Be Excellent To Each Other

OK. I don't have a TV in the gaming room and don't want to connect consoles up in the living room on account of them being messy.

So, I need a way of connecting my cube to the PC's monitor. I have ruled out one of those expensive VGA adapters as I don't want to spend that much, but was wondering if it would be possible to use one of those cheap USB capture devices and use that? Obviously I wouldn't be using the capture function, merely using it to display the NGC on the monitor.

Anyone here use a capture card? If so does it display the inputted signal before you actually record it to the PC?

My Video card may even support Vivo. I know my card downstairs does, only it's called Avivo on account the card is ATI

Has anyone used either Vivo or Avivo to capture? if so same question applies, can you use it to get a signal of a device onto the monitor without actually recording/capturing it?

TIA

JC

The problem here may be lag, i.e - by the time you see it on the monitor it's half a second old. Not a problem for TV, certainly a problem for gaming.

It's possible to run a PS2 through a TV card on a PC. i've done it before. When I was a student.

AVIVO is a process in which the decoding of movie files is offloaded on to the GPU, rather than a VIVO solution. It doesn't mean your card has a video in socket (although it may, still, it's just two different things.)

I read the ATI manual and apparently it stands for Audio video in Video out.

It's capture basically.. Thing is, I hate the ATI software....

Years and years ago (P133 days) my mate had an ATI rage with the TV thinger. We used to make tiny little grainy videos at about 20FPS. However, I do recall the video being OK before you actually started to capture it, so Mali has jerked my memory and I think for 15 quid I'll give it a go

I wouldn't have even bothered getting the NGC out of the box again, but tonight I found out that a very clever swede has hacked up the ocarina ltd disc for NGC and used the emulator in it to do Mario 64 and Kart 64. Best part is they're 14mb the pair..

Kart I can do without, but Mario 64 is the second best game ever made (right behind Fallout 3).

Also managed to find Luigis mansion, Mario Sunshine (which is a bit crap tbh) and some others.. And then I realised I have paper mario, RE4 (never played it) and about 50 other games (hadn't even looked through the games I had until earlier, just played Mario Kart NGC). I'll need something to do when Fallout is totally 100%ley completely completed

From Wikipedia :

AVIVO

AVIVO is a hardware feature designed to offload video decoding, encoding, and post-processing from a computer's CPU hardware to ATI's GPU hardware series, first introduced with the ATI R520-based line of GPUs. The platform is designed to enhance the quality and flexibility of ATI's current video capabilities. The platform involves hardware video decoding, encoding, and a variety of tools to aid in the process. AVIVO compatible GPUs have lower CPU usage when a player and decoder software that support AVIVO is used. However, the GPU itself does not convert TV signals to video signals usable on computer monitors. Such jobs are done by Rage Theater or Theater 200 on reference video card designs, and the availability of such decoder depends on the decision of implementation of the manufacturer and market positions of various models.

From ATI :

Avivo™ High-End Video and Display

* Rediscover your photos and video and experience over 1 billion colors - exclusive to ATI graphics cards
* Remarkable, high-quality HD video playback
* Ready your multimedia system for HDCP1 and watch high-definition content


Believe me Sir, hardware is my area of expertise, and AVIVO doesn't mean you have video capture ability (although as I pointed out it doesn't mean you don't have it either). I've owned quite a few AVIVO-enabled cards and they couldn't do capture.

1) Get a wire tidy and set it up in the front room. Even cheaper option and guaranteed to work.
2) Set it up in front room when playing and remove it when not. Also a guaranteed and frugal option.
3) Get an emulator and play them on your PC.
4) Send it all to me and I will plug it into my TV and give you regular updates as to how much fun I am having on a scale of 1 to 10.

I think option four involves the least stress and possible mishaps although I may be biased.

Get the aerial lead, plug it into the back of telly card, off you go. It's that simple. You don't need to toss about with anything else.

I once walked in on a friend running a PS2 through a TV card trying to get Playstation Linux to work. I felt it best to leave him alone.

I'm glad you've shaken off that terrible bout of lurkitis you were suffering from.

Thanks, it might have been the antibiotics I took for a chest infection that did it

Also my favourite haunt has slowly died a death over the last year so I needed somewhere to post where more than three people are likely to read it.

WoS isn't that bad yet, is it?

Nope, not WoS I never really got past lurking there. I have over 4,000 posts on my old favourite haunt but as I said it is as dead as the proverbial Dodo nowadays.

Sad but it was never as much fun as this place anyway.

Yeah, it's great around here. *morosely pops a balloon*

Whatchoumean yet?

I suppose alot of people here don't know about Stu's jaded past with certain emulators.. Won't go into it now..

I joined his forum about two years ago and he banned me after two posts. I didn't even say anything slightly provocative (sic) to him I think he was just paranoid.

A few weeks ago (just before I joined here) I applied for an account there as my love for videogaming has returned for the first time (properly like) since 2000. My account was approved today.

Not that it mattered tbh because the whole place is now pretty much pay per view. My argument with him for the last eight years is that he doesn't really give a shit about anyone but himself and only runs off his mouth in his reviews and rants to make money. That's fine, but he always pretended that it had nothing to do with 'bigging himself up' and all to do with getting word to the people.

He had a good go at ruining an emulation scene for his own goals (a certain fruit machine emulator and his fair play campaign) where he claimed to give a shit about the poor souls who were losing money and in debt due to cheating fruit machines, yet in the end it all turned out to be for himself and bolstering his image. The reason I know this was because at the time the authors of the emulator denied him permission to use it in his campaign and he basically told them to go fuck themselves and used it anyways (causing them alot of problems). when people tried to suggest he do something to make fruit machines inacessible to young people (to stop the addiction before it has a chance to take root) he wasn't interested.

It was purely about him.

Suffice to say I don't like him very much tbh. He has a habit of being a complete hypocrite and doing exactly the things he claims to hate so much.