Retro Home Theater Setup - Receiver Recco?

[segafan]

I've been planning for a while now to separate my retro consoles from my regular HT setup and give them a proper home using better suited equipment.

Here's what I have:

-NES (Composite)
-Master System (Composite)
-Sega Genesis 2 + CD 2 (S-Video)
-Saturn (RGB)
-Dreamcast (RGB and/or VGA)
-PS1 (RGB)
-N64 (S-Video)
-SNES (S-Video)

Want to hook it up like this:

Consoles -> AV Receiver -> XRGB3 (or some kind of RGB conversion) -> Sony PVM-2530 (or 2950)

Does this setup make any sense? Basically what I would like to do is have a receiver used for input switching, preferably converting different video sources to one type of output, which gets outputted/converted for display on an RGB-compatible monitor.

If there's a better more efficient way to do this I'd love to hear more.

thanks all

[awbacon]

Other than the AV receiver altering the signal BEFORE it gets to the XRGB3, I'd say it sounds reasonable.

You could always just send the AUDIO into an audio receiver, and the video signals into a switcher BEFORE the RGB converter if the AV receiver presented any issues

But I doubt that would happen. I think your idea is pretty solid

[segafan]

Thanks for the quick reply. Half the battle will be tracking down an XRGB3 without paying an arm and a leg...

I actually picked up a Sony PVM-2530 a few years back for $70 on eBay; a military installation in my home town used them for surveillance and sold 100's of them for dirt cheap. During a cross-country move though I sold it and I'm now kicking myself for having done so since good ones are hard to find.

Does anybody utilize or recommend a certain model of receiver? Onkyo/Denon/etc?

[mario2butts]

Well, using a receiver for video switching would make sense if all your sources were composite or S-Video, but since you're planning on making RGB connections you're going to have to do some switching outside the receiver. As far as converting the video sources to one type of output in the receiver, there's no need, the XRGB has inputs for composite, S-Video, component, and RGB which are all converted to VGA, and the PVM monitors (as far as I know, I've never used one) have composite, S-Video, and RGB connections. And in any case, no receiver that I'm aware of has inputs for the RGB signals used by classic consoles.

Plus, while there are a handful of games for the consoles you listed that support surround sound, I'm assuming this setup will only be for stereo since you already mentioned you have a HT. Given these two factors I would strongly suggest buying a used, older stereo receiver and don't worry about its video switching capabilities. If you look around yard sales and such you can find decent gear for very cheap.

Unfortunately the only new stereo receivers you can buy nowadays are either budget junk or very high priced units geared towards audiophiles. The mid-level market is filled with surround A/V processors that likely have way more features than you need and not enough (if any) improvement in sound quality to justify the added cost compared to an older stereo receiver.

Personally, after fighting for years with piles of video switchers, power strips, and tangled wires, I've found it easier to connect game consoles individually, as I play them. Audio goes straight to the receiver, video into my XRGB-3.

If you are dead set on switching, composite/ S-Video switchers are easy enough to find, but RGB switching gets complicated since there's no one standard connection type. I suppose the best way if you wanted to do as little cable hacking as possible would be to find european SCART cables for your RGB capable consoles and get a SCART switcher, preferably one with separate RCA audio outputs that you could send to the receiver. You would have to build a custom cable to interface between the switcher and the XRGB or PVM. The XRGB uses a plug that looks like euro SCART but is a differently wired japanese standard (DO NOT plug a euro SCART cable into an XRGB without rewiring it, bad things will happen).

One other thing about the XRGB that I found out the hard way: routing audio through it is a bad idea. When I tried, it introduced a lot of distortion and severely degraded the sound. Best to separate the audio from the video before it hits the XRGB if you plan to go that route.

Best of luck with your setup!