POUND HD Link Cable for Dreamcast

This cable is a great solution for getting the best image quality from your Dreamcast on a modern TV! Like any true Dreamcast fan, we all know VGA is the best possible image quality, and I have a VGA box that I love, but my 55" Sony 4k does not have a VGA input like most modern TV's. There are HDMI converters out there that can be hit or miss in my experience, and you can spend a small fortune chasing the best image quality. this cable is great because it just works! No converters, no extra power, just plug it in and go. This only works for VGA compatible games, this is obvious and stated in the ad. There are not many games not VGA compatible so you are most likely not even going to find it an issue in most cases. The image is displayed correctly on my TV in the center and the proper aspect ratio, but there have been reports that it is shifted on some peoples TVs. Because this does not upscale, and just sends the 640x480 VGA signal, some TVs just dont know how to handle that over HDMI, and you may be one of the unlucky ones with such a TV. This is not the fault of the cable and it does exactly what it is advertised to do. I saw another review mention sound issues, this is NOT the case with me, playing Jet Grind Radio all the music sounded great and exactly how it should. As long as your TV works with this cable, you cannot beat the price and the image quality is great, any DC fan that uses a modern TV should try this out and see if it works for you!

I have an old Samsung LCD TV with VGA, but it refuses to recognize the slightly non-standard VGA output the Dreamcast produces. It wasn't until recently that I found an cheap VGA to HDMI upscaler that worked for me: HDE VGA w/Audio to HDMI Video Scaler Converter Box with Power Adapter VGA to HDMI Adapter However, like most upscalers, it needs an external power source, and since my entertainment setup needs to be baby-proofed with all of the wires hidden, it meant either leaving the upscaler on all the time (wasting electricity) or leaving it exposed in some way. I chose the former and hated it. This cable solved my problem. Yes, if I get up close, I can see visually that without the upscaling, the signal is slightly softer. But I already sit far enough away that I have to use a controller extension cable, so it's not noticeable. I love that this cable allowed me to clean up my wiring and stop wasting power. My only complaints: 1. The cable happens to be long enough for me, but I still would have preferred to be able to supply my own HDMI cable. If that box had been shifted just a few inches over, it would have landed right in the middle of the hole I had to route the wires through, and I would have had to get an HDMI extender. 2. The Dreamcast side plug fits in more sung into the console than an official AV cable, or even my old 3rd-party VGA box. I know some collectors are worried about that, as it may end up over-stressing the AV port. Like any of these kind of converters, I'm sure more could be done to improve signal quality, tweak color balance, etc, but for my money my games looked great. Also, a lot of people are quick to point out that this cable "isn't a 100% solution" as some games don't support VGA mode. There are exactly 16 games that can't be made to work, and 279 that can. So it's a 94.5% solution. Games that don't work with VGA: Air Force Delta Bangai-O Ceasars Palace 2000: Millennium Gold Edition ECW Anarchy Rulz ECW Hardcore Revolution Iron Aces Jojo's Bizarre Adventure The King of Fighters '99 Evolution The King of Fighters: Dream Match 1999 Last Blade II Heart of a Samarai MTV Sports: Skateboarding Featuring Andy McDonald Plasma Sword Psychic Force 2012 Ring, The: Terror's Realm Soul Fighter WWF Attitude

While I didn't necessarily need this cable since I modified my Dreamcast with a VGA out using it's native capabilities, I did like the idea of having the convenience for use with televisions that did not have a VGA input. There are so many helpful reviews on this cable on Amazon (take the time to read a few), here is a quick rundown from my experience: 1. The cable really does use the VGA signal from the Dreamcast and convert it to HDMI 2. The cable does no upscaling - so if your TV doesn't accept the Dreamcast's odd resolution and refresh rate which is interpreted as 640×480 VESA by most TV's, it may not work. 480p on a TV is supposed to be 720x480. Not the fault of the cable, but of the Dreamcast. 3. If your TV doesn't work and you get a blank screen or no signal message, try turning on the Dreamcast first, and then turning on the TV. You can also try changing to a different input, and then back while the Dreamcast is on and some Televisions will pick up and trigger the 640x480 signal. 4. My cable when comparing it to my VGA output was too dark and the colors were off. I took mine apart and changed (increased) the resistance on the RGB input lines. This will both add clean brightness color to your final output signal and I increased mine finally to similar values to that of my built in VGA output. To do this change the three 75ohm SMD resistors and replace them with 120ohm resistors. See my picture for reference. If you want one step down, you can use 100ohm instead, but I get some really good results with the 120ohm. 5. This cable out of the box produces a slight loss in sharpness (noticeable) compared to the native Dreamcast VGA signal. It's not bad and less noticeable on a TV compared to a monitor. It may be possible to adjust this also by changing the filtering components (usually capacitors), but unfortunately their values are unknown since they are not printed on them like the resistors. Hope this helps someone out there that doesn't mind tinkering and isn't intimidated by soldering. I really like my Pound cable much more after I made these changes because I didn't have to change a bunch of things on my television to compensate for brightness and contrast.

For my test I chose 2 games: Airforce Delta, and Slave Zero. As no surprise to me, Airforce Delta did what you would expect from a VGA cable. It didn't work. As for Slave Zero, it worked perfectly. I also pressed the INFO button on my remote to display the resolution and connection type. As you can see it's HDMI with 640x480. Their is no way to change the resolution any higher. (that's not a problem for me). Though the "HD" is a bit misleading. This device is using a HDMI pass through converter. It's not an upscaler. Hope you found my review helpful. And would I recommend it? No. You can only play games that are VGA compatible. No VGA means no play :( . Games like Airforce Delta cannot be patched, hacked, or tinkered with. I downloaded a patched version and still no luck. Some games really are that stubborn. So for those of us hopping for a Universal HDMI cable that will play ALL DREAMCAST GAMES... keep dreaming. Hope you all liked my review. Thanks.

