Actually, since my panasonic plasma is a commercial display panel, it accepts "terminal boards" ... that is, all of my inputs are actually add-in boards. With that in mind, I see that I can buy an add-in board for my plasma with SCART: http://www.superfi.co.uk/images/main/ty42tm6t_a_844x374.jpg so that's that, then ... I assume going straight SCART into my plasma will give me the best possible picture, yes ? (and I can tell the tv to line double it, etc.)
Ok, yes I see your post on the other thread RE: lcds/plasmas ... Your point is well taken. I'm going to try the native SCART-input to the plasma at first ... and I'll see how it looks. If I'm lucky, the commercial display units (which seem to be beefed up in all aspects) will deal with these signals better than a store-bought plasma TV. We'll see... Thanks to all for all of the good help, in both threads.
component allows for non-interlaced resolutions, RGB does not. Also, the colorspace is different to my knowledge.
Except for most of them that have VGA sockets Whether they like interlaced video over that is another story, I've heard many don't mind. ??? Your TV will line double/triple/quadruple it depending on native resolution no matter what... and yikes big spender, most likely you don't even need a SCART input card, just a cable to adapt SCART to VGA, connect RGB to RGB and Csync to Hsync (GND to GND). Huh? You mean a SCART input probably won't right? That's the entire difference, so obviously how well the output and input fits the matrix will determine how well the video is received or recovered if the source was originally RGB. I don't think you have to worry much over colors now with digital transcoders in consoles and he isn't talking about transcoding his SNES video. ----- Basically the only way you'll get better video than the RGB that comes out the back is to tap digital RGB to *digitally* upscan it, and to my knowledge digital RGB isn't exposed anywhere, meaning you won't have better video until someone clones the SNES and specifically adds an upscanned output. If you upscan the analog outputs (XRGB etc), you're just increasing ADC/DAC quantization error, noise and lag on a digital display.
Hehe, OK, I meant 15kHz RGB. Do TVs support 15kHZ VGA, or are they only 31kHz like most PC monitors? The other advantage to buying a CRT monitor (albeit a tiny one for SNES) is that lightguns will actually work!
I believe a lot support 15 kHz RGB over the VGA port because inputs are multiplexed to the ADCs as if they were all aliased, and the 480i detection code could be lifted from component with little effort. Some VGA inputs may treat the 15 kHz video as a custom computer mode instead of a TV signal however.. it just depends on how flexible their algorithms are. It's not something you should expect, just hope for since I don't have any real figures.
Yeah, try that. Should look pretty good. The reason why it won't look perfect is that the SNES was made for CRTs which accept 240p and 480i. And HDTVs were made for resolutions not below 480p. The SNES outputs something like 240p or similar so it won't look as good as anything at 480p or higher. Anyway, if you tried it and are still curious as to what alternatives you have, maybe buy this thing: http://cgi.ebay.com/Gamecube-SNES-N64-VGA-Box-Connect-to-Computer-Monitor_W0QQitemZ170284772610QQihZ007 - It only uses S-Video, not RGB!, thus colors won't be better - but: its advantage over the SCART input of what I assume goes for most or all HDTVs is that it was made for SNES specifically and thus will do a clean upscan of a 240p signal to 480p and output a VGA compatible signal that you could connect to your TV's VGA or DVI port. It may look slightly crispier than RGB via SCART, but this depends on how the HDTV handles SCART input (i.e. if it falsly assumes that whatever goes in must be 480i, when it's actually 240p in this case). Usually it wouldn't be a question whether to go with S-Video or RGB, but since we're talking about HDTVs and SNES... Oh, and here's a nice place to buy a modified Super Famicom and your RGB-SCART cables: http://www.robwebb1.plus.com/snes/snes_hard.htm
Obviously the bandwidth of the analogue spectrum used in a particular implementation is what makes or breaks non-interlaced image quality, but I was under the impression that unlike RGBHV (VGA etc), plain-old European RGB connections did not do progressive by standard definition? Or do you mean that "weird" japanese RGB?
