Post#20 » Fri Jan 31, 2020 6:07 am
Akura to HDMI is the best. I bought a cheap VGA cable off eBay and it's okay, certainly serviceable, but the Akura produces a more stable image and less interference.
Akura's are about £50 which is about 3-4x more than the cheap eBay cables, but much cheaper than the Hanzo, Toro, OSSC or other high end device - despite it producing a high end image (it just lacks features I can't be arsed with like scanlines etc. I'd rather save the money than ruin my image with crap like that).
The Akura also avoids the need (at least on modern TVs) to buy an additional VGA-HDMI converter (most of which struggle with the Dreamcast's odd image signature, the one I had worked for most games, but as soon as you entered a web browser the screen would be shifted off to the top left, making it impossible to use. And on exiting the browser your image would be stuck this way until you turned the console off). This never happens on an Akura, saves the money and faff of finding a £30 VGA converter and essentially winds up only about £10 more overall for a cleaner, less frustrating setup with a better picture.
I also use an MCable with mine to smoothen out the sharper edges when the image is scaled, but this is expensive and not by any means an necessity. The Akura does everything it needs to do to produce a 1080p compatible picture without frivilous additions and after all additions you'd need for the VGA cable, ends up as an £8 upgrade with an image improvement usually in the £150+ range.
I've not used a Retrobit, but if I was going to pony up the money to "Retrobit" my consoles, I'd save it for an OSSC for maximum compatibility and better options. Retrobit's are expensive for what they are, £30 a cable per console. I can get an OSSC for £160 and connect all my consoles to it with 4x lossless pixel-perfect scaling. It might be a good buy if you only have one single retro machine, you'd have to check the reviews.
Never even heard of Bitfunx, but it sounds like a waste as an adapter kit, essentially it's just going to output the VGA signal over HDMI which won't improve compatibility and will likely leave the resolution/frame issues in place. Again, you'd have to read the review to know.