I'm going to make a statement. If the only console I owned was a Nintendo GameCube, and I wanted to connect it to a VGA monitor, I would find the Micomsoft XRGB-2 Plus Upscan Converter to be a worthwhile purchase. There is one caveat. You must also acquire one of Nintendo's D-Terminal cables to go with it. Forget composite, S-Video or component video cables. Composite video is worthless for our purposes, the component video quality is degraded to little better than S-Video quality by the converter cable you have to use in order to connect to the Japanese RGB port, and the improvement gained from going to S-Video to D-Terminal is such that the benefits are are obvious.
Actually, you will need another video cable. Anything will do as long as it has stereo audio connectors. You see on the back of the GameCube there are two video ports. One of them is used for composite and S-Video cables, along with their audio outputs. The other is video output only, for use with component and D-Terminal video cables. For some reason, D-Terminal is also known as digital video, but that is a misnomer. D-Terminal is, as I have said before, component video by another name and with a different socket. However with regard to the XRGB-2 Plus, it has the advantage that it does not need to be converted to another configuration.
The D-Terminal and component video cables are also used to display progressive scan; unfortunately the XRGB-2 Plus does not support progressive scan. I have tried with both the XBox and the GameCube, and it simply doesn't work. From what I understand, many GameCube games do not support this feature so this is less of a loss than it would appear.
Like the XRGB-2 Plus, D-Terminal cables are available from my friends at Upstate Games (http://www.upstategames.com). So while you're over there ordering one of Micomsoft's Upscan Converters for your GameCube, you owe it to yourself to get one of these excellent cables as well...and it is an excellent cable. I had assumed that it would be of merely average quality, but to my surprise Nintendo has turned out a product that, while not up to the standards of Monster Cable, is nonetheless a solid product. The connections are sturdy and positive, and the 6' cable is of satisfying solidity.
When first I connected the D-Terminal cable to my XRGB-2 Plus, I left the S-Video cable in place so that I could do a side-by-side comparison. The GameCube can display two images at once. All three games in my GameCube library showed what I would describe as significant and worthwhile improvement. Those games are Wave Race: Blue Storm, XGIII: Extreme G Racing and Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II. The most obvious improvement is, as always, in the text and fine lines. They are universally crisper than when viewed via S-Video. Other graphics are harder to quantify, but certainly they benefit from an improvement in clarity.
To be honest, I would say that the video quality gained from a GameCube equipped with a D-Terminal cable is the best you can expect to get from the current crop of consoles when they are connected to an XRGB-2 Plus with the currently available crop of cables. Of course if someone comes out with a Japanese RGB cable for the GameCube, say Monster Cable (and I'm not holding my breath), or for the XBox (and I'm still not going to hold my breath), things might change.
Devotees of progressive scan are, of course, going to be disappointed by this article. Certainly, as I have said, the XRGB-2 Plus does not support them. Neither do all of the GameCube's video games. The XRGB-2 Plus certainly has a role then, with such titles. However if you are the kind of person who would purchase, or consider the purchase of, Micomsoft's product then you are probably the kind of person who would seek to have the best of all worlds, both progressive and interlaced video modes. With the XRGB-2 Plus handling the latter, how about the former?
Well, there is one readily available possibility. From Audio Authority, there is the Model 9A62 component to VGA transcoder (http://www.audioauthority.com/aacconsumers/9a62detc.html) that includes a video signal pass-through feature.It can only output 480 progressive and interlaced video resolutions, but those are the only resolutions supported by the GameCube, so nothing is lost. The 9A62 costs from around $150 to $190, depending upon the source. The component video pass-through could be connected via an adapter to either the D-Terminal or Japanese RGB sockets.
Now I haven't tried Audio Authority's product, but you can be assured that a review will be forthcoming the moment I can lay my hands on one. According to sources on the Internet, video quality is very close to that available from the Dreamcast equipped with a VGA Adapter, representing the best image quality ever available from a video game console.
So, you may be wondering what my video configuration is, and what I would recommend. The two aren't exactly the same, but I may as well share them with you. I have both an XRGB-2 and an XRGB-2 Plus. My PlayStation 2 is equipped with a Japanese RGB cable and is connected to the XRGB-2. Its VGA and audio outputs are connected to the corresponding VGA and audio inputs on the XRGB-2 Plus. My XBox is connected via Monster Cable's Gamelink 400 X component video cables and Micomsoft's component to RGB adapter, to the Japanese RGB socket on the XRGB-2 Plus. My GameCube is connected via a surgically enhanced S-Video/Composite A/V cable (I sliced off the S-Video and composite video cables) and Nintendo D-Terminal cable to the D-Terminal socket. Each video input on the XRGB-2 Plus has its own corresponding audio inputs.
If I only had the XRGB-2 Plus, I would use a Monster Cable GameLink 300 X S-Video cable to connect the XBox to the S-Video socket. The GameCube and PlayStation 2 configurations would remain the same, though of course the PlayStation 2 would be connected to the XRGB-2 Plus via the afore-mentioned Japanese RGB cable. This is precisely the configuration depicted on the XRGB-2 Plus box. Clearly someone at Micomsoft knew what they were about.
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