Adaptec GameBridge 1400 Review -- Play Console Video Games on Your Laptop

Seems like a great deal, you are right.

If you really want HD, then you aren't going to get it on most notebooks. There are LCD monitors at the $300 price point that are true 1080p HD with HDMI and Component and DVI-D ins...so you can plug in anything you can throw at it. If you are interested, look into LCD displays by a company called Spectre.

Great. If your distro recognizes the hardware, then its just a matter of configuring MythTV to work.

 

Its $9 bucks at Amazon at the moment. I was like but now I understand why.

 

What kind of CPU do you need for decent gameplay? I only have a 1.13ghz P3M.

Is the game in a window or fullscreen? I'd much rather play it on my 19" widescreen monitor instead of the 14" LCD of my notebook. Would it still be a max of XGA resolution?

Thanks.

 

I have the GameBridge 1410 and the volume control on the remote doesn't actually work. Can you confirm that this is a problem with all GameBridges or is it just mine?

 

Bought mine from woot a while ago. Remote works, but it changes the volume of the entire system.

(edit) scratch that. the remote never worked at all. i suspect the battery is dead. changing the volume from the laptop changes the volume of the entire system.

 

I don't have the 1410(Which has the remote) so I can't comment.


The processor I'm using is a Pentium M 1.86, and it always runs at max when the GB is in use.

 

so does it use full cpu usage on a dual core? now i might have a reason to bring my 360 with me to college if this works.

also, could you run this on mediadirect if you have a dell? cause doesnt dell use intervideo for their mediadirect? that would be great if you didnt even have to boot up to play

 

I have no idea, using a Pentium M on an ASUS

 

I'll try to answer some of these questions to the best that I can.

First, the highest resolution the Gamebridge 1400/1410 have is 480i (S-Video). To my knowledge, it cannot output 480p (progressive scan). The resolution will remain low in comparison to larger screens; the large the screen you have, the more the small resolution has to be stretched.


I personally don't think you need an incredibly powerful CPU. I'm currently running on my Latitude D620 and Intervideo HomeTheater is using about 5-15% CPU power and about 60MB of RAM. However, I'm not sure if having an integrated card will change this; I'll found out soon enough when I try it on my X60s Thinkpad. However, I am running a clean install of Windows XP SP2, with as few resource heavy programs as possible. I believe that the GameBridge does no image filtering whatsoever, so the GameBridge will consume processing power and memory usage in order to create the clean image you see on the screen.


As mentioned earlier, it currently is not consuming one core of my processor, though I should mention that's while its on the TV tuner, not the S-video port, but I have doubts if that would change if I were playing a game right now. I would sometimes have Firefox opened (usually checking out a game's FAQ) while playing, while not showing any delay (dropped frames however, did occur).


I have no idea how mediadirect works (I assume its akin to HP's QuickPlay), but I'm not sure if they're compatible. I recently have found out that the version of Intervideo Home Theater that comes with the GameBridge is an older version. I've yet to find a great alternative to it; I've tried DScaler and while it will run I'm unable to change channels or switch to the composite/S-video connection without the video failing, resulting in me having to close and open Dscaler again.


The remote works perfectly with my GameBridge, although its a bit oversensitive sometimes when I'm changing channels. Trying to switch to "21" results in "211" - but at least it realizes there is no channel there and won't switch. The volume works fine but it does change the system's volume.

 

hmm, well if i do get it, ill def have to see if you could play without booting up