Assault Rigs Set-up Page

Audio / Video Set-up

There are two different A/V hook-ups on the back of your Playstation depending on the age of your machine. One has the multi-port and three small ports; yellow, red, and white, and the other only has the multi-port. There are two different video cables, one set of audio cables, and one combined cable that the Playstation can use. The PS One only has the multi-port. I have listed the cables names, what they look like, how they work, and a rating for each one.

Coaxial Cable	This cable is black, nearly 3/16" thick, and usually has a threaded connection on the end.	This cable compresses the audio and video signals into one wire and does not shield the signals from each other. The colors can be seen bleeding together sometimes and the audio will sometimes crackle and pop because of the lack of shielding. You will need to buy a small cable box for your Playstation in order to use this cable that usually has a switch that will send the signals to either channel three or four on your television.	Poor
Composite Cable	This cable is yellow, comes in various thicknesses, and has male RCA jacks on the ends.	This cable compresses only the video from your Playstation. It is a better quality than the Coaxial Cable because even though the video is still compressed, it is shielded from the audio signal. Bleeding can still be seen, but it is not as apparent. Your Playstation will either come with a set of A/V cables, or a multi-port cable with A/V cables at one end. An A/V cable has both a Composite Cable and two Audio Cables.	Good
S-video Cable	This cable is usually black and has four small wires inside the end of the plug.	This cable transmits the highest quality video available for you Playstation. The cable will connect through your multi-port. The four wires in the plug are for color, light, dark, and a grounding wire. Each wire is shielded from the other wires. Color bleeding is virtually eliminated with this cable and the picture is the clearest and sharpest available.	Great
Audio Cables	These cables look like two Composite video cables; one is red and the other is white.	These cables are generally connected to a stereo receiver and offer a much better audio quality than the Coaxial Cable does. This cable is usually connected to S-video Cables and Composite Cables. If you have an older Playstation with the A/V ports along with the multi-port, it is advisable to use the A/V ports instead of the cables connected to the multi-port cable for slightly better audio quality.	Great

If you are using a Playstation 2 instead of a regular Playstation there are two other ways to hook-up your machine.

Component Cable	These cables look like three Composite video cable; one is red, one is green, and one is blue.	These cables are clearer than S-video Cables. Usually only high end televisions use this connection method, like widescreen, projection, and high definition televisions. If your television has these ports on it, you should definitely invest in the cable for your Playstation.	Excellent
Optical Audio	This cable is a fiber optic cable with a small bulb on the end.	This cable is used by Surround Sound receivers to immerse the player in the games audio environment. Assault Rigs states that it has Dolby Surround Sound effects in it, but until the Playstation 2 the game couldn't be played with true Surround Sound capabilities. All Assault Rigs does is use certain sound effects that trick your ear into thinking that they are near or far away on the left and right.	Excellent

Link-up Set-up

Usually when console games have more than one player playing at a time, they split the screen either horizontally or vertically or even both, having each player use a portion of one television screen and playing each players audio together. The Playstation's link-up option allows multiple players to use different televisions to play certain games. Now each player can have their own full screen and have their separate audio come though their audio system so that it is clearer and does not have the other players audio mixed in with it.

The way this is done was not very cheap when the Playstation first came out. Actually it was rather expensive. To play link-up games each player need a copy of the game, their own Playstation hooked up to their own television and a separate link cable must be purchased and used to connect the Playstations together. Each player could also use a separate stereo system for their own Playstation. This idea was great except for the expense involved.

Take into account the prices of these components when the Playstation first came out. Two Playstations were nearly three hundred dollars a piece. A decent television that was large enough to see what was going on and had RCA ports for the Component Video and Audio Cables that came with the Playstations would be about a hundred and fifty to three hundred dollars a piece. The games cost nearly thirty five dollars a piece and the cheapest cable was twenty dollars. Added up the cost came to nearly a thousand dollars. This is why most people borrowed a friends Playstation and either used a small television, or used a second one that they already had.

Today you can get a used Playstation for less than one hundred dollars, and you probably already have one yourself. If you don't have two televisions already, a second one will be about one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars. A used controller will run you about fifteen dollars. You can get a link cable for less than ten dollars, usually in the original box. Games can be found for usually less than ten dollars, with some of the more hard to find ones being around twenty dollars. Added up you are looking at about four hundred and eighty dollars, and that's if you need to buy two televisions.
The other things that hindered the link-up option was that the link cable was so short. The official Playstation cable was nearly thirty dollars and was only six feet long. The longest cable was eight feet and cost twenty dollars, it was from Nyko. At only eight feet away, you can still hear where the other player is at in the game and unless you face the televisions away from each other, it is easy to look at the other screen at get a good idea of where the other player is at.

Apart from these reasons, link-up games are still a blast to play and are a great way to revitalize the games that support them. It's best to simply have one of your friends come over with their television and Playstation and rent the games if you don't want to purchase them or don't already own them. The link cable usually has to be purchased. I don't know of any national video store chain that rents them.

Link-up Games