I recently tested an interesting cable for the Sega Saturn: It appears to be a shielded cable that outputs RGB and Composite video via RCA connectors. It comes with RCA to BNC adapters, making this an easy way to use both RGB and composite video on something like a Sony PVM…and it’s only $10!!! Here’s the link, with more info below:
RGBs RCA + BNC Cable: https://amzn.to/3Z4qK55
While there’s some other use-cases worth discussing, I’d like to start with what I think would be the most common: RGB monitors! With these cables (and the bundled BNC adapters), you can connect them directly to your monitor’s RGB ports, with the yellow cable used as sync:
This will look great and all the Saturn 2D-graphics games will look amazing. The Saturn has quite a few 3D-graphics games though and many have artwork that rely on the blending of composite video for transparency and other effects – I show examples in this (unrelated) video at 5:44: https://youtu.be/KwXJWkkczKk?t=344
With this cable, swapping from RGB to composite is as easy as moving the yellow cable from sync to composite-in and switching the input on your monitor. While sure, you could just get both an RGB and composite cable, maybe this is the easiest method for your workflow?:
This cable also offers a cool advantage for any of the MiSTer solutions that use a Saturn MiniDIN – Flip some dip switches, make some tweaks to the MiSTer.ini and this cable can act as a component video cable. Now, of course, that’s NOT something you can do on an original Saturn, since these cables just pass the signal through! But I wanted to mention that here, in case that’s something you’ve been looking for in your Saturn-MiniDIN-based MiSTer setup.
So, this cable obviously isn’t for everyone, but I thought it was worth reviewing. Heck, the price alone makes it something to consider, but I also think the use cases I mentioned here are something many of us might run into!
…oh and yes, I checked: The audio cables are oriented properly!
