Right "ALREADY ON YOUR TV" sums up my main point. Like I said it's hard to get people interested in something, when TV makers can't agree how to implement it. No standard is really why this particular type RGB failed in the US. Most people only value improved picture enough to get a simple cable. Not go through the whole mod or converter box thing.
This started with Calpis saying RGB isnt cheap or convenient. Nothing to do with it being picked up in America or not. Which is why I corrected his post to make sure his view point was as an American in America - which doesnt cover the rest of the world, something the Americans need reminding of now and again. When it comes as standard on your TV, there are no TV's without it - its effectively free to the consumer. There is no cheaper option, so you are not saving money by having or not having RGB in Europe. Then he said RCA is easier for the consumer, its a 1 wire solution (when if you want sound, its actually 2 or 3, depending on if you want stereo or not) when Scart is 1. The thread then spiralled from there. Its not popular in America. But branding Europeans are the crazys and going to extraordinary lengths to get RGB is just incorrect. Its easy and freely available, its also the best picture quality you are going to get from retro gear - so why wouldnt you use it. In America it might only be the crazies that use RGB and RGB is difficult compared to RCA because of that. But that is why I added "In America" to the end of his post - which is kinda the whole point and is why the OP asked for a European view.
It was cheap and freely available THEN too. Just because its not or wasnt in America doesnt mean it wasnt here. It came as standard, there was no extra cost to buy additional equipment - your TV could just do it. There wasnt TV's without it, so there was no cheap option and more expensive RGB option. Your TV had a 2x Scart sockets, one of them was RGB. Its just how it was.
If you only have a PS1, I'd recommend RGB if available. As many have said before me, it makes for a very good low-res picture. If you have a PS3, then go with HDMI. PS1 games look pretty nice when upscaled. I'd avoid the PS2 route, certain games look kinda choppy running in BC mode, and the component cables can make games look awful (with no actual upscaling being done but a lot of clarity being added to the picture it really calls out bad textures). I was playing Final Fantasy VIII (non-PSN) in 1080i on my PS3 for awhile. I made it to disc 3, transferred the save to a memory card, and started playing the same record on my SCPH-1001 PS1 through composite. The video is blurry, but the sound is great.
RGB was not just cheap and freely available, but also wildly popular with the PS1 crowd in Europe. Because as most pirated games were in NTSC, they required an RGB Scart cable to display in colour. In my case, the modchip, the installation and the RGB Scart cable were part of the deal. And it didn't cost much. So trust me, people all over Europe were playing PS1 through RGB in the late 90s, instead of settling for the cable that came with the system.
Whatever guys, fine, SCART/RGB input was free. So was the transition from analog TV to microcontrolled and from microcontrolled to HDTV. And while the 6 GBP patch cables I found were being sold like hotcakes *IN* the UK, it's 3x overpriced, SCART cables have always been cheap as chips. Also 13 unshielded wires can sometimes cost the same as 3 shielded and one of the most complicated consumer connectors in history doesn't cost significantly more than probably the simplest plug in use since the 30s or something. SCART is convenient and easily understandable to laymen, I forgot to take into account European wisdom and superior education. CENELEC had a lot of foresight including RGB 20 years before a major use, the 40 million PAL PS owners apart from Oceania each bought a SCART RGB cable and that alone justified it's inclusion. In all it was the wrong decision for NTSC countries to not adopt RGB/SCART because we resent European innovations. SCART however has also been good to the US since it's responsible for 95% of the LM1881 sales since 2002.
