superg wrote:
Kinda messy, but I perfectly understand your point. I am still in search of perfect retrogaming room setup and my switch is one step towards it.
RCA is better choice for a number of reasons but in this case you have to enforce users to modify all of their cables because SCART is de-facto standard for console RGB. Only small number of people will be willing to do this. IMHO majority of retro-gamers however still don't want to tamper with electronics and rather have plug and play solution, so I have to support SCART

.
Very messy yeah. I honestly get cold feet once in a while, because it's taking a lot longer than I originally envisioned to complete. I'm not modifying the console cables (some of them are original and more than 10 years old, it would feel like a crime), but I am instead doing very short female scart to 6 RCA adapter cables, I buy a female to female scart cable, cut it in half... then wire the important bits to rca... it's a nightmare and I don't even know if I won't have signal loss in the end from all those cables and my soldering (if I do it'll be a nightmare to trace and find)... It's not something I've been recommending to anyone... Or will.
But felt I had to explain, I've looked extensively at the price of scart plugs a while back, I never understood why they were so expensive and didn't have a lot of choices going on. I do understand it now (poor stock) and it makes sense because stock also drives price.
superg wrote:
There are issues with 5th input and power (LED's are draining power and diods on power line aren't of high quality from what I know). There isn't much to report on that switch because it's mechanical, picture quality is obviously the same because when you push button it's equivalent to physical reconnecting of the cable, so simple is that. Furthermore if you're using XRGB you don't care about power issues because XRGB doesn't use that at all. So if you don't care about automatic switching and overall case design/inputs count and you're using XRGB - Bandridge is just fine.
I see. I thought both used a power supply because I know the automatic one does.
Apparently not.
Most of the people I've advised with bandridge have been going with the automatic one, but up to this point I would go with the non-automatic myself because I didn't think it warranted the price difference (and I do get up to plug the consoles anyway)... I never thought they would pull a led in a non-wall plug fed unit which now I see they did.
That's the equivalent of a schoolbook error for switchers, but probably something which can be fixed by taking the led out, I'll keep it in mind.
eightbitminiboss wrote:
They're still worthwhile for the price if you don't mind having to open it up to cut a trace to have the 5th port work properly because of how it's wired and it's been a good switch to me for the past year I've owned it. But I needed a bigger switch so I could have at least another 2 consoles hooked up and the nearest competitor would have been the Shinybow 6x2 switch is more than the gscartsw (and still be one port short of what I need) or the Keene SCART Commander which in my situation, would command 2 of them and be way more expensive. The gscartsw seems to be in the right niche.
Thank you for the feedback, I was really afraid for a while there that I had been recommending shite.
I didn't knew that shinybow.
superg wrote:
8 inputs is perfect choice because of underlying hardware (every multiplexer has 8 inputs). Daisy-chaining works just fine, it was one of main requirements.
yeah, I was thinking 8 scart + 1 scart input disguised 8 pin din as a build-to-order option if someone wanted to daisy chaining between units (first unit purchased would never need this because it only needs to output to be linked one that had the input port), but I realized now 9 scart derivation switches could not be practical from a design standpoint.
As is, one looses a scart port on one switcher, but I have a lot of crap going on and it's enough for me, I don't know if the difference from 15 to 16 ports makes a world of difference to anyone.
lostinblue wrote:
Well, it turned out that Mini-DIN wasn't very good idea

. MiniDIN->SCART cable is custom, I have to solder it for each switch and it's waste of time. Also there are a lot of good quality SCART->SCART cables, so I am still considering to change it later.
I understand that perfectly! (because of the aforementioned female scart to 6 rca nightmarish story)
Yeah. I still like the idea though.