Post-Exam Calm

[felis_ultharus]

This has been a good day already, and it's scarcely mid-morning. I did 20 pages of editing very early, and I'm now about a half-a-week ahead of where I need to be in school. I'm reading goood books, getting plenty of hours at work (but not too many), and gradually getting my space in order again

Comments

[yumemisama]

Believe it or not, the cheapest solution is usually a TV tuner for the PC. You can get RCA -> VGA converter boxes, but as they contain a lot of circuitry they get kind of expensive. If you have a TFT monitor with built-in TV tuner, you should just be able to plug and go. Tuner cards are about $60USD on the low end -- you get Engrish instructions, but they work fine. Cat has a laptop and therefore has a USB TV tuner box instead, which I think bumped it up to maybe $80USD.

If you want a monitor specifically for the PS2 with a crystal-clear picture and no adapter required, you probably want to hunt around for an old arcade monitor. It does make a difference in picture quality, but the jump is not as large as going from RCA jacks to an S-video cable. Sometimes it's also actually annoying, as graphics on some of your cheaper slapdash games are specifically predicated on you NOT being able to see that level of detail -- I know the score bars in the PSX Tekken games are dithered instead of actually being transparent, for example.

Signed, the local A/V geek.

P.S. -- Play Kingdom Hearts. So cute. So weird. So slashy.

[jenjoou]

Speaking of Kingdom Hearts and slashy.

[yumemisama]

Yes. It is absolutely just like that, except for the part about the flashing. The ending is even slashier. Honestly, we don't even have to try anymore. ^_^

[felis_ultharus]

We were trying? I thought Squaresoft was just providing ^_^

[yumemisama]

I like to think it takes ~some~ artistic effort to write all this porn...

[felis_ultharus]

That would probably be funnier if I knew who the characters were :/

(Problem with VGCats is that you either know the games or you don't -- and it really makes the difference.)

[yumemisama]

Don't worry about it too much -- the bit they're making fun of is in the second game. You have a ways to go yet. ^_^

Although I will note for you, for when you start the first one, that the names all have meaning in Japanese -- Sora is 'sky', Riku is 'shore' and Kairi is 'border between'. Happy pondering of this once you're neck-deep in the plot.

[felis_ultharus]

Thank you! Thanks to your advice, I looked around at TV tuner boxes after work today.

There are a couple in price range, and I can get free installation (which is good, since you're talking to an arts geek -- I'd probably just plug the card in wherever it looked pretty).

There are a few brands -- I'm not sure what I'm looking for. They all seem compatible with my computer, and all of them have RCA outlets. Is there anything more I should be looking for?

Also on your (and other people's) recommendation, when I brought my useless VGA adapter in for an excahnge, I traded it for Kingdom Hearts plus credit. Now to see if I can get the machinery working.

[yumemisama]

There are a couple in price range, and I can get free installation (which is good, since you're talking to an arts geek -- I'd probably just plug the card in wherever it looked pretty).

As long as 'looks pretty' also translates to 'has some ventilation', this works just fine with PCI cards. The slots aren't really numbered or anything. Any installation procedure that avoids involving tin snips or any large Frankenstein-lab-esque electrical sparks is a successful one. Computers are fairly idiot-proof nowadays; everything is shaped differently and you cannot plug a card (or a CPU, or a fan, or a RAM module) in where it does not go without involving a large mallet and probably a lot of beer.

The installation shouldn't give you any problems. Windows XP is very fond of new toys. You plug it in, you feed the computer the CD that came with it, and you keep clicking "OK" until it says you are finished. If the store offers 'free installation' this usually means they'll also go to the trouble of clicking OK for you, which means you can kind of skip all this too. ^_^

For use with a PS2, you only need the most basic of TV tuner functions, which is RCA-in. Most cards will also come with cable-in, a remote and sensor, and some combination of trailing antennae for broadcast TV and AM/FM radio. You will also get a small boatload of software that you have never heard of before, from tiny companies that exist solely as a maildrop in Taiwan, which generally perform a lot of TiVo-like functions for you and sometimes also attempt to let you burn recorded shows straight to VCD/DVD, or play VCD/DVDs, or things like that. Select any combination of this that strikes your fancy; you probably won't ever use any of it, since if you have a drive that takes DVDs you probably already have better software for the same stuff.

Most tuners will also perform a variety of 'firmware' functions, like picture-in-picture display, switching to the second audio channel (usually Spanish down here; I imagine it's probably French where you are), or taking screencaps of the active picture. Utterly unnecessary for what you want the thing for, but if it amuses you, feel free to try it.

For what it's worth, I got tired of moving the television years ago, since I never watched it, and I have my PS2 and GameCube plugged into a TV tuner card now. Works perfectly fine, and on the odd occasion where I do watch the cable here, the reception is much better than I ever got with an actual TV. The picture will either float in a window on your desktop, or run full-screen, and puts out sound through your PC sound card.

[felis_ultharus]

Thanks! I'm taking you're advice, an I'll have a TV card by Saturday ^_^