Thanks for that good information ... it begs a miscellaneous question that I had concerning the output, which is, is ALL snes output 240p ? No matter which game, etc., I can count on it always being 240p ? 15khz, right ? That will be helpful if I decide to enlist the help of an external hardware scaler to get a perfect signal, and hopefully line-quad the signal, etc. Thanks also for your hardware/store link - is that your store ?
Answering myself for the archives - yes, all SNES games are 240p, 15khz. Except, apparently, for ranma1/2 which was 480i.
They obviously do SD progressive as in 240p for SNES etc. I now get what you mean though, some HDTVs may accept 480p over SCART, at least they should. A good TV should display 15-68 kHz H / 24-72Hz V video over all RGB/component connections for maximum flexibility but of course they don't. Dude, that's exactly how you WORSEN a signal. You can't get a perfect upscanned signal without a digital raster which you don't have access to. The best picture you're going to get, period, is by directly connecting the SNES to a good display with at most ONE internal scaler, most definitely not by putting it through an external one too. Edit: wait, there isn't an interlaced mode? Edit 2: yes there is!
I assume the games were 240p inherently.. however, NTSC TVs have 525 lines interlaced.. (or more conveniently here, 480i), made only more concrete by the abundance of composite outputting, at least here in the U.S.
If the external scaler outputs a native resolution for your HDTV, then the internal scaler is not used at all - it's a native input. This is a great resource: http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/ A fascinating read, and some very interesting equipment. I'm leaning towards the DVDO VP50pro ...
I'm new here, so I hesitate to contradict I thought all NTSC SNES games were 240p, but: "In the 90s 480i output became popular. It provides 480 lines of resolution (but only 240 lines per field = at a time) at 640 to 720 pixels of horizontal resolution. A handful of SNES games used this mode (Ranma 1/2), some Saturn games (Columns Collection), quite some PSOne games (Tobal 2) and actually most of the PS2 games out there." ( http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/ ) I dunno. Maybe he's wrong.
Le sigh. Time for a wee history lesson. Way back when, before all these bullshit video modes, you used to have CCIR 601 (NTSC). The luminance resolution was 720x485. Now, NTSC has 525 vertical lines, right? Well, sort of. Technically, yes, but only 480 of those lines were used to transmit the picture (Well OK, it's more like 485, but for the purposes of this demonstration we'll say 480). NTSC was interlaced, so each field only has half the vertical resolution. That means there were 240 lines. So, NTSC used the M format, giving 29.97 interlaced frames per second. (As a comparison, film was shot in 24 FPS. Nothing wrong with that.) As this is an interlaced signal, it takes two fields to make a frame. The SNES could output in several resolutions, but again for our purpose here we'll focus on its vertical resolutions of 239 and 478. The 239 lines is progressive scan (sort of) and the 478 is interlaced. Most games didn't use interlacing. Therefore, they gave a flicker-free (as interlacing by nature gives a twitter effect) picture. So interlaced NTSC uses 480 lines but over two fields, therefore each field has half the resolution. The SNES, however, by and large uses a progressive-style scan, and therefore can display the picture in one field of 240 lines. The frame rate doesn't suffer, and neither does the picture. And hence the crappily named video modes. Incidentally, CCIR 601 is now called Rec. 601. Why everything had to change, I don't know!!
This is true under the right conditions (though it still adds lag), most digital displays aren't natively 720/1080 lines however and will probably interpolate at least horizontally. No, a fair amount of SNES games DO use interlaced (480 line) mode. Ehrm, wrong person? Missed my point? Wouldn't you think I know this stuff? Need me to write you a NTSC encoder in Verilog? :banghead: What I said stands, if you took a 240 line scene, and output it as 480i, that's exactly what you get: 240 lines, (line doubled,) at 30 fps.
Hahaha, I was actually trying to quote the posts either side of yours - how the hell did I get yours?! Oh well, that's what comes from posting in the middle of the night!! Yes I'd think you know this stuff Why would you want to output it at 480i? lol.
