Gameboy (TV de) Advance

This is not such a popular or well-known device, now that we have the GameCube and its GBA Player attachment to view GBA games on our TV screens. But back in 2002, this was the only (cheap) way to do it. Disassembling the GBA and attaching the TV de Advance to the GBA's ribbon connector wasn't so tough to do (See here). All in all, an easy, and rather cheap, way to view the GBA on a TV.

The image quality is miles better than a dark GBA screen, but the composite video is rather so-so. So, thank goodness there's an easy enough way to get RGB from it.

Thanks to this handy-dandy picture that I found on the Net somewhere, I was able to wire up a cable easily.

I just added one of the audio channels to the cable I made up, and sent it out of the side of the TV de Advance adaptor. It's a little bulky with 3 wires coming out, but at least it works, and it cost me nothing to make.

And that's pretty much all I have to say.


Let's rate the GBA (via TV de Advance adaptor)! (Note that I am not comparing composite quality against RGB quality, but rather each quality against the best that Composite or RGB has to offer, respectively.)
Composite Quality
RGB Quality

Composite video quality is, as I said above, a little poor. Subdued colours are nice and crisp, but saturated colours have really bad fringing going on, simply because of a cheap NTSC encoder. Plus, the entire display is very flickery since it's interlaced. So, the eyes get tired after playing for a while. (Wasn't the idea of a GBA-TV adaptor to alleviate this affliction?)

RGB video is very sharp, and colours and pixels are perfect. No more fringing. Unfortunately, the display is still interlaced, so it's a bit hard on the eyes. Still, after the Nintendo DS, it's my preferred way of playing GBA games.

Now, you can see what I mean on the SCREENSHOTS PAGE,

or return to the main page.