So I was bored and looking around at things and I got to thinking about how my LCD does a horrifyingly crappy job of displaying composite video. It has major color bleeding or whatever you want to call it. And ofcourse our good old NES didn't output S-Video. Well considering my much cheaper TV makes NES look RGB monitor sharp I got to thinking there must be something I could get to take the composite video signal and encode that into something better since the LCD can't do a good enough job. So I looked for a Composite Video to S-Video converter. Obviously I'm aware people make retarded adapters that just take a S-Video signal and ruin it into Composite video, but I actually found something that "sounds" good but is awfully pricey. http://www.hometech.com/video/svconv.html#MC-CSVA1 It claims: Featuring Advanced CSC Chroma Separator Circuitry for the brightest, sharpest picture with exceptional color rendition. Cleanest separation of color frequencies. Virtually no "dot crawl" or distortion between color bands for the sharpest picture. Chrominance and luminance perfectly calibrated for the sharpest, most detailed picture -- no adjustments needed. So it sounds all very nice as the problem I have with both the Genesis and the NES are the fact that Composite video has horrible dot crawl and color bleeding (on the LCD). But with an entry price of 87$ (the cheapest I've found it) I'm not so sure it's worth it. Anyone here ever seen anything like this? I don't pretend to be an expert but the idea behind this certainly makes sense to me. Obviously it doesn't really matter to me how, but I really want to get good quality video from the NES and Genesis without some insane cost. For the Genesis I've looked into S-Video output mods (too pricey, I've been quoted it'd cost 99$ not including shipping the unit back and forth), XMD-2 or XMD-3 RGB/S converter boxes seem to cost well over 100 bucks easy and ofcourse can't help the NES issue. So has anyone found out anything useful for these problems other than using an old TV? If all of the above