I recently bought a 32" Sony Wega HDTV. It displays an excellent progressive scan image from its component inputs. I want to hook all of my game systems up to this TV in the best way possible. Here's my crazy idea:
Buy or make RGB cables for all my systems that support it (Genesis, SNES, Jaguar, Saturn, PS1, and N64 with RGB mod).
Then, take this RGB signal and send it to an XRGB upscan converter. That will give me a VGA signal to work with.
Run the VGA signal into a VGA-to-component transcoder, like the Audio Authority 9A60. This will produce a 480p progressive scan signal which my TV is capable of receiving.
What do you guys think? Is this doable? I realize it would be complicated setup, but in theory, it should work. Right? I would love to know if anybody has tried anything like this.
One concern: I know that the Saturn, PS1, and N64 are capable of running in high-resolution modes. Only a small number of games on each system support this (e.g. Virtua Fighter 2 on the Saturn, Star Wars Rogue Squadron on the N64, etc.). Will this higher resolution display properly through the console's RGB outputs, or is RGB limited to about 320 x 240?
You can't magically create quality where there is none, the $400 solution you propose might not be significantly better than some S-video cables, except that you'll get larger pixels and no scanlines.
Since your TV will take low-rez signals anyhow, the whole upscanning thing seems like a waste of effort. You can buy an X-Select D4 for nearly the same price as the XRGB-2, and it'll do the same thing as the setup you just suggested.
Also, as Lawrence mentioned, S-Video is will be close enough in quality to the converted component signal that it may not be worth spending a couple hundred dollars for the difference.
All right, I guess I'll just stick with s-video. Thanks for the advice.