Almost too cheap for monitors

Well, surprise of surprises, my Samsung SyncMaster 204B isn't HDCP compatible.

So, I was thinking a few weeks ago that I could stop using my XCM Mega-Cool VGA Box, since it's pretty weak as far as 480p signals go. I mean, I've seen what it can do for higher quality signals, and it's great, but putting that on a 4:3 monitor just means that everything's squished, and that's not something I take too kindly towards.

So... thinking that everything's gonna be thrown to HDMI, I got myself some cable, an HDMI switch (which are down to reasonable prices as opposed to a year or two ago), and about 10 bucks worth of converters. Routing my consoles up through it, I found that my XBox 360's picture quality increased. Before I was using a VGA cable (which I probably bought off Amazon), and though the picture quality was pretty good, there was some serious ghosting going on.

Unfortunately, even for 480p, running HDMI through your PS3 will still demand that every device you hit on the way make use of HDCP. Geez, I hate copy-prevention schemes, they don't accomplish anything except headaches. For the record, the XBox 360 is above such concerns.

So, whatever. My ten dollar experiment turned out to be a bust, and it looked like I'd have to spend money on an HDCP-compliant monitor. I was looking around, and I finally settled on pretty much the cheapest thing I could get my hands on: the BenQ G2222HDL.

As far as my choices went, it was down to the BenQ G2222HDL, or the Asus VE228H. Turns out Amazon could ship the BenQ out for free, but would charge me 18 bucks to ship the Asus. So, BenQ it was. I've always been curious about the brand, so I didn't feel anything at all choosing it over the Asus, even if it had an HDMI port to the BenQ's plain DVI. I mean, no matter what, I wasn't ever going to trust audio pass-through on a monitor, at least not without running it through RCA as well and comparing. Only difference is now I can't run that experiment, but it's not worth 18 bucks and my own peace of mind.

All I gotta do is wait, now. It'll be nice having two monitors around. It kinda irks me (okay, it really irks me) that I couldn't just get an HDMI to DVI-D converter and have it work, especially since I know I'm only missing a few bytes of authentication handshakes, but eh.

Unfortunately, as great as it is, there's a bunch of stupidity that HD came with, HDCP being one of them - it creates nothing but headaches without ever giving any benefit to anybody in return. Seriously, the internet says it's not stopping anything at all.