PS2 + PC Monitor

Stephen

I've been thinking of buying myself a nice PS2 for christmas, but as a lowly student, I don't have a TV of my own to plug it into, but I do have this nice 17" pc monitor. Is there some way to connect a PS2 to the PC monitor, via some external piece of hardware or some pci card in the PC?

I can't afford both a TV and a PS2 :eek:

Anyone know?

Cake Fiend

*boink*

Stephen

That site appears to be fooked, though that might just be the dodgy setup here in college.

po0k

yeah, the page works. Mightn't be a bad idea.

Would it wllow you to run the games at high res then? say even 800x600 cos the 512x384/640x480 of most tvs is abysmal for games.

TeRmInAlCrAzY

The Playstation resolution is set by the game/hardware. It can't be changed (not without some extreme hackery).

You'll just get a clearer picture.

I note, however, that on a quick glance, it says VGA monitor -> I dunno from the page whether it would support an SVGA monitor with all the mode switching they do. I presume it does, and it's just the terminology they are using.

po0k

Thought I read a spec sheet somewhere that sid the PS2 could do high res, or at elast render them, if not display them.
Then again I suppose the res of textures in all games is configured f or 640x 480, making any icrease make the games look ****e.


Still, twould be nice to view the games in something looking a little newer then what my Amiga 600 managed 7 years ago.

TeRmInAlCrAzY

Yeah, the spec says that it is capable of playing at higher resolutions, but the games out now do not actually use those resolutions.

Simply plugging in a monitor capable of displaying higher resolutions is unfortunately not going to make a difference. The signal supplied to the monitor is the defining factor, and the resolution would have to be changed at source. This would be a bit of hackery in the extreme.

Bleem! was able to acheive higher resolutions simply because it specified what those resolutions were. The game code running along did not notice what was happening, and the Bleem! rendering engine took care of upping the resolution.

BTW, Bleem! is dead. Their website www.bleem.com is showing a rather sad image, and it appears that the whole enterprise has gone to la la land. Full story at

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/22910.html

Stephen

I ended up buying a TV card, and it does the job. Image quality is slightly degraded but its playable, plus I can now watch tv and stuff on my pc

The ps2 comes with composite AV leads, so the video only is plugged into the TV card and the audio is plugged into my hifi. I understand the audio and video can be combined with an RF cable which can also be plugged into the TV card to get audio and video through the PC, for those who don't have a hifi handy.

Stephen

One more thing:

The TV card seems to have a bit of trouble with old PS1 games, probably due to the lower resolutions they use (Gran Turismo and F1 98 in this case). PS2 games work just fine (Burnout in this case).