Is video on the Neo Geo supposed to be this awful?

Just got my first system and Samurai Shodown 1 & 2. LOL'd big at the white and yellow video cables. Hooked it up to my Sharp Aquos (top of the line 52" model) and it looks like crap took a shit.

Heh well not that bad. I do notice alot of flickering though. Especially in SS4 the green health bar is always flickering and in SS3 the health bar is a repeating rainbow color (as well as some other parts that I suspect is a certain color not being displayed properly).

Is this normal or is there some sort of defect in my system? Perhaps need a cleaning maybe....Just got it from Sofmap in Aki. Have newer cables been developed for mass production and sale or is this it? Frankly I can just play it on my wii but there's something awesome about playing it on the original Neo Geo system.

 

My neo always looked garbage on my HD tv, I have no idea why. I use RGB, and it still looks bad. I always bust out the good CRT. Check your model number, if it's particularly high, you should perform the RGB bypass mod, as the "new" consoles can be fixed up a little.

 

http://assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23545

 

Yeah I didn't have any rolling/bouncing/waving (mine was flickering and color issues) so I started a different thread. Seems like 2 completely different issues. But it seems after alot of digging, that's just how my high serial # system is. I tried it on my 42" lg plasma too which isn't as good as the Sharp and same thing.

 

The rainbow effect is like you said an RGB problem. I'm guessing you're in the US, here in the UK I get the rainbow effect if I plug my scart into a non RGB socket (there's usually only one on a TV here).

There are various RGB to component mods around the net that you might want to look into. There are even websites that will do it for you for a fee.

 

Really I couldn't find any. Can you send me links? I'd really consider doing that. Thanks man.

 

Also check out the other threads in the AES sub forum, this topic has been well discussed.

 

The rainbow effect (and dot crawl) shouldn't be visible in RGB, they're from poor (by today's standards) RGB encoding. The Neo's encoder is a lot less sophisticated than a more modern console such as Wii's (they have digital encoders with more recently discovered tricks, perfect timing and high precision filtering and transcoding).

Some artifacts are unavoidable though since games have high pixel rates which allow for detailed images to have some chroma frequency components. Noise on chroma from luma creates the rainbows, noise on luma from chroma creates the dot crawl.

The simplest solution would be to filter the two before mixing, but I'm not sure how much detail would be lost.

 

I'm thinking getting the Neo Geo to look good isn't even worth it when I can just play an emulated version...

I can even get the Neo Geo stick for wii so it still has the feel. I'll still buy games for collector purposes tho.

 

The composite is horrible but if you upgrade the video it makes a world of difference.

Here are some screen shots I did via composite and s-video. You can clearly see the huge difference S-video makes. No rainbow on his sleeves. The composite below is from a 3-6 revision which has the best Composite output of all the Neo revisions.

 

Forgot to ask, is the flickering happening when something is happening on screen or idle? Most flickering I've noticed is usually during graphic events when the CPU is pegged.

 

Flickering happens during both

 

I don't think that's the right way of thinking about it.
Because researching why you are having such problems is going to allow you to learn a lot.
It can even result on a whole new hobby (perhaps you're interested on tinkering with electronics ?) which never is a bad thing.

Just don't give up and run to emulation as a solution.
If you have the hardware, why not use it ? It's so much fun use the real thing instead of emulation.

I use a "consolized MVS" to play my NEO GEO games and I love it.

 

One thing that will help is to reduce your screen size. It might be partly responsible.

 

Thanks for posting this. I still run my Neo Geo AES using only RF. :110:

I will definitely look in to S-Video because the rainbow effect is annoying in some games.

 

If it happens on idle then your TV doesnt like the refresh rate from the Neo.

 

There's a little adjustment screw that you can adjust that's located on the upper left area of the motherboard. You can eliminate the flicker and scrolling lines in your energy bars completely by adjusting this. This adjustment Has to be set for composite, or for RGB separately. Good results for composite may look horrible for S-VHS/RGB, as the same goes for good RGB adjustment may be awful for composite.

 

Here's a pic:

 

I don't see how, it looks like it's just to get the crystal to oscillating. If it did fix the crosstalk, it'd be configured as a filter for luma or chroma. Since composite is taken directly from the encoder, that can't be the case. Also S-video/RGB shouldn't have crosstalk (crawl or rainbow) since the components never mix.

I also think some may be confusing "flickering" for a video artifact, the fact is some games toggle sprites (often a character's shadow) at 30Hz for a cheap transparency effect. True transparency can only be software-rendered via palette manipulation so it doesn't happen often.

 

Adjusting that screw gets rid of wavy lines across the entire screen and the flicker/rolling bars as easily seen in fighting game health bars. I've owned numerous AES consoles and had to adjust each one of them to eliminate these probs.

Wavy lines on the screen isn't an issue I've seen with RGB/S, but RGB/S does have the problem with the health bars.