Cable Selection

[Intrepid]

I'm getting a new TV next week and therefore will have the inputs I've been wanting for so long.

 

I need to decide what new cabling to buy to take full advantage of my new setup.

This TV comes with 4 A/V inputs, including:

3 composite video (2 rear, 1 front)

2 S-video (1 rear, 1 front)

1 component video (rear)

 

That's essentially 3 rear inputs and an aux front input.

 

The component will very likely go to the PS2 as I use it as a DVD player also. The rear S-video will likely go to the DreamCast, and the composite will go to the NES (routed through the VCR, as it's a 2 birds with 1 stone there).

 

What I'd like to know is what other systems are worthy of investing in S-Video cabling to really improve the picture. My personal most likely candidate is the Saturn.

 

My thoughts on optimal cabling per system are as followed:

 

Component:

PS2*

XBox

Game Cube

DreamCast*

 

S-Video:

Saturn*

 

Composite:

Genesis*

NES*

SNES*

 

Coax:

Pong Systems*

Odyssey^2*

Atari 2600/5200/7800*

Sega Master System

TG-16

 

Should there be any modifications to this recommendation? I'm considering the units under stock configuration, no A/V mods allowed. All coax units bypass RF switchboxes and use a phono to F adapter. Some systems (such as the N64) are left off because I do not know enough about their practical usage.

 

*= systems I own

[ussexplorer]

What switch box are you going to use? I have several game systems and I know if I link all the rf units together. It gives one crappy signal. So I sortof got something like what you got

 

SMS - RF

SEGA Genesis - A/V

SNES - A/V

Atari 7800/2600 RF

 

The bigest problem is trying to find one that is cheap and yet covers both RF/AV

 

Laters,

 

Josh

[Intrepid]

Well, the TV has 2 coax inputs, so I'll be using 1 for cable and 1 for games. Will probably run the 7800 through the SNES through the Genesis RF. That's what I was doing before. The picture doesn't degrade too badly, and I'll eventually buy AV cables for the SNES and Gen and hook them too a switcher. If the picture is actually that bad, I still have my old A/B coax switch I can use to reduce the number of systems that get passed through.

[Ze_ro]

If you're really that concerned about picture quality... I'd recommend you get a TV/monitor that's capable of RGB. Unfortunately, not many TV's have these, so any one that you find will be fairly expensive (Although I believe most European TV's have SCART connectors, which have RGB capabilities). However, I've never seen a better picture than that provided by an RGB connection.

 

For a cheap solution, look for an old Commodore 1084S monitor... they support RGB perfectly, but they're rather small (compared to your 36" TV anyways). I have my Jaguar hooked up to one through an RGB cable, and it looks excellent.

 

--Zero