Not to fan any argument flames, but every non-gaming tv related device which was purchased in my household (all budget range VCRs, DVD players, freeview, Satellite and cable, even a video camera) for the last 20 years were plugged in by a scart cable and the cable was included in the box. I didn't even know what the composite plugs were for until I got my gamecube. (My ps1 and sega consoles all came with RF cables)
But what do we know? We only live here and use it. Also, Saturn (at least the model 1) came with Full RGB scart as standard. Scart leads, £1 or so: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-5m-SCAR...s_Adapters&hash=item27b9ecf023#ht_3073wt_1185 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-5M-Metr...s_Adapters&hash=item43aec405f4#ht_2244wt_1185 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SCART-TO-...les_Adapters&hash=item5199ffd0cb#ht_708wt_905 But I have not bought a scart to scart lead pretty much ever.... they come bundled with everything as mentioned above. So you end up with loads of them
I'll list the PAL consoles I've had since I was a wee lad and what AV cables they came with. Unfortunately this will be pain to read as I'm posting with Chromium. Anyway, here goes: NES came with an RF lead, Mega Drive II came with an RF lead, PS1 came with a composite cable and a SCART adapter (my TV at the time only had a single RGB enabled SCART socket + RF), model 2 Saturn came with a Scart cable (but not RGB), N64 came with a composite cable and a SCART adapter, and lastly the Dreamcast came with a composite cable and a SCART adapter. For both the PS1 and the Saturn I got an RGB SCART cable, and for the Dreamcast I got a VGA box, within a year or so of getting the consoles. Game stores here were rather vocal about telling their customers to spend some money to get the best out of their (shitty PAL) consoles.
Seems like a dumb way to treat it if you ask me. So much effort for so little reward. A PS3 or even an emulator running PS1 games will look fine on a modern TV(Unless you want a CRT look to it.). Which IIRC was the entire point of this thread. Most LCD/Plasma's WILL NOT ACCEPT A true 240P Signal(Which many PS1 games are). Using Scart/RGB without an upscaler is pretty much pointless And if you want a CRT look to it, then use something like the XRGB and add scanlines to it. OR play it on a CRT. maybe if any of you actually took the time to go to the link I posted and read what I was referring to http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/ VS Running the same game on a PSTwo over Composite and YUV Component Since the PS3 software emulates the PS1, I'd assume the game is rendered in RGB Colorspace if you are using HDMI with full range enabled(because what point would there be in emulating the game in an inferior colorspace?). And while Scart was common in Eur/Jp, it was not in the US. These are the facts regardless of the reason that we all know. I'm pretty sure we are beyond the scart times nowdays though with HDMI/DisplayPort/DVI and etc with todays TV sets. Going through all the trouble to see if your set even supports 240p, just seems like a waste of time if you already have a PS3.
I keep hearing that, but all my LCD's/Plasmas have worked fine directly. (Although I do use a scaler and add scanlines, its still works without). All I had to do was turn off all the processing (gaming mode, etc etc) and it was fine. With those enabled, I got some weird things happening.
Hmm... well RGB was NOT cheap and did NOT come with all televisions for some time. Right through until the late 1990s, there were still cheap 14" television with no SCART sockets. And what kind of televisions did kids have in their bedroom for their consoles? Yep, most of us had 14" televisions. The Saturn came with a SCART cable, yes. And it was a pain in the arse. EVERYONE that I knew complained that they had to spend £25 on an RF lead that didn't come with their Saturn, because they didn't have a SCART socket on their televisions. I didn't know anyone with SCART... nor composite, even. Then the Nintendo 64 came out... and it still came with an RF lead. And I remember building an RF splitter so we could play multi-player GoldenEye with several televisions, lol. Yes, SCART cables are £1 now. They certainly weren't until recently, though. Again, I remember back in the days of Dreamcast and PlayStation 2, SCART cables were still around £15 usually. You might have got a really cheap one for a bit under £10 if you knew where to look. As for everyone using RGB - not true! I worked in a video game shop and right up to PlayStation 3, people would often use the cables that came with their consoles - the composite cable with the SCART adapter. Those who knew they wanted the best picture quality would come and buy RGB SCART leads or component, but the vast majority were happy with composite. And of course, there's the argument that multi-SCART socket TVs had only one RGB socket (sometimes two). So yes, whilst RGB SCART sockets were becoming commonplace on NEW televisions around the mid Nineties, many people couldn't afford new sets or had smaller sets without them. So yes, the luxury of RGB did cost more, in effect - you had to buy a new television! Of course, saying that, if you were buying a television anyway, it was an option that was just there for you, indeed. Most people were too stupid to realize how to use SCART properly, though!
