how to hook up my playstation 2 to my computer

[altangerel20]

hello, my question is, i want to play my playstation 2 on my computer, how can i do that? the reason is b/c i have a nice 5.1 surround sound hooked up to my computer, and i bet the monitor is another factor that will improve the resolution of the game than playing on the tv. thanks

[biggs]

Originally Posted by altangerel20

hello, my question is, i want to play my playstation 2 on my computer, how can i do that? the reason is b/c i have a nice 5.1 surround sound hooked up to my computer, and i bet the monitor is another factor that will improve the resolution of the game than playing on the tv. thanks

You can use a capture card, or a card that has video in on it, or a tv tuner card. as for the sound im not sure

[Arcainyx]

Your sound will mostly depend on how good your sound card is. As an example, I got a deal on my sound card from a local music store. It is actually an audio studio card. I don't use any of the sound mixing options however, I have the option of using optical or RCA inputs or outputs on it I believe. What sound card do you have again? If you have either RCA or optical inputs on it, it should just be a matter of hooking up a cable from your PS2 to your sound card, and adjusting some menu options in order for your computer to play the sound. Optical cabling will be more expensive to do but you'll get much more sound quality.

It will be much the same for your video too. Depending on your video card, you could either go RCA or possibly composite video, with composite video being better visual quality.

Your cheapest option will be to take the cable that came with your PS2 and run it to your computer, with the seperate connectors going to your video and sound cards. If you don't have them on your cards, you're either SOL or looking at new cards if you still want to go this route. I know of nothing more exotic then this such as a PS2 USB to computer USB connector. Maybe someone else does?

[jd53887]

if you do it that way, with the RCA to comp... that won't get you surround sound. will it? Is there 5.1 for PS2? Well, I was thinking, you get an optical wire that turns into RCA or w/e your speakers plugs into and just hook that up to the speakers itself. Like you know those 2.5mm jacks on one end and 2 RCA on the other? Well same concept. Optical on one and RCA or 2.5mm jacks on the other. Get a few complings and plug the RCA or 2.5mm to the speakers directly.

[Arcainyx]

I looked at a few pages on how the PS2 does 5.1 sound. Apparently, for the PS2, it is the optical output itself that is necessary for 5.1 output. In the pages that I read, to use 5.1 sound, you run an optical cable, directly to an audio component with a Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS decoder built into it. In my case, this is what I did, running the cable from my PS2 directly to my audio reciever.

Unless you have an optical input on your sound card, it may not be possible to get 5.1 sound from your PS2 to work correctly on your computer. Most (if not all) of the 5.1 systems built for computers on the market today rely on processing from the sound card to produce the surround sound. I'm going to assume that your sound card doesn't have an optical input on it. In this case, if you still wanted to try and get 5.1 sound, it appears that your only option would be to use some sort of signal converter or a cable with signal conversion built into it. You have to have some way of turning the laser light from the optical cable into an electrical signal usable by your sound card. I'm simply not enough of an audio expert to know if this would still produce 5.1 surround sound.

It is possible that if you do buy a cable (or use some other method) that is RCA to stereo headphone jack, and plug this into an input in the back of your sound card, that it might be able to produce 5.1 surround sound from that. I know that most sound cards today have an input built into them but I don't know if you could get surround sound from one in this way, especially since you wouldn't be using the optical signal if you did this. At the very least, you should be able to hear stereo sound on your computer speakers from your PS2 this way.

jd53887, I don't know that what you describe would produce 5.1 sound either. You would still need something to convert the optical signal to an electrical signal, whether the other end is 2.5mm or RCA. That being the case, I don't know if it's possible to produce 5.1 sound.

[Triple-X]

I also have a question relating this. I have an S-Video input on my graphics card and I also have the red and yellow port in the FRONT of my computer. I was wondering if I hooked it up that way, will it work? I also have audio inputs in the back, but they're not the right ones, at least I don't think they are.
Here are the pics:
For this pic I would hook up the S-Video cable (To the right of Blue Plug)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...Picture001.jpg
And here I would hook up the 2 audio ports. (Aux IN)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...Picture002.jpg

Tell me if it's possible! Thanks. Also, will my computer respond to the ps2 connected to it? How will I run it and etc? Thanks.

[Arcainyx]

Here's an example of the cables they have available for S-Video:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...18402%3A118405

This would work assuming that your PS2 is relatively close to your computer. What you can do is pull apart the different cables, separting the RCAs for your sound from the S-Video so that you can plug them both in to your computer. Those look like the correct inputs (although the S-Video was a bit fuzzy so I couldn't be completely sure there) so, assuming that they're all functional, you should be good to go.

Usually, your computer won't respond to devices hooked up like this like it would to other things. For example, Windows users most likely wouldn't see a PS2 get treated like a device being installed on their system. How you control it would be up to a combination of what hardware and software you have installed on your system. I don't have any in-depth experience with OSes other then Windows so I can't speak for them but, usually in Windows, assuming your hardware is working correctly and everything is hooked up, you should be able to change your video card to use S-Video and your sound to use those RCA inputs in your Control Panel. You might have to refer to whatever documentation came with your stuff but it usually isn't hard to do something like this.

[jd53887]

um... just so u know... that s-video next to the blue plug going to the monitor is an s-video output. That will only show ur desktop to ur TV.

[Triple-X]

really? ****! so now do i need to purchase something in order to do get an s-video input on the computer?

[jd53887]

um.......... yea!!!! just type "tv tuner" w/e u wanna buy it. If not enough comes up, type PCI or jsut PC Cost less than $100 USD