced, most of these new ones you can buy are assembled by hand. (They're not shitty like someone taped them together, they're still professional quality) This is why they're $25-$35 new now. I actually ordered one on Saturday from a different store, one of the cable-only models like you've linked to, but it was $6 more. But I ordered it from a company that's only 30 minutes from where I live, so I mainly did it because shipping would be very cheap and very fast. It's probably made by the exact same company that made the one you linked to. So if you want some feedback on them, I'll probably have one later this week.
Talk about ludicrous price increases... glad I got mine when I did. I paid $29 shipped for mine, and now it's over $100!
I got the cable yesterday. It looks just like the ones the site you linked to is selling. One end goes into the DC, the other side is VGA along with red and white audio connectors. The audio part of the cable separates from the video a few inches from the connector on the DC side, so if your audio source is in a different place than the TV it's easy to connect both. For example, I have the VGA going to my TV, and the audio to my sound system. The cable is probably 4 or 5 feet long, I haven't measured it. It's long enough for my needs. As far as quality goes, I have no complaints there. The physical cable itself is looks good enough to be an official product. The video quality is fine too, I noticed no unusual artifacts or smearing. It's definitely better looking than a Wii with component cables. In summary, there doesn't appear to be an issues with it. Unless you want the extra features offered by some of the boxes, the cable is probably better than a box because you don't need to worry about having a plastic box somewhere. If you want pictures or more detailed information, feel free to specify what better information I can provide.
Why didn't they go with the cable option back in the day? I always assumed some kind of conversion process happened in the box, but if a pure cable option is now possible, it seems as if all it required was matching like pins with like. I know the vga box also offered other options like S-Video output, but if you're buying a VGA box for VGA output, surely the cable option would have come up before, or has there been some sort of technological advancement that made this possible?
The box never did any conversion. VGA output is present on the AV Out port on the console itself; all the box does is provide ports and the TV/PC switch. I suppose the reason Sega went with the box instead of a cable is because some games don't support VGA mode (without hacks), so you'd have to switch between composite/s-video and VGA, and it's easier to do that by flipping a switch than by switching a cable.
The box does have some buffering going on in it on sync signals. I recall not getting image on my monitors without these buffers when I added internal VGA mod to my machine.
There's probably a few capacitors and other assorted parts, but it's all passive logic, as opposed to an active device like the GameCube component video cable.
I don't know about some folk's box, but mine has an svideo encoder in it so that I can do VGA, svideo, or composite. There's a switch on it that controls the cable ID so that you can tell the DC to do either VGA or svideo/composite.
S-video and composhit come from DC as is, there's no encoding happening... or at least there is no need. One can have external encoder in RGB mode but it will produce inferior image due to no phase information that the video DAC in DC has access to. My VGA box has the VGA out, TRS audio out and s-video + RCA composhit and audio outs. Besides a switch there's a LED and a logic chip to buffer the sync signals.
