Playing old consoles on new TVs

[Lost Oliver]

Or at least attempting to.

Dear CaB. I come to you with a problem.

A couple of months ago I got a new TV. A Hisense 55A9GTUK 55 Inch OLED 4K Ultra HD Smart TV to be precise.

It's great but unfortunately there are  no scart on it, just HDMI, so I can't play on some of my retro consoles (Sex Box, PS1, Mega Drive).

I don't play these often, usually just when someone comes to visit or I really really get an itch to play Mega Bomberman.

Anyway, I looked online and it said it get an adapter, so I got a couple of adapters. Waited a few days, they turned up and they did nothing.

So I read a bit more and it said that actually they were useless and what I really needed was a converter. So I bought a converter and that didn't work either. I showed it to my cousin and he said 'Lost Oliver, you realise you've bought a HDMI to Scart converter? No wonder it doesn't work. That is for playing next gen consoles on old TVs you dick'. So, I bought a 'Scart to HDMI' converter and waited for that to arrive.

It arrived a week ago, I tried it and guess what. It doesn't work. I've spent close to 50 quid on stuff that doesn't work and I'm now beginning to think that it's never gonna work. Do yous have any ideas on what could work? I really don't want to be shelling out even more money for something that does fuck all but I don't want to give up on my Mega Drive etc.

People have told me to just get an emulator but I don't want to do that. I want to play the games as they were meant to be played. And I like the fact that I'm limited by the games I've got. If I had an emulator I could play literally anything and I don't think I could cope with the choice.

Anyway, if anyone has any ideas I'd be very grateful.

Yours
LO

[Tokyo van Ramming]

Get an old TV

[Pink Gregory]

Streamers and Let's Players manage to do it, though I'm unsure if they're capturing original hardware, might be worth looking that way.  It's the converting analogue to digital signal that's the stumbling block.

Assuming your new tv doesn't have composite/component either?

[Ron Maels Moustache]

Does your posh telly not have inputs for a composite lead?

e.g. one of these



Doesn't look as clean as proper RGB Scart, but it's a workable alternative in some cases.

If you're really serious about retrogaming on a modern telly then you're probably looking at getting something along these lines:

https://www.retrorgb.com/ossc.html

It's a bit of an outlay but it's a fantastic device once you get to grips with it. Supports pretty much every old system except the N64, as that doesn't do RGB output for some stupid reason.

OTOH you could get on old CRT telly off ebay if you aren't arsed about messing around with upscalers.

[buzby]

RGB to HDMI Converters that work for old consoles
(includes the OSSC mentioned above)
RGB to HDMI Converters that don't work for old consoles

Assuming your new tv doesn't have composite/component either?

New TVs have RF and HDMI and that's pretty much your lot (some also have a LNB input for a sat dish as well)

[Lost Oliver]

Yeah, no composite input. Just bastard HDMI (4 of them though).

Thanks so much for the advice everyone. Looks like I'm gonna have to either stump up over 100 quid or just get an old TV.

[jamiefairlie]

Can't you return the cables you've bought? You can get RCA component to HDMI adapter boxes on Amazon.

[bgmnts]

Streamers and Let's Players manage to do it, though I'm unsure if they're capturing original hardware, might be worth looking that way.  It's the converting analogue to digital signal that's the stumbling block.

Assuming your new tv doesn't have composite/component either?

Streamers and let's players presumably are using emulators just to make it easier though to be fair.

I'm fairly certain that there are SCART to HDMI adaptors out there you can get on amazon.

[aunt mildred]

Or at least attempting to.

Dear CaB. I come to you with a problem.

A couple of months ago I got a new TV. A Hisense 55A9GTUK 55 Inch OLED 4K Ultra HD Smart TV to be precise.

It's great but unfortunately there are  no scart on it, just HDMI, so I can't play on some of my retro consoles (Sex Box, PS1, Mega Drive).

I don't play these often, usually just when someone comes to visit or I really really get an itch to play Mega Bomberman.

Anyway, I looked online and it said it get an adapter, so I got a couple of adapters. Waited a few days, they turned up and they did nothing.

So I read a bit more and it said that actually they were useless and what I really needed was a converter. So I bought a converter and that didn't work either. I showed it to my cousin and he said 'Lost Oliver, you realise you've bought a HDMI to Scart converter? No wonder it doesn't work. That is for playing next gen consoles on old TVs you dick'. So, I bought a 'Scart to HDMI' converter and waited for that to arrive.

It arrived a week ago, I tried it and guess what. It doesn't work. I've spent close to 50 quid on stuff that doesn't work and I'm now beginning to think that it's never gonna work. Do yous have any ideas on what could work? I really don't want to be shelling out even more money for something that does fuck all but I don't want to give up on my Mega Drive etc.

People have told me to just get an emulator but I don't want to do that. I want to play the games as they were meant to be played. And I like the fact that I'm limited by the games I've got. If I had an emulator I could play literally anything and I don't think I could cope with the choice.

Anyway, if anyone has any ideas I'd be very grateful.

Yours
LO

Nice choice of TV, I got the same from Costco (what a deal they were doing). It definitely does have one composite input on the side, it looks like a headphone socket but there's a small flylead which came with my TV that converts it to composite and it works. I've tested it on an old PVR, the picture from SD freeview looks woeful though as you would expect from a 55inch 4k tv upscaling a 576i image.

RMM posted an image of the lead you should have got with the TV, except it's got female connectors on the composite end.

[Pink Gregory]

Streamers and let's players presumably are using emulators just to make it easier though to be fair.

I'm fairly certain that there are SCART to HDMI adaptors out there you can get on amazon.

oh undoubtably they do but there must be a niche for capturing from original hardware.  More of an enthusiast thing.

[madhair60]

really sorry but I have a Scart to HDMI convertor I use for Mega Drive and it works. So... buy another one I guess

[Famous Mortimer]

Streamers and let's players presumably are using emulators just to make it easier though to be fair.

I'm fairly certain that there are SCART to HDMI adaptors out there you can get on amazon.

Some do, but the guys I occasionally watch who play the old Mario games are definitely doing it on the original hardware (and an old telly, which has a very minor difference in terms of refresh rates or speed of recognising inputs or some shit I just tune out when they start discussing).

The other option is, get yourself a PC that can emulate everything, fill it full of games and just whack it under your telly.

[Pranet]

I've not got any useful advice, just wanted to say new TVs can be sods, mine wouldn't work with my old PVR even though it had an HDMI socket. Weird. Had to use the composite sockets instead. And I remember once seeing some one on you tube review a gadget that let him use his ZX Spectrum with a modern tv so these things must be possible.