I've given up on playing on my pi. It turns out that the input lag is much worse than I thought it was- I was probably blinded by my excitement over having a new toy.
So, I'm using shmupmame on my desktop PC, with my LCD monitor and it feels good to actually have my skill determine the outcome of the games again
What I want to do, however, is to play the games on my CRT TV (Sony Trinitron) like I was doing with my pi. I've seen a number of VGA to composite converters and internal PC graphics cards with composite out online. Could any you who are in the know, and maybe have tried something like this, answer me this: would a VGA to composite converter introduce any input lag? Would the composite out card necessarily be a less laggy option than a converter?
Also, would there be any challenges to playing MAME this way that I'm not currently seeing? As far as I understand it, after setting up the right equipment, my PC should treat the composite feed as if it were just another monitor that I can configure MAME to output to. Am I oversimplifying?
Thanks to those who are able and willing to help!
