16th August 2020, 8:07 AM
A small correction:
VGA is RGB. Well, RGBHV. It's the best quality you can possibly get short of BNC connectors with HV.
The only issue with VGA is it doesn't support i signals, only p. Now, it's just a cable so you can still PASS a signal through that kind of connector, but VGA connections on monitors have no idea what to do with an i signal because it's not part of the spec.
For my part, I've got a Sony Trinitron from 2003. It has component connectors but doesn't support progressive signals. I could probably mod it to support straight RGB, but it's risky on a CRT. It's actually a good thing it lacks progressive. Not because there's a problem with it but because most home-brand CRTs built with p support also have post processing added. This breaks light gun compatibility. So, I have the newest home model I can reasonably get that still works with light guns. Beyond this point, I'll need to go with the studio sets. Those things are crazy good looking CRTs that support p signals without post processing. The side effect? They're TINY! That's to be expected considering their use but still...
Anyway, I finally entered the rabbit hole of console modding. First I modded my Famicom for AV. That was done out of necessity due to the different standard for US channels on RF. I may go the full distance and RGB mod it. (I don't intend on HDMI modding my retro consoles due to, again, light gun compatibility.) I recently modded my PS1 (not PSOne, a 5501 model PS1) to have distinct sync signal that wasn't being pulled from composite. Not only does this provide a clearer RGB signal (OSSC is a godsend) it also makes the light gun slightly more accurate. (The Guncon independantly pulls a sync signal, and it normally has to deal with pulling it from a composite signal but now I can feed it a pure cync without all that unneeded noise.)
I've also been modding my XBox and PS2. Both required unique OS mods but the end result is I have 500GB SSDs in place of their hard drive solutions and can store and play all my games that way now. These were rather simple mods. The hardest will be soldering in extra RAM in my XBox to support certain arcade games. In fact, I intend on using "virtual disc drive" mods on all my optical media based consoles. I can just rip the disks on my PC and play them all on SD cards, which will be far more reliable going into the future. There's also the potential for faster load times but especially on older consoles there's a limit depending on how some games are coded. Some break if the load times are too fast, but fortunately these disc drive emulator mods take that into account and can slow down access speeds to match the original drives. The PSIO for PS1 is... rather disappointing but there's a new one out there that actually properly loads the data through the optical drive port instead of the rear port and thus has far better compatibility. My PS3 and PS4 didn't really need to be modded in that you can just slot in an SSD and gain those advantages, but my XBox 360 is a different story. It ties EVERYTHING to specific firmware instructions on Microsoft approved HDDs. This sucks for a variety of reasons, but the end result is that while the MS OS doesn't care at all if you load a game on a USB device of any kind, the SATA connection can never be upgraded. I'm tempted to flat out remove the HDD from that system and swap it for a USB flash drive at 1TB as a full replacement, but unfortunately while USB 2.0 is decently fast in terms of load speeds compared to SATA 2, it has built in latency which SATA doesn't have to deal with, so there's a tradeoff. Still, ultimately I'm going to have to do it anyway since HDDs are destined to die and soon. At least in my XBox One I can more easily swap HDDs so long as they fit within a specific range of capacity. This has nothing to do with file system limitations (again, external devices have no such limit), it has to do with a hard coded restriction to detect if an unapproved drive has been inserted. So, I can have either a 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB SSD installed, and ONLY those specific sizes, none other.
(As an aside HDMI is MUCH more complicated than you're giving it credit for. They've been doing multiple revisions and once you take into account the sound carrier upgrades, well now you've got a jungle to handle.)
VGA is RGB. Well, RGBHV. It's the best quality you can possibly get short of BNC connectors with HV.
The only issue with VGA is it doesn't support i signals, only p. Now, it's just a cable so you can still PASS a signal through that kind of connector, but VGA connections on monitors have no idea what to do with an i signal because it's not part of the spec.
For my part, I've got a Sony Trinitron from 2003. It has component connectors but doesn't support progressive signals. I could probably mod it to support straight RGB, but it's risky on a CRT. It's actually a good thing it lacks progressive. Not because there's a problem with it but because most home-brand CRTs built with p support also have post processing added. This breaks light gun compatibility. So, I have the newest home model I can reasonably get that still works with light guns. Beyond this point, I'll need to go with the studio sets. Those things are crazy good looking CRTs that support p signals without post processing. The side effect? They're TINY! That's to be expected considering their use but still...
Anyway, I finally entered the rabbit hole of console modding. First I modded my Famicom for AV. That was done out of necessity due to the different standard for US channels on RF. I may go the full distance and RGB mod it. (I don't intend on HDMI modding my retro consoles due to, again, light gun compatibility.) I recently modded my PS1 (not PSOne, a 5501 model PS1) to have distinct sync signal that wasn't being pulled from composite. Not only does this provide a clearer RGB signal (OSSC is a godsend) it also makes the light gun slightly more accurate. (The Guncon independantly pulls a sync signal, and it normally has to deal with pulling it from a composite signal but now I can feed it a pure cync without all that unneeded noise.)
I've also been modding my XBox and PS2. Both required unique OS mods but the end result is I have 500GB SSDs in place of their hard drive solutions and can store and play all my games that way now. These were rather simple mods. The hardest will be soldering in extra RAM in my XBox to support certain arcade games. In fact, I intend on using "virtual disc drive" mods on all my optical media based consoles. I can just rip the disks on my PC and play them all on SD cards, which will be far more reliable going into the future. There's also the potential for faster load times but especially on older consoles there's a limit depending on how some games are coded. Some break if the load times are too fast, but fortunately these disc drive emulator mods take that into account and can slow down access speeds to match the original drives. The PSIO for PS1 is... rather disappointing but there's a new one out there that actually properly loads the data through the optical drive port instead of the rear port and thus has far better compatibility. My PS3 and PS4 didn't really need to be modded in that you can just slot in an SSD and gain those advantages, but my XBox 360 is a different story. It ties EVERYTHING to specific firmware instructions on Microsoft approved HDDs. This sucks for a variety of reasons, but the end result is that while the MS OS doesn't care at all if you load a game on a USB device of any kind, the SATA connection can never be upgraded. I'm tempted to flat out remove the HDD from that system and swap it for a USB flash drive at 1TB as a full replacement, but unfortunately while USB 2.0 is decently fast in terms of load speeds compared to SATA 2, it has built in latency which SATA doesn't have to deal with, so there's a tradeoff. Still, ultimately I'm going to have to do it anyway since HDDs are destined to die and soon. At least in my XBox One I can more easily swap HDDs so long as they fit within a specific range of capacity. This has nothing to do with file system limitations (again, external devices have no such limit), it has to do with a hard coded restriction to detect if an unapproved drive has been inserted. So, I can have either a 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB SSD installed, and ONLY those specific sizes, none other.
(As an aside HDMI is MUCH more complicated than you're giving it credit for. They've been doing multiple revisions and once you take into account the sound carrier upgrades, well now you've got a jungle to handle.)
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)