Full screen web browser, on screen keyboard, and other questions

[Momotombo]

EDIT: Never mind, read the reply

I want to build a console-like system that hooks up to an HDTV in the living room and runs emulated games, PC games, and other media. Since this is going to be a family/friends thing on a big TV, I also want to be able to easily browse the internet so we can screw around on that and maybe watch youtube videos or look at whatever comes to mind. I've had the idea of using an on-screen keyboard along with a web browser that locks into full screen mode and has a gamepad-controlled interface, maybe a mouse controlled by the analog stick or something, and an on-screen keyboard for typing in text boxes and such. I've even thought of having multiple cursors of different colors for each gamepad so that other people can join in and click on things, but I don't think there's any software out there that does that.

Anyway, I'm not sure how I'd do any of this. I think I've been able to control my mouse quite smoothly using joy2key or whatever it was called, but I can't remember if it was sensitive to how far the analog stick was pushed or anything like that. I've heard of xpadder and that sounds pretty interesting, but I plan on having each emulator configured for the gamepads rather than having xpadder do all the work in the background.

So, I'm wondering if anyone knows a way to configure a web browser to start up full screened, with no way to take it out of full screen mode, to have an on-screen keyboard appear whenever something needs to be typed and then making it go away when there's no more need for it. And if possible, a way to have multiple cursors like on the Wii for fun I guess.

As far as my other questions go, I was wondering what might be the best way to make older emulated games look good. On my old TVs they look fine, but when stretched over a new TV or at high resolutions on computer monitors, they become pixelated and they don't look good anymore. I've tried scanlines, but they make the picture look really dark and it kinda hurts my eyes. Video smoothing like with bsnes looks blurry, but I've found that it's the most acceptable solution so far. I don't like any of the filters like HQ2X because they make the image look weird and gooey, like the colors are all smeared over each other or something. I heard some newer TVs can display the tiny SNES resolution but I can't be certain. The closest I've come to seeing that with my monitor is reducing the screen resolution to 640x480 and setting zsnes to the original windowed SNES resolution, and that's as good as I can get it. I was wondering what you guys out there might be doing to make your old emulated games look nice on big new TVs.

Anyway, that's it for now. Sorry if it's a lot, this is a biggish project I want to work on when I can build the PC to run everything on. If I can't implement the on screen keyboard properly I plan on buying a wireless keyboard and mouse anyway, which would be easier. I just want to do a lot of things to make the thing as much like a console as possible.

Thanks for reading

EDIT: I forgot one last thing - Should I use GameEx with Windows XP? I'd rather use Windows 7 unless it has problems with the software. I plan on having the entire system run only GameEx with no way to see the desktop if at all possible. Like I said, I want it to be as much like a console as I can make it. Also, would you recommend AMD/ATI or intel/Nvidia? I like how much cheaper ATI is, so I plan on going with them, but I read there were some problems with ATI. Anything on that?

[Momotombo]

Never mind about the on screen keyboard, I've decided it's too inconvenient to be controlling a web browser with a game pad, I just thought the idea would be cool at the time. I've decided to just go with the wireless mouse and keyboard.

I decided to use firefox with adblock in fullscreen mode along with an addon called Autohide, which seems to allow me to hide everything but the status bar and the address bar plus the home, refresh, and the back/forward buttons while hiding the min/max/exit buttons, so that might solve that if I can disable exiting fullscreen mode.

I'd still like find out how anyone out there might be making their old games look nice on new TVs/monitors anyway. I can go with bsnes' and other emulators smoothing, but if there's a better way I'd like to know it.

Also, I did try out GameEx on my own PC and I love it, but while it's switching to an emulator I've discovered that it goes to the desktop and very briefly shows the emulator window before starting the game. I was wondering if there's any way to keep that from happening, since I don't want anyone to see any behind the scenes stuff if possible. I'll keep looking at GameEx's configuration to make it impossible to exit to windows and whatnot, I don't want it to seem much like a normal PC at all by the time I'm done configuring it. If anyone has more ideas on making a fully GameEx machine like I want, please share them.

[twotone8]

http://www.gameex.info/forums/index.php?showtopic=66&view=findpost&p=58266

check out this guys cabinet.

i've been drooling over silver x's setup for weeks.

he seems to be building the same system you're looking for, complete with web browser, onscreen keyboard, etc. he give a few short details as to how he's doing it, and i sure wish i understood it all. might try pming him. let me know what you find out, i've been curious myself.

[Momotombo]

Wow, that looks just about perfect. It looks like it can even run N64 games, which I think I'm going to add to the library unless too many of them screw up due to bad emulation and such. Thanks man.

I actually think I'm going to copy that entire setup and then have my own tweaks. That's so cool, I love the tiny case he has.

By the way, if anyone out there can tell me, how would bsnes run on that system? I'm thinking not very well, which kinda ruins that plan unless I can figure out how to fix the audio in zsnes.