Video input on a New iMac?

[PandorasVox]

Haven't been able to find this covered /anywhere/, so I figured I'd ask: what are ym options for getting an external video signal into the 17" iMac I'm suppsoed to be getting this fall?

Reason is, I'm big on the classic gaming. I have a SE, and am trying to find an SE/30, so I have the Mac side covered a bit, but as of this fall I will have no Wintel boxen. I want to acquire a refurb pentium 266 or thereabouts, and I'm trying to figure out if there's a hack or a product out there that would let me input the video from the Pentium box when I get it through the iMac's beautiful screen.

I've seen, in previous TV-related research, that a cheap USB video-capture/input-thingy exists called the "MyTV" or the "MyTVtogo", but I don't see that working on an older computer without a tv-out (though an old PCI tv-out card shouldn't be too hard to find on ebay...).

So in all, I just wanted to see if anyone here has any ideas/hacks to propose... because all my attempts at finding a solution that doesn't cost more than a cheap refurb monitor are coming up dry. I may end up resorting to buying/adopting (whatever's available) an old monitor, but if there's another option, I'd like to know of it, as space is a constraint in a university residence.

Thanks all,

Leigh
(Pandoras's Vox)

 

[G5orbust]

hmmmmmmmmm. very interesting. The imac isnt a very good choice because it has its screen's input cord concealed and therefore cant be put into any other souce besides the graphics card of the imac itself. unfortunately, the se/30 has no graphics card or viedo connectors to run an external screen. So i dont think it can do mirroring onto ur imac's screen. but, as long as ur origional screen still works, i suggest using that.

 

[vniow]

If you can afford it, get a video card with S-video out and get a firewire A\V converter like the one from Formac (not the one with the TV-tuner, the other, cheaper one) or the one from Dazzle. The cheapest you're going to get one of these is about $250 though. If you're going to play games, avoid the USB ones at all cost. Since they have to do hardware compression to get a decent signal across the USB bus, they have a 1.5 second delay which in games can mean the difference between life and death. If you can't afford it and have the space, just go for another monitor.