Retro Gaming on the Big Screen - Review of the SyncStrike, CGA2VGA and SLG3000 Kit

For those of you interested in running your old consoles on your big HD screens, I'm sure you've heard of the Sync Strike and SLG3000 kit.

This is the kit I picked recently:
http://www.arcadeforge.de/?page_id=880#DIY%20Scaler%20Kit

It consists of
1) Sync Strike - takes in RGB Scart cable from your console and outputs to VGA connection (in CGA format) and RCA Audio connections
2) cga2vga - takes in the output of the Sync Strive and upscales it nicely to 640x480 real VGA.
3) SLG3000 - takes the output from the cga2vga and outputs a beautiful scanline image directly to your HD TV via its VGA connection.

A few images are attached (This forum software needs to be upgraded to enable image embedding so I'm sorry you will have to click on the images..)

Wii 60hz RGB - Looks great. Run and gun contra rebirth never looked better
GameCube 60hz RGB - Fantastic. Prefer it to even the component cable with progressive scan.
Megadrive/Genesis 60hz RGB Yea, get some!

As you can see in the images, it really does look fantastic and is highly recommended.


Now there are some problems. Some are annoying and some might even put you off a purchase...

First of all, it comes with no instructions what so ever. Nothing in the box, just 3x PCB's. You actually can't even use the kit when it arrives as you have to go out and buy 3x Male to Male VGA cables AND a 5vDC 2amp PSU. Could they not just sell everything together?

The other problem is the cga2vga. You have to randomly press the four buttons on the PCB to get it change from Chinese to English then somehow get it switch to 640x480 with the correct input type. The autodetect input doesn't work and when changing the resolution....wow, lets just say it's temperamental! Then when you finally have it all set up just the way you like it you will find yourself leaving it plugged in all the time because it doesn't save the configuration once powered off.

Also, during my testing, it did not work with all consoles. For example, my RGB SNES and RGB modded USA N64 just say "no signal"... These are 100% RGB with the real custom RGB cables and work fine on a Sony Trinitron CRT so not sure why they are not working with this kit.. maybe I just need to re-mod these consoles and their cables.

It's certainly not plug and play though and not for the average user. Despite these faults, I would recommend it. Look at those images, they're great!