Vdigi Wii VGA Review
09 02 08 - 12:56
Ahh, yes! Ever since the heady days of the Dreamcast, I've longed for that pixel perfect display that Sega's VGA box delivered. I've tried many tricks and products - some that I'm not proud of, but the relentless pursuit of RGB glory continues undeterred. So how does my latest attempt to dodge the $300+ XRGB converter line fair? Let's find out! The Vdigi VDW2 arrived from Hong Kong in a simple plastic bag nestled inside of a bubble wrap padded envelope. No box or instructions? Wait! Look closer and you'll find the box and instructions flat-pack style next to the cable. Very cool packaging, truth be told. Simple but sharp. No gaudy colors or hacky pseudo-game/anime graphics. If I had a game shop, I'd stock it.
At any rate, on to the product. The cable itself has the density of a high quality power cord. That is to say, it's thick, sturdy and makes me feel like I could tow a car with it. The VGA connection point itself is sturdy and appears to be shielded. A nice feature of the cable is the green RCA cable you see dangling in the picture. If your Wii isn't already set up for 480p, you can use this part of the cable to hook it up to a TV (HD or otherwise) and make the necessary adjustment. Very clever.
The main two test beds I used were No More Heroes (because I remain highly enamored with it) and, the true test, Guilty Gear XX Accent Core.
If you want a gold standard for testing a video cable - look no further than a high res 2D game. And since GGXXAC is currently the highest res 2D game I own... the Vdigi will live or die by her.
Both the Wii interface and No More Heroes showed a marked improvement over the component>VGA box I was using previously.
There was less dot crawl and blurring that I could see. The overhead map was much sharper and I could find treasures and Lovikov balls without straining my eyes. There was a general overall improvement to the visuals of the game, granted NMH is not an eye candy fest, so I was mostly looking to see if the game appeared better in a qualitative sense. In that regard, the VD W2 did quite well.
Onto Daisuke Ishiwatari's masterpiece Guilty Gear! Getting reaaaallly close to the monitor and focusing on the edges of the graphics I was very happy with the results. All of the pixels were sharp and clear, colors were solid and uniform... all in all a very nice picture. The only reason I can nitpick is to say it doesn't have that same humming razor sharp edges that the Dreamcast VGA or an arcade monitor has. That said, I'm fairly happy with what I know is a component to VGA conversion. So happy, in fact, that if a true VGA cable is released that the pricing on that peripheral would determine when/if I were to swap it for my VD W2.
The Vdigi VD W2 is not a cheap piece of cable, but with shipping it should only set you back $50 or so (which is about what the official GameCube component cables originally cost). Overall the cable seems to be well worth the purchase price. Longevity of the product and how well it stands up to use is yet to be seen, but based on the solid construction (it really is a thick cable), I think things will turn out alright.
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