StarTech.com High Resolution VGA to Composite (RCA) or S-Video Converter - PC to TV Video Adapter - 1600x1200 RGB to TV, TAA (VGA2VID)

OK, I'm in the middle of a project, and I don't have time to write this. Honestly. But I felt compelled to literally drop everything and do this. Let me preface this by saying I've tried a dozen other VGA--> S-Video solutions, and, in a word, they sucked. Washed out color, scan problems, resolution-limited inputs, etc, etc. Suffice it to say, I did not have high hopes. If you're reading this, you have a need for S-Video. I do too, and that's our business, nobody needs to be 'judging' us for it. If you have that need, read on. My Setup: Multi-Media PC w/ nVidia GTX-590 feeding a standard monitor @ 1200x960 on one DVI output via DVI-->VGA adapter, and a 55" LCD on the second output, via DVI-->VGA-->HDMI @ 1900x1080. The 55" is above a pool table in the basement, and I use it to run music videos, youtube, as well as music-driven visuals, etc. Converters and all, the output looks fine, no visible issues/artifacts. The Need: When I built the house 20 years ago, I ran s-video cabling and distribution amps to every tv location in the house (there are many). Yes, I know, but it is what it is. I originally used a video card w/ an S-Video out, and life was generally good. W/ the upgrade to the 55", however, S-Video was not an option, for so many reasons. All I wanted was a way to 'pick off' an S-Video signal from the 2nd nVidia output, and send that to the rest of the house (for parties, etc), while still viewing uncompromised 1080p on the 55". As I mentioned, the other stuff I tried looked miserable. The Verdict: With a 1900x1080 input, and ZERO fiddling/configuration, the Startech output looks BETTER than I have ever seen from any of the VGA cards w/ dedicated S-Video outputs (and I've tried many), let alone the converter boxes. The color is saturated, the downsampling/aspect ratio is perfect. The graphics are crisp. Crap, this is too good, I'm waiting for something to go wrong, lol. Much like Apple (in the distant past...) IT JUST WORKS. Amazing. If I had one criticism: It should have a VGA passthrough. It is on a VGA Y-Connector in my setup, not a deal-breaker.

Just got this nifty little gadget today, along with a new 25-foot audio RCA cable and a new 25-foot male to male VGA cable (ordered & paid for separately - they don't come with the converter box. Both cost under $5 each). I plugged the converter box into a power outlet. I plugged one end of the VGA cable into my Lenovo Vision E2 laptop, and the other end into the converter box. I plugged the single-plug end of the audio RCA cable into the headphone jack of the Lenovo and the two RCA audio plugs on the other end of the cable into the TV (a 32-inch Sharp tube TV). I used a video (yellow) male-to-male RCA cable that I already had on hand, plugged one end into the converter box and the other into the corresponding RCA jack on the TV. I had to fiddle a bit with my screen resolution on the Lenovo laptop, but right now I'm viewing YouTube videos on my TV set via my laptop. The video quality is quite good (a lot depends on the video quality of what you're viewing on the laptop. Some of the uploads on YouTube are not so great & there's nothing this box can do to clean them up. That's not the fault of the box). Sound is also very good. Everything works great! I'm very pleased with this purchase. There's a ton of great BBC/Open University material on YouTube that Amazon Prime, Netflix streaming and Acorn streaming TV don't offer - and it's all free! This is a stormy, rainy weekend here in Northern California, and I'm one happy camper with this great little (and it really is very small in size) converter box!

I bought the StarTech VGA to Composite/S-Video Converter hoping to connect my PC to an older CRT TV, but it simply didn’t deliver. Despite claims of supporting high resolutions up to 1600x1200, the output was unstable and blurry. I tried multiple resolutions and refresh rates, but the image either didn’t show up or looked completely distorted. Setup was supposed to be plug-and-play, but I spent hours troubleshooting with no success. The unit feels solid physically, but the performance doesn’t match the price tag. For something marketed as a professional-grade solution, it fell short in every way. If you're looking to downscale VGA to RCA or S-Video for retro setups or presentations, I’d recommend looking elsewhere. This one just doesn’t work reliably.

