Friday 23 November 2012

Widescreen VGA!

I've always been curious about CRT televisions that can accept a VGA input. In particular, 16:9 widescreen sets that might be used for watching DVDs or playing modern PC games on a CRT without interlacing.

I took a punt this week and forked out for a jumbo Loewe Xelos with a VGA card fitted. I'm pleased to say that the image is superb! Really great looking TV. Incredibly stable picture and the focus is very good for such a large screen. I've only managed to get 640 × 480 going so far but hopefully the VGA module can be coaxed into accepting a 16:9 aspect resolution.

More testing in order...

Loewe Xelos with VGA from laptop
Close up

5 comments:

  1. Hi Paradroid,

    Don't know if I ever mentioned: I've got one Loewe Articos 32 (chassis Q 2550 H). It has the VGA upgrade kit installed too, which I bet is the same one that your TV has. Incidentaly I bought that kit (was rather expensive at the time) after I read an article from an Aussie guy that was around the web those days who had found out how to use that kit to achieve some undocumented high definition modes for the Loewes, which unfortunately were known to not accept progressive video via SCART. I remind the guy was using PowerStrip and he posted the timings he was using for 480p@60 and 576@50, that showed me the way and I created my own modelines with Winmodelines.

    Well the picture definition at 50Hz is astonishing, only problem being the flicker specially on bright pictures, but you get used very quickly. Here are some 50 Hz modes, great for PAL material:

    Modeline "1024x576@50,0Hz 31,3KHz (50Hz)" 40.750 1024 1064 1128 1304 576 590 595 625 -hsync -vsync
    Modeline "1920x1080@50,0Hz 31,3KHz (50Hz)" 76.000 1920 2000 2112 2432 1080 1134 1144 1250 interlace -hsync -vsync
    Modeline "2048x1152@50,0Hz 31,3KHz (50Hz)" 81.500 2048 2128 2256 2608 1152 1180 1190 1250 interlace -hsync -vsync

    You should find one vertical size control in the Loewe menu, which appears when the kit is installed.

    Good luck!

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  2. Oh, very cool! Looking forward to trying these modelines out!

    Thanks for the info! Much appreciated.

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  3. Still here in 2020 :) Do you remember what model and chassis that xelos was? And was this found in Australia? cheers

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  4. I can't remember the exact model number... but, yes, it was found in Melbourne, Australia.

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  5. Que pasada! Te deja to car el color desde el menĂº de la TV estando en RGB?

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