VGA Extenders, Any used one? (Off Topic'ish)

[Stu1983]

I'm looking to view my arcade on my TV in my living room so I have the option of lying on my sofa and playing a few games or watching a film.

I have a network socket beside the arcade and I have a network socket beside my TV in the living room.

My initial thoughts are to get one of those VGA extender thingys that take a VGA input and transmit it over CAT5 and then change it back to VGA at the other end which I can plug straight into the VGA socket on my LCD TV in the living room

I'm just wondering if anyone has ever done anything like this, my main question is would there would be any lag between the the arcade and the TV

The other thing I need is something that would do the same but with a USB socket, so I can plug my controller into a hub in the living room and transmit it back to the arcade. I think I've seen USB extenders before but I haven't looked recently.

I've also the option of lifting the carpet from the floor above and laying a few more cables if need be.

Finally I found a wiring diagram which shows how to wire a 15 pin VGA cable to an RJ45 socket, to me this seems like the best option as I can get the parts for £10 or £15 rather than pay £100 for a VGA extender but would this give me a poorer result? Surely the VGA extender does something better for all that extra cash.

Thanks

Stu

[LB11]

Sorry I cant really answer your question. But at one point I bought a 25' belkin VGA cable and the picture was complete crap at best. So I dont know how much better cat5e cable is to run it through your house. Thats probably why there are VGA extenders instead of VGA to Ethernet adapters.

[LB11]

Oh, another thing, Why don't you just make a small HTPC and have it load the games and vids from the cab over network? $300US will buy you a pretty good HTPC for what you seem to need. Things might cost more there though. That would probably be what you would spend in the end for extending everything.

I think that would be much better than trying to run USB and VGA and etc to your living room. Then you have to go to another room and turn the cab on and off when you want. It would be much more flexible to say the least.

[Stu1983]

Oh, another thing, Why don't you just make a small HTPC and have it load the games and vids from the cab over network? $300US will buy you a pretty good HTPC for what you seem to need. Things might cost more there though. That would probably be what you would spend in the end for extending everything.

I think that would be much better than trying to run USB and VGA and etc to your living room. Then you have to go to another room and turn the cab on and off when you want. It would be much more flexible to say the least.

Yeah an HTPC would probably be the more sensible option, I've been wanting to build one for ages but everytime I start pricing the parts I get carried away and end up an all singing all dancing super htpc that'll $1000+ It would be a good christmas project though with all the overtime money I'll be getting so I might look into it again

Stu

[LB11]

Tell me about it.... I started putting one together with spare parts I had laying around.... Then I needed DX9 for MCE (had an ATI AIW8500), Then I needed a nice looking case, then a matx motherboard to fit in it. Then a different CPU since the AthlonXP motherboards were expensive and it was cheaper to get A64 stuff. Then I wanted a HDTV tuner, then the bill was $800

Just do it in increments, get the basic stuff now, and upgrade later! You don't really need a super CPU except maybe to play the newer mame games. You don't need a TV tuner, you could use 1 stick of 1gig memory for now and get another later (which is plenty anyways), you might have a older HDD laying around (10 or 20 gig if you keep the files on the Cab).

[bkenobi]

The VGA->Cat5 adapters are not just moving the wires around. There is actually some kind of encoding and decoding going on there. I don't know exactly how it works, but a cat5 cable has 8 conductors where a VGA cable has 15. The real problem (potentially) is that you have to make those two jacks connect directly to each other without going to your router. As far as quality, as long as you are within the range spec and have decent cables, you should be fine even if you have some electromagnetic fields to go through. Cat5 cables have twisted pairs that help cancel out that kind of noise. As long as the adapter uses them appropriately, you shouldn't have problems.

To be fair though, I've never used them and they look on the pricey side. If it were me and I was going more than a few feet (VGA cable length), I would go the HTPC route as well.

BTW, there is one other option I have used and works ok. X10 sells those wireless video transmitter reciever pairs. I've used them to play video games on a tv I couldn't see. Messed up, but it worked and looked fine...as long as the microwave was off.

[Brian Hoffman]

Why not keep you gaming pc CLOSE to your tv and use wireless USB CONTROLLERS...

I have a small formfactor pc right next to my PS2 and it works great.

[eproxy]

hxxp://www.myhometheater.homestead.com/vgacable.html

[Brian Hoffman]

http://www.myhometheater.homestead.com/vgacable.html

Great resource

[eproxy]

cost effective for sure

[Stu1983]

hxxp://www.myhometheater.homestead.com/vgacable.html

Yeah this is siomilar to the solution I had found for wiring the cable maually, for all that it will cost I might as well try it

Stu

[bkenobi]

Keep in mind that component is analog (as is vga), so you will experience losses to video quality as the signal strengh goes down. If your cable gets too long, you will probably see issues. This is probably EXACTLY what the VGA->TV adapter you were looking at before used (assuming it was component and not composite or svideo). It's surely a neat trick though!

[alexdog69]

i have used the VGA to CAT5 .... modems .. or whatever the proper name is for them... encoder on one end, decoder on the other. and i have used the USB over CAT5 units as well.

they were both used in an install we did for a university.. where we had a 37" LCD screen running 720p with a ELO touch-screen overlay... running a custom way-finding app we built.

the picture quality was degraded but perfectly acceptable.

the USB functioned properly.

latency did not appear to be an issue, but this particular scenario did not have the requirements of a video game system. so............ i can't really make a recommendation based on this.

if it was me, i would experiment with 'hard wiring' things and employ normal repeaters developed for use with regular DSUB-15/USB cables.... and just hack some CAT5 between them if that is what is most convenient. i would avoid introducing any extra .... 'steps' or 'conversions' ... and just try to focus on eliminating the physical distance specific problems (physical cabling and signal attenuation) ...

in the past I used a HRT-200 as a VGA splitter + amplifier to run the same card to 2 displays.

if you wish to just amplify a separate VGA output ("line driver") to help with extreme cable length or multiple connections (signal degradation) on a given output, something like an Altinex DA-1908SX would be appropriate.

USB repeater i am not so sure. that one should be easy.