[sugar glider]

Hello everyone. Could someone tell me the cheapes and most effective way of connecting my ps2 to my monitor as im getting rid of my old tv. Ive done some research and it turns out i need a compoiste-s to vga converter. Is there any other way using a tv-card for example. I have one of those but dont know what to do with it or what leads and connections i would need?
can anyone shed any light on this matter?
thanks

[bonzobanana]

Yeah a bog standard pc tv card would do it. You would need a ps2 s-video lead assuming your tv card has an s-video input and if you wanted to route your audio through the pc as well a 2 phono socket to 3.5mm stereo jack plug lead.

Here's an audio adaptor that would do it.

DealExtreme: $1.09 Composite AV Cable Female to 3.5mm Male Convertor Plug.

You could use a standard playstation composite lead but s-video would give a better image. Not massively better but significant. If you could find a component or RGB scart capture card going cheap even better and you would obviously need the necessary leads too. Remember though the ps2 has fairly poor output quality. It will never give an image as impressive as gamecube, dreamcast or xbox. A dreamcast for example has a VGA output option and looks amazing on VGA monitors as most games on the dreamcast have progressive output.

[fallenangle]

Another option would be a Component to VGA converter or, as the PS2 has so few prog scan games, even a RGB to VGA converter. PS2 Component cables are cheap but a decent converter of either sort will cost you at least £40+ from eBay. I can not say how good the PQ would be with a device of this sort but it should be better than S-Video.

[bonzobanana]

One benefit of a pc capture card is sometimes you can process the input in various ways to create a better image, i.e. try different ways of deinterlacing the image and different effects plus scale etc. You basically using the pc itself as clever video processor. There used to be and probably still are applications that will do this for free. The other benefit is of course you can capture ps2 video to post on youtube etc as well as other consoles.