Keene SyncBlaster Black Box

[BuckoA51]

On the screenshots? I wouldn't worry about it, most Extron interfaces have a brightness boost control anyway, if not you can always compensate by boosting the brightness on your processor or display.

[austin532]

While the Extron method may give a very slight difference with the picture, I'll stick with the Black Box method for now. Quality wise the picture looks exactly the same for both methods minus the slight banding. The banding is really not that bad and looks similar to minor TV burn-in. A small sacrifice to pay to not having to deal with a cluster fuck of a mess.

I'm sure Keene is well aware of this and will most likely fix this in the future with a Black Box 2 or whatever they call it.

Overall I'd say it's a close tie between the 2 methods.

BlackBox = Simplicity - Slight banding
Extron = Messy - No banding

[BuckoA51]

I suppose it depends how you cable it up. Once I'd sorted the negative/positive sync thing I found that I didn't need a psu for the Sync Strike. Also it might be possible to eliminate the sync strike entirely and just use something like this - http://www.retrogamingcables.co.uk/fema ... itors.html Then you'd just tie that back in with a simple BNC female to VGA. As for audio I don't route audio through my Mini anyway so I haven't worried about that.

I'm sure Keene is well aware of this and will most likely fix this in the future with a Black Box 2 or whatever they call it.

I doubt that very much. This is a niche product as it is and Keene like everyone else is moving away from SCART as no consumer gear uses it any more.

[Thomago]

Regarding the brightness loss seen with the Extron interface:

It's totally negligible here; with the Extron interface (and WITHOUT signal amplification!) I need to set my Framemeister's A/D-Level to about 152 to make pure white from my PS2 appear pure white (my TN-LCD makes it quite easy to discern "pure white" from "not-quite pure white"), without the Extron interface to about 151.