Hi, sorry for the newbie question but I'm inexperienced with technical aspects such as this.

I run all of my retro consoles (SFC, PS1 etc.) on an NEC XM29 Plus through RGB scart. I connect the RGB scart cable into an adapter (I apologise, I've forgotten the name of the adapter, it's been so many years since I bought it), then a VGA cable from the adapter into the NEC XM29 Plus. It looks like this: https://imgur.com/mOcVULb

Now what I'm looking for is a capture card which will allow me to play these games in the same way on my CRT monitor while connecting a capture card to my PC to record and stream. However, I'm having difficulty finding a capture card which offers RGB scart compatibility (possibly made even more complicated by own setup) and being new to this I wouldn't know a good choice from a bad one anyway.

Any help would be very much appreciated, thank you for your time.

Well, one solution I could think of would be this:

These consoles usually come with AV cables as well as SCART, so you'd grab a splitter for AV cables LIKE THIS ONE and an AV to SCART adapter LIKE THIS ONE so your current setup is untouched and you can continue to use it as is.

that way you could just get an AV capture card for 10 - 30 bucks and you should be able to get the feed on both your PC & CRT. (for the "higher" end people suggest the GV-USB2, but if you're not that invested, you can go for the lower end ones just fine)

Thanks for the suggestion and I'll bear it in mind consider it's much cheaper than any alternative, but after going to the effort of getting that sweet crisp RGB picture on a broadcast monitor I'm not sure I want to go back.

I did find this proposed setup though and I think it looks suitable:

https://imgur.com/65UYZXJ

I'm new to capture cards and the like, but do you see anything wrong with that? Should I beware of buying a cheap scart splitter or will any do? Presumably any capture device will do when using an HDMI splitter, such as an Elgato HD60 S for example.

Once again sorry for my lack of knowledge and I appreciate the prompt and helpful response.

Yes you should be aware of cheap splitters. The cheaper the splitter, the more degradation of video and audio you get which can result in delay on the various sources you’re splitting to. Powered splitters are a good choice to prevent this.

But that setup confuses me. Why are you splitting the SCART and the HDMI? Why are you essentially putting the game on two TVs/monitors? Are you playing off the CRT or the gaming monitor?

If you want to play the game off the CRT, then simply use the SCART splitter and plug the HDMI out of the OSSC into a capture card - there’s no need to split the HDMI.

If you want to play off the monitor, then simply plug the SCART directly into the OSSC and then split the HDMI coming out to the monitor and the capture card (some capture cards have the ability to do this for you) - there’s no need to split the SCART.

While there’s technically nothing wrong with splitting twice like that, as long as you don’t degrade the feed with the splits, I’ve never seen a use case for a setup like that where you essentially have 3 different displays for the game (CRT with SCART, monitor with HDMI and capture card with HDMI).

My setup is similar to yours if you want a reference of what someone else does. I use Component instead of SCART, but I take the Component out of the console and connect it into a powered splitter. From there, I send one split to a CRT, and the other split goes to a RetroTink-2x. The RetroTink-2x outputs HDMI which goes into my capture card.

"If you want to play the game off the CRT, the simply use the SCART splitter and plug the HDMI out of the OSSC into a capture card - there’s no need to split the HDMI."

Thank you. I am just new to this stuff and I was finding it a bit confusing, your post cleared things up for me. I'll be playing on a CRT and splitting it to the OSSC so that's all I need. Thank you very much for the help.

By the way, do you have any personal recommendation for a good scart splitter?

I’ve never needed a SCART splitter so off the top of my head I don’t know if a good one :/

But before I go looking for one, what CRT model do you use? Some professional models like PVMs or BVMs can do the splitting for you without the need to purchase additional hardware.

The NEC XM29 Plus does have output connectors, but I believe it's only via BNC style connectors, not like the one VGA style connector it has that they seem to be using. I have one and can check when I get home. They'd need to buy a SCART to BNC breakout, which is probably cheaper then the splitters actually.

Oh duh, I missed that in the original post lol. But tbh that probably is a cheaper way to go than buying a good quality SCART splitter. It should be decent quality too.

Yeah, as an owner of an XM2960, I would suggest SCART to 5xBNC (make sure the cables output raw csync, or have a sync stripper), and then a 5xBNC to VGA for the bottom passthru. For the VGA port, get a multisync adapter for older Macs that used the DA15 connector to VGA.