Solid HDMI to VGA adapters in 2025?

[drojman]

As title really. I know a lot of the generic ones has issues with crushing black levels.

I last really looked into this when Tendak was the go to buy, but I see now they new adapters aren't a guarantee that they'll work. I've used Startech before for DP to VGA and it's worked well, and they also do an adapter for HDMI, so I'm tempted by that.

Any obvious buys that don't completely break the bank?

[fernan1234]

Startech is my go-to (the one that has a switch to output RGBHV or YPbPr via the D-sub connector). I wouldn't buy it at the retail price though, but hunt for a good deal for a used one.

[digitron]

I've used the Portta converters and they work well, they do require an AC adapter (included).

[orange808]

HDMI to RGB "adapters" are sort of ridiculous. I'm over it.

It's not an adapter circuit, it's a video processor. We should call them what they are: video processors.

These little Chinese machines are all bonafide digital signal processors--and we have almost no information about how they work or what they do internally. There's (really) no way to configure or program most of them, either. It's not surprising that they suck.

Think about it. These machines have no GUI menu, few options, and almost no documentation. The Chinese ones have no docs at all--and the internals keep changing! Yet, everyone lines up to buy these cheap "black box" machines--and we're all (somehow) surprised when our dirt cheap Shenzen specials can't handle everything automatically--without any user configuration.

Maybe the answer is the OSSC Pro with the analog output expansion. That will give you full control and you'll know what you're buying. Probably need to keep the signal input at or "below" 16:9 720p DTV or 4:3 XGA? That's not a big deal, because our old legacy devices didn't normally output higher resolutions, anyway.

No, it's not "overkill". They are ALL video processors. There's no such thing as an HDMI to VGA adapter. That suggests it's a circuit making a straight forward signal conversion. It's not. Suggesting otherwise is absurd. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

There's too many things that can go wrong. You also need quality of life options like gamma and porch adjustments.

[SquidDude]

Here's a collection of greyscale voltage measurements for a lot of common DACs https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... id=0#gid=0, as the first post said, a lot of the cheaper ones crush dark details.

The StarTech DP2VGAHD20 is great for DP to VGA (might work with an hdmi to dp adapter), but in terms of HDMI to VGA the Icybox IB-AC502 is a good choice, if you can find one.
It's like £15 and is extremely close to reference quality, advertised to max out at 1080p@60Hz, although this shouldn't be an issue for most HDMI to VGA use cases.
I remember there being some complaints about its sync handling (I think it was to do with progressive/interlaced switching), I've never ran into any issues with mine but it's still something worth noting.

Some of the chinesium ones are better now, but the issue with those is you never know when they're gonna change out the internals.
Any one that mentions an AG6200 chipset or similar is bound to crush dark details, I think the good ones use a CS5210 chipset.

[jd213]

There have been some issues like delays on resolution changes with the Icy Box boxes:
https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p= ... 34a#p83885

I have a Benfei adapter and a Moread adapter with the CS5210 chip, have been pretty satisfied with their output and resolution switch time on my CRTs, but I'm not too picky about issues like black crush.

[SavagePencil]

Excited to see how this pans out:

https://misteraddons.com/products/refle ... -to-analog

[drojman]

Excited to see how this pans out:

https://misteraddons.com/products/refle ... -to-analog

This looks like possibly the best solution, but from what I gather it's been due to release for a while? Unless I missed an update.

Otherwise, the Icybox may be best for me. The resolution switching issue may at least be a non issue for me as I really want this to play 480p PS2 and GameCube on a VGA CRT - hopefully it wouldn't require much resolution switching when already launched.