For the perfect price of half a goat in my country, I got myself a Philips 14PT 1354/58 TV, which is a mini 14" TV from 2000. I plan to use its Composite Video In RCA connector to get video signal from my Apple iBook and play Diablo 2 (and other games, obviously) just as Allah intended games to be played. It also has a SCART connector on the backside, but if I remember correctly, SCART sucks. Or something.
The TV seems to be in a very good state, the screws haven’t been altered, so after opening it up (just four screws, pfew) I faced the difficult task of de-dusting it. And there was an insane amount of dust, you know, the black type that sticks to the flyback transformer (remember not to touch the flyback transformer or the electron gun, when the unit is powered on, else you’ll have a really short (or really long) trip to the netherworld and back, if you’re lucky). At least I like to think it’s dust and not … you know … dead skin.
Took me few hours to clean up everything, after that I plugged in all the connectors and powered the TV on, switched the channel to EXT (External), plugged in my Apple M9109G/A Mini VGA to S-Video Adapter into the iBook and used a cable with RCA connectors to connect Composite Video In on the display to Composite Video Out on the adapter. And voila, it still works, 25 years later.
If you don’t like display mirroring, since this is an iBook not a PowerBook, and iBooks are locked by Apple into mirroring-only via firmware, you can use Screen Spanning Doctor to enable extended desktop. Extended desktop means you can configure each display independently and you can have 1024x768 on your iBook display and 800x600 on your TV display, the second display extending the main iBook one.
The CRT tube seems to be made in Spain (yupee) and the whole TV unit is made in Europe, whatever that means. Diablo, Diablo 2 and Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri on a CRT display? Hell yeah, at least until I manage to sell my house and get an Eizo display.
