This may sound vague, but what I need help with is to have the ability to connect my PS2 to my laptop to use its monitor in place of a TV.
I've been looking around online for any products or guides that could help me. There is a good amount of info, just wanted to know if any of you know of an easy and/or cheap way to get that setup.
You need a TV tuner. There are USB2 TV tuners, but they are expensive. If you had an external monitor, you can get a cheaper composite-to-VGA adapter (or more ideally, an S-video-to-vga if PS2 can do S-video or component), or even if you just had a desktop, PCI TV tuners aren't that expensive at all.
Most TV tuners have a several second long lag, the only one I've found (and use) that doesn't have a long lag is the EyeTV EZ, but that is for OS X only.
there are allsorts of problems using TV Tuners for games consoles, As Error404 mentioned the Lag of cheap TV cards means that the console would be un playable.
Because of this, there is a box called.......Magic VGA Box!
They are available all over the internet and work really well.
Hope that helps
Jon
__________________ "You only live once, play it right, and once is enough" - me :) "When i die only god can take my soul" - me again! :P
I've never seen any lag with TV tuners. I suppose if the application you are using is also buffering what you are watching so you can get a Tivo functionality it would create a delay. Nonetheless I have an Nintendo 64 and PS2 hooked up through a PCI TV tuner card with no problems whatsoever.
I haven't done emulation recently, but I doubt even the most powerful computers right now will do a decent job of emulating a PS2. Even N64 emulators can be slow on 2ghz computers.
In any case, to emulate PS1, you needed a binary dump of the PS1 firmware or whatnot. A Duron 1ghz could just barely run PS1 games after that. I'm assuming a binary dump of the PS2 might be easier (since there is Linux-on-PS2), but the emulation would run a steep cost on the CPU.
As for laggy TV Tuners, I used a PCI Hauppage tuner a while back (very cheap thing from Best Buy) and it was flawless when I played N64 or Gamecube on it. No lag at all. I could see USB tuners being laggy though, due to bandwith concerns.
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