Sony PVM 20L4 20" & Sony BVM A20F1M compatibility

[moorebwb]

Sony PVM 20L4 20" / Sony BVM A20F1M

I have an option to buy 1 or possibly both of them. i own a uk pal sega saturn with mod switches for the 3 regions and 50/60hz and a scart lead, a uk pal megadrive with the 50/60hz switch with scart lead also. the 3rd console is the standard jap pc engine with 3 colour component leads. i visited the chap with the a20f1m which he got working fine with the xbox 360, we tested firstly the saturn but couldnt get a picture, so possibly presuming it was the leads? also with the pc engine the screen seem to continuously rotate the screen. didnt bring the megadrive, but planning on a return trip this coming week,

any suggestions on compatibility/which leads are needed and any advice on getting my consoles to work before purchase would be a great help

[xAzurexEonx]

The BVM is going to give you more options in the resolutions, however some systems will need some extra stuff to display. The 20L4 is standard def but easier to hook up almost anything to. Both are good and sweet to own both.

Phonedork (Youtube) has a final video of what a typical setup can end up looking like. It really depends on which systems you want to hook up and whether you want to mod all of them to use a single type of Sync or use whatever Sync they output as and work around that.

I find it easier to just use a SD definition monitor for 240p stuff and another HD (digital) monitor like 20L5 for 480p and above and avoid "some" of the headaches and additional equipment.

[Dochartaigh]

The Sony BVM-A series requires an extremely rare 68x input card (which commonly goes for like $2000.00+ USD by itself lately...) to input RGB for older Standard-Definition 240p systems like you're talking about. Having that card is the only way to natively input that RGB signal...so I'm assuming it doesn't have that card, and you won't be able to hookup ANY 240p systems to it over RGB. Also keep in mind that the A-Series, even with this outrageously expensive 68x card, can STILL have problems syncing with systems like Sega Mega Drive, Dreamcast (via Toro), one of the NeoGeo systems - and I'm sure some others as well. More info on these sync issues:

http://retrorgb.com/bkm-68x.html

For Xbox 360, and it's 720p/1080p (and other High Definition type of signals), how was he getting that signal into the monitor since it doesn't have an HDMI port (or even component inputs? --I'm assuming here - I'm not totally familiar with the A-Series). Was he using a HDMI to HD-SDI converter box of some sort? Anyway, I wouldn't suggest anybody buy any of the BVM-A series. I mean, if you ONLY play High Definition systems, and don't mind spending a couple hundred on a good HDMI to HD-SDI adapter (never owned one of these myself for the record to test them out in depth), and the A series monitor is pretty cheap, I would personally buy one just to check out, but that's about it (definitely NOT for everybody).

The Sony PVM-20L4 is an excellent standard definition monitor, complete with a high TV Line count of 800 (the regular/standard/lower PVM's usually have 600 TVL's). I have it's bigger 20L5 brother, and the model before it with the same line count (PVM-20M4). BUT, this monitor is only for 240p/480i content, so no 480p and up.