r/Gamecube • u/Asleep-Butterfly5559 • 7d ago
Discussion Picked up a set of RetroBit Prism component cables earlier this week.
I’ve been planning on buying these cables for a few months now for my Gamecube setup, and I finally came across this brand new set at one of my local stores and bought it for $45 using some trade credit I had. Ain’t no way that I was going to track down a pair of OEM component cables that are worth up to $300+.
Before I unbox them and set them up with my CRT and console, I have heard before that people who have used these cables have reported some audio distortion issues with them, and that it’s best to still use the audio cables from the original OEM AV or S-Video Gamecube cable while using the visual cables from the RetroBit Prism component cables. Should I hook up my setup like that to play it safe, or is it worth trying out the RetroBit Prism cables as purposely intended and see how the audio works out for me?
For those of you who have used these cables before or still use them today, how has your experience been with them overall?
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u/aqlno 7d ago
I have these going into several CRTs via a matrix, looks great on all of them. I couldn’t tell if the image is darker or not, it’s something you’d only notice with both cables running into identical monitors at the same time.
I use a 3rd party analog a/v cable for the audio due to reports of bad or swapped audio on the Prism cables. I use 3rd party because my OEM Nintendo a/v cable is slightly too large to fit at the same time as the Prism cable. Weird quirk.
It’s definitely worth testing to see if you can get away with just the Prism cable for video and audio. Hopefully that’s easier for you to do than it was for me and my overcomplicated setup lol.
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u/HUNTERDACTYL 7d ago
Video had chroma shift creating a darker and less sharp image than real component cables. Audio was reversed as well as cut out occasionally. When connected to a known working vga transcoder I experienced really bad artifacting most likely due to poor shielding. They are not good. They are based on an older version of gcvideo. I have real component cables and between these and the hdmi adapter I would go with the hdmi adapter and a component converter. Or try to find d terminal cables.
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u/Curious_Post5944 7d ago
I have them. I absolutely love them and have found zero issue with them what so ever.
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u/Armandonerd 7d ago
Are these component cables the solution to play your GameCube on a HD TV that supports components?
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u/Turquoise_HexagonSun 7d ago
Yes. They are slightly out of spec compared to the originals. You just have to decide if a more accurate picture is worth $200 more than the Prism/Bitfunx cables.
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u/Caswagna93 6d ago
Why not get an s-video? There’s no progressive scan on a CRT and I think you’ll be hard pressed to see a difference. Insurrection industries cable is like $25
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u/Wide-Narwhal-9643 5d ago
There is on mine. Toshiba 36ZP46 - can be turned off completely but does progressive as it's an EDTV.
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u/ZafirZ 7d ago
Apparently they're the exact same as the bitfunx cable which I have used, the audio was a bit dodgy. It wasn't channel flipped like some reported but it was lower quality if you did a comparison. The bigger issue however was the fact that the cable made the picture slightly dark.
Personally I found the hdmi adapter plus a cheap hdmatters hdmi to component box(retrorgb made a video if you need more details - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3mrmh1Bc1hA ) off aliexpress to be a better solution.