Please note: This item is the VGA adapter alone. VGA cables and SF cables are sold separately. I bought a new SF cable on Amazon. If you're interested, you can take a look at SF Cable, 12ft 3.5mm Stereo...

The transcoder will work, and it will give you the control to compensate for overscan or filling a full picture for a capture card. However, it’s incredibly finicky with any resolution beyond 480p, and worst of all has the strongest blue-shift tint I’ve ever seen on a video component. Please be advised you’ll have to do corrective color shifts to your signal before you send it to this device. It appears to also suffer from screen tearing as I’ve been unable to sync it with a proper 59.94 fps frame rate. Otherwise it’s fine. Comes with a lot of power connectors for global compatibility. Update a few months in, it has a very nasty bug where occasionally the box will crash or have some malfunction, causing it to "bootloop". This causes a holy hell of lag on my computer to a degree where it's nearly unusable. I've stopped using it after.

Great unit, works out of the box. The ONLY drawback to this design is, it is NOT A PASS THROUGH VGA cable design. Having only 1 VGA connection to the computer does not allow you to set up the video selections on your desktop monitor. You have to add a 1 to 2 VGA adapter allowing simultaneous viewing of the outgoing signal. In my case, I use the desktop monitor with a 1 in 2 out VGA splitter with audio. eg. SIIG 1x2 VGA & Audio Splitter - video/audio splitter - 2 ports. I have perfect streaming pix and audio on my TV now from "free" sources. Even with the lack of VGA "pass through" connections, the cheaper units with that feature are terrible. I bought one at 1/4 the price of this one. JUNK. This has a plug and play hookup with no on-screen menus. Well worth the money.

I needed a VGA to composite converter to watch streaming video from hulu/netflix/youtube etc and ran across this little gem. I first saw it on newegg.com with 5 eggs(stars). People really seemed to like it. Then I checked amazon thinking, "No way will it be 5 stars on Amazon. People love hating things on Amazon." But lo and behold! 5 freakin' stars! And for good reason! All I had to do was connect this baby to my computer via VGA cable (and a DVItoVGA plug) and then use a single composite cable to connect it to my TV. I also needed to go into my display settings on my computer and "extend" the desktop after my computer recognised the new display. I run Windows 7 64-bit and have my displays connected to a Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 1-GB video card. I have the output resolution to my TV set at 1024x768 with "underscan" selected. That seemed best to me, but others worked too. But now for a couple of cons: It may be my cable, but every minute or so a faint line runs horizontally down the screen. Not a big deal, but definitely noticeable. Like lots of other reviews say, if you plan on reading text with this, you are going to have a bad time. But subtitles on Netflix read like a dream. Another minor gripe is that Windows 7 will not let you change the desktop wallpaper on an extended display, so the desktop picture on my computer monitor has to be the same as the one for my TV which has a very different resolution. So all in all, this is a very awesome little device that fits a very niche market, because it was either this or buy a new TV.

I looked closely at other well-reviewed and cheaper adapters but didn't like the limited input resolutions they listed. The last thing I wanted was a device that made me lower the resolution for the display built into my laptop, even though the video output has its own settings. (Had that happen with other monitor/adapter combinations.) This delivers on its promise of automatic processing - it produced a very good, clear image on the TV with no change in resolution settings on the laptop. Lettering is hard to read, but it makes images, even ones of modest resolution, look great on my Sony WEGA flat-front CRT. Online streams that normally look their best filling only half my laptop screen come out even better, bigger on the TV. This is using the yellow RCA connector. 4 stars because I wish it had its own image positioning adjustments. It shows nearly all of the desktop image, pretty well centered, but when you use a video player, browser, or a still image viewer in full-screen mode the results vary from maybe one to three inches of wasted space on the right hand side. The fact that the desktop image goes edge to edge on screen proves the TV is dutifully showing whatever the Startech is sending. But it's hard to beat how easily it hooked up and worked immediately, or the very good image quality produced. Recommended.