First serious setup

[Thamiel]

Hey guys,

Done my time messing about with the usual suspects, (HD Box Pro, GBS 8220) and though they definitely do the job I found my satisfaction with the picture quality dropped pretty quickly.

Currently i'm playing everything on a Bang & Olufsen MX700, love the shit out of that TV but i'm moving in with the Missus in a few months and let's just say i've noticed a few snarky comments and baleful glances on her part directed toward my majestic, gorgeous CRT.

With that in mind, i've done a heap of reading, scoped out my options and settled on a budget for myself to get a decent picture on the LCD/Plasma I will inevitably have to do my gaming on in the coming months. On their way to me at this moment is an XRGB 2+ and a DVDO iScan HD, though not my original choice when I set out I got great deals on both of them so I couldn't really argue.

At this point I just have a few general questions about the setup:

1. I plan on feeding my 240p consoles into the XRGB, then to the iScan for scaling up to native rez. From reading the manual, the iScan accepts both RGB and YUV over the same inputs. My question is what sort of cable do I need to get from the XRGB to the iScan? I assumed it would be a male DSUB 15 to 4 RCA but I can't seem to find any cables like that online.

2. Might be an assumption on my part, but does sending 240p material through the XRGB to the iScan negate the random pixel issue the iScan has with 240p signals that are directly input?

3. iScan HD perfectly operable without a remote? The main reason I got a great deal on this is it had no remote or power supply, power I can sort but I think the remote will be problematic.

I think that's it for now, any input on this setup would me much appreciated!

[Fudoh]

1. I plan on feeding my 240p consoles into the XRGB, then to the iScan for scaling up to native rez.

I doubt that a brandnew LCD or Plasma set would have such bad scaling, that this is neccessary. You would be adding extra lag for no real benefit, BUT...

From reading the manual, the iScan accepts both RGB and YUV over the same inputs. My question is what sort of cable do I need to get from the XRGB to the iScan? I assumed it would be a male DSUB 15 to 4 RCA but I can't seem to find any cables like that online.

no, you're on the wrong path. The iScan shares YUV and RGBs inputs for 15khz signals. This has nothing to do with a XRGB output. Your XRGB does output 31khz RGBHV. There's a passthrough HD15 input on the iScan HD, but if I remember this right, this input is NOT processed, so you can't upscale the XRGB's picture with an iScan HD anyway.

2. Might be an assumption on my part, but does sending 240p material through the XRGB to the iScan negate the random pixel issue the iScan has with 240p signals that are directly input?

yes, but as said, the 31khz RGBHV is just passthrough, it's not even transcoded to DVI/HDMI.

3. iScan HD perfectly operable without a remote?

yes.

[Stainomo]

3. iScan HD perfectly operable without a remote? The main reason I got a great deal on this is it had no remote or power supply, power I can sort but I think the remote will be problematic.

I have a remoteless iScan HD - you can do a seperate setup for each input so once everything is connected it's a matter of pushing input (or you can try auto but it's not 100% for me).

[Thamiel]

Thanks for that Fudoh, I should have realised. From reading the manual your totally right about the pass through not being processed at all.

The TV we have is utter rubbish. Can't handle 240p at all so i'll keep the XRGB 2+ for that, not sure what to use the iScan HD for now but no big deal. Scored it for just under $100.