This cable is Awesome!!! I can't believe all the negative reviews on it. The picture is crystal clear and sharp and the colors pop with no lag when playing games (I tried it with Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Spiderman. It basically is taking the best connection possible that the Dreamcast was/is capable of (which is VGA) and converting it to HDMI so you can play it on your modern day HDTV using just one cable (no converter box required). Its true you can't play the entire Dreamcast Library using this cable but anyone who knows anything about the Dreamcast should know that not every Dreamcast game supports VGA (most seem to but not all). I personally haven't tried Codebreaker to see if it could force the non VGA games to work but it might as I know it can be done if using an actually VGA cable (with some of the non supported games). The cable is also really long and seems to be made very well as far as the quality goes. Also I noticed people who said the cable made the picture uneven.... while this did happen to me... I noticed it can be fixed if you turn your Dreamcast system on before you turn on your TV. Overall I am VERY satisfied with this cable (I even purchased a 2nd one) and I Highly Recommend it to anyone looking to hook up their Sega Dreamcast system to a modern day HDTV without having to spend a lot or having to buy multiple items just to get a good picture. At $30 this cable brings new Life to your Dreamcast on your HDTV... buy it while you can because like the Original Xbox version.... it may be gone (at least at the price that it was).

I'm absolutely blown away by this cable. For the past few months, I have been playing my Dreamcast on a 43" 1080p LED TV through composite video. When played in a 4:3 aspect ratio, it doesn't look that bad, but the colors bleed together and dark games are almost unplayable without drastically increasing the screen brightness. I swapped in this HDMI cable about halfway through playing Shenmue and my jaw hit the floor. I honestly had no idea the Dreamcast could look this good. The textures are crisp, the colors are bright, text is clearer and everything is just generally better to look at. I actually prefer the look to this cable over the more expensive VGA boxes. I also tested Marvel vs Capcom 2 and Jet Grind Radio, and both looked impressive. To be clear, this does not "upscale" anything, but it definitely makes playing on a modern television more of a pleasant experience. I had also tried a cheap composite to HDMI upscaler, but this cable blows it out of the water. There is no ghosting, tearing or lag. If you want the best possible picture on your Dreamcast but don't feel like spending $100+ on a VGA box, definitely pick this up.

UPDATE: After talking to the seller, I was able to exchange this for another one and this one actually works. The green background noise is no longer present. I did compare this with a dreamcast vga cable and they were both very similar (other than vga looking much sharper). The reason why I'm not using the Dreamcast vga cable is because my 4K tv doesn't support VGA. So, I would have to use an adapter. After comparing the vga cable to this hdmi cable, I can finally recommend this cable to everyone. I will say that if the screen shifts to the right when using the cable, this can be fixed by turning the Dreamcast on first before turning on the tv, but this hasn't bothered me at all when using this cable. I will keep my original review in case if anyone sees this. I have updated the star rating because of not only the cable, but for the customer service provided that was provided to me. I recommend this cable if you can't use a vga cable for whatever reason. ORIGINAL REVIEW: (2 out of 5 Stars) This is why I don't recommend this product: While it does work, it gives me two problems. 1) The screen shifts to the right side and it looks awkward. Sometimes after messing with the tv or the cable it will display it correctly. 2) There is lots of background noise when in use. You can tell the difference because it has a slight green color. If you look closely, you can see it in the background of the games. I tried it with composite cables to see if there was any background noise and it wasn't there. While it makes the dreamcast very convenient to hook up, you're better off getting a VGA adapter for your dreamcast for better visuals.

This is arguably the best image quality you can get out of a Dreamcast, unless you want to get into destructive modding to extract the digital video output from the console before it's encoded into analog. Some might argue that other products like the OSSC or Framemeister will give better results, but that depends on a few things. Certainly those products have a leg up on this in terms of up-scaling or line-doubling, but the key advantage here seems to be that the short cable length between the console and the HDMI converter is providing you with a cleaner image because there is overall less resistance to the analog signal coming out of the system. With the rest of the cable length coming from HDMI, concerns about quality loss over a distance are dramatically reduced. It only works with VGA supported games, but thankfully for me everything I want to play has VGA support, with only two minor exceptions: 1) Soulcalibur has VGA support for Europe but not North America. However, thanks to a minor hex edit and the Dreamcast's well known support for playing burned CDs, people have been able to enable VGA support for the NA version of the game (and the same trick works on a few others too). 2) Hydro Thunder seems to suffer flickering issues, like it is trying to bob deinterlace the 480p signal when it doesn't need to be. Very odd, clearly the game is at fault though.

Ma Dreamcast n'affichait aucune image avec un convertisseur péritel vers HDMI... Cette adaptateur a résolu mon problème le son et l'image s'affiche correctement maintenant !

画質も申し分ないし、遅延がないのでスムーズに遊べます。でも、出来ないソフトがいくつかあるのでやりたいゲームがある時は注意した方がいいです。サクラ大戦、サクラ大戦2は出来ませんでした。

If you cannot connect your Dreamcast via VGA then this is the easiest way to connect to a flat screen TV. It does not upscale and also defaults to a full screen mode. However, after a while I didn't even notice. Quick and convenient way to play Dreamcast on a modern TV.

Everyone in the DC scene knows that VGA is the number one option to connect a DC if you have the option. If that isn't the case like in my living room setup. Then this HDMI solution is your second best option. Just plug and play those awesome DC games on my Plasma and Projector!

Lots of people complained about these failing but I guess time will tell on how that pans out. So for the time being I'm happy with the purchase.