As I understood it, the point of this thread was to ask Europeans* who have played PS1 games through RGB on SD CRTs about how they would look through HDMI. Well, I'll answer that right now. Unscaled, PS1 games played on a PS3 that's hooked up to a 1080p native resolution LCD monitor with HDMI look nice in that tiny 480p window, but not as nice as on a 15khz CRT monitor through RGB or on a quality (must have a digital comb filter) CRT TV through S-video. The same games in my opinion look horrible if scaled on an LCD screen. That's why I have my PS3 hooked up to both LCD and CRT screens at the same time. *The people in this thread who seem to be the only ones who actually have experience using RGB.
I never said everyone used RGB, just that it wasn't expensive here. (i.e. it doesnt requiring going out of your way to import a TV or buy some crazy studio monitor) - But as mentioned above, pretty much everyone I knew with a modded PS1 (which was pretty much everyone with a PS1) used RGB to play imports in colour. Look back to the original post, Calpis said getting/using RGB is expensive. I tacked on "In America" - which is where this all spiralled from. This was in the present tense, but somehow we got to in the past too. This was kinda the point I have tried to repeat within this thread. TV's just came with SCART/RGB after a certain time, it wasnt a case of having to buy something extra - like getting a 3D tv now. You pay more on top to get 3D vs a TV without. It didnt really matter if people were using it "properly" or not. It would work either way (composite or RGB). People who wanted the better quality had it and it came with their TV. Which again, was the whole point. Scart to scart isnt the same as a video game scart lead. Even now a bunch of leads for consoles are more than £1. I never paid for scart to scart leads, they came bundled with anything you bought that used them. Which again was kinda my point about scart. The option for RGB is there andit came with your TV (not an expensive addon like buying a 3d tv). If you dont care, use the lead that came with the console - it plugs into the same socket and "just works". But to be fair, we did seem to deviate a lot from my original point =/
I don't even know what you guys are arguing about anymore, and I'm not sure you do either. I also think it's a mistake to limit the discussion of RGB to Europe, as many of us in the US and elsewhere have RGB equipment.
It seems to have twisted into a million different things. In short, Calpis said getting RGB equipment is expensive - I tacked on "in America" as its just not expensive here, which it isnt. Simple
Yes, but back in the day, getting RGB was expensive here, too! Televisions cost a LOT more. In the days of the Saturn, I had a television made of wood, with a large dial you had to turn to change channels! And I had (and still have) a cheapy 14" with only an aerial socket. What was I supposed to do? I was a teenager, and even a 14" television with SCART was several hundred pounds! In fact, an Amiga monitor was £300 - and that didn't have a tuner, so the televisions were probably more than that. To me, RGB was definitely an expensive option! Maybe NOW it's not, but back in the day, it was. Because yes, you had to go out of your way to buy some crazily expensive television or an Amiga monitor.
The comment was made in the present tense about RGB being expensive. I corrected it to "in America". The rest was just dragged out from that, but wasnt the original point. But I bought TV's in the 90's/2000s with RGB scart without even knowing and we werent a well off household and everyone I knew by the late 90's (ps1 times) had RGB scart for imports, again without trying. And this thread was about the PS1 after all... And even if we are talking in the past tense, the last 13 years or so, its been available without really trying.
As APE said, it's not expensive in the US either. It's more expensive than buying a regular CRT TV, but it's still less than buying a new HDTV. If you live in certain parts of the US it's cheaper as you can sometimes pick up monitors locally. PVMs were expensive at one point, but that's not so much because of their RGB capabilities as their superior image quality and controls. Besides, they were never intended for consumer use, anyway. Also: WOOO!!! 3K posts!!!
