PS2 with WinTV? Anyone done this?

[Cabana]

I want to hook up my PS2 to my monitor (and soundcard). What is the best way to do this? I did a search for TV Tuners and seems there are a lot of problems with them. I looked at the ATI TV Wonder VE, but it's only mono, that's no good. Is some kind of passthrough box better? I figure it would be easier since there are no drivers to deal with. It would also be nice to have a way to change channels in case I want to watch TV, but that's secondary. Suggestions? I am running Windows 2000 and I have a Voodoo5 AGP.

ONE MONTH LATER:

After over a month of fighting with Zophar.net over my order which was never shipped, but I was charged for, I have given up and am going to get a WinTV-Go instead. I chose this because it is basically the same as the 401, minus the remote, FM, and S-Video (none of which I need). I will plug audio directly into my soundcard, circumventing the mono audio. My one concern is with my PS2 - I did a search and found slight incompatibilities with PSOne. Has anyone used a WinTV card with a PS2? I'd like to know of any problems beforehand. Thanks!

BTW, I would recommend against patronizing Zophar.net, they have the WORST customer service ever. I am currently fighting the charge on my credit card.

 

[Vadatajs]

Try www.hauppauge.com. I have a model 401, and while I don't play ps2 through it, it is stereo. Hauppauge also has really good windows 2000/XP drivers.

 

[TigerShard]

Here is a link to a cheap connector that allows you to do that. It is an external box.
http://www.zophar.net/store/items.phtml?ps2-acc

 

[Cabana]

Bump.

 

[Illogic]

I use my WinTV & Soundcard in conjunction with my PS2. The WinTV has a composite in and I use that I plug my PS2 into and on my Santa Cruz, I have a 1/4" to composite audio jack that I connect my L/R channels into. Then in my Santa Cruz control panel I change the VersaJack to analog in.

 

[Cabana]

So you don't have any video problems? That post I linked mentioned some with the PS1 when changing resolutions, I was just wondering if the PS2 did the same thing.

 

[MCS]

Hi there, I have tried this recently with my old Hauppauge WinTV PCI card that I had lying around, with the audio going into my SBLive. Initially I was quiet disappointed with the image quality vs my actual television, and there was pretty bad interlacing problems. I downloaded the latest version of the WinTV 2000 software and this has a nice de-interlace option which helped a lot. But the quality was still pretty poor - until somebody recommended a utility called DScaler. I am now using that instead of the Hauppauge software and even on the default settings it looks a HELL of a lot clearer, brighter, sharper etc. It is still not as good as a real TV, and never will be (you will have to accept this fact) but for me it's perfect for when I can't use the living room to play PS2

So in short, try using DScaler and you should be satisfied.

 

[Cabana]

Thanks for the replies - I had been planning on using DScaler anyway, but now I'm pretty much convinced to get the card. I'll post once I do and give a short summary of how well it works.

 

[TigerShard]

Sorry to hear about your troubles with zophar.net. I have never bought from them before. Just to let you know, Zophar.net is not a real business, they sell those items to make funds to keep their emulation website going. The website is a good site, but thanks for the warning about their store.

 

[Cabana]

Check out the forum for the store on their site...it is filled with complaints about not receiving goods. He actually locked it last Friday because so many people were posting wondering where their goods were.

 

[UrQuan3]

I can't say any thing about PS2, but TV cards and game systems don't get along well. If the TV card is set to "single field" the TV card will drop every other field of the TV signal (every other line on the screen). This is normally the setting I use, though the motion won't be as smooth. If set to "both fields" the screen almost always jitters up and down by one pixle. Very irritating, I get a headache. If set to "Interlaced" the picture will look like a comb because the fields normally don't line up. I have an All-in-Wonder 128, but the same happens with all the TV cards I've seen. The game systems I've used on my TV card are PSX, n64, Saturn, Super Nintendo, and Dreamcast (VGA-box very good).

I'm trying to find out if anyone has used a cheap line doubler to go straight to the monitor. I'm wondering about the REDANT VGA-box and the TVOne cheese video box. Both use composite or s-video.

 

[Cabana]

Actually I ended up getting a WinTV-Go for $30 this week and it works great. I am using Dscaler and the image is what I expected - obviously it doesn't look as nice as a TV since it is greatly enlarged, but it runs fine. Dscaler has all kinds of interlace settings that make it look right. For the price I don't think it could be beat, plus I can watch TV and run the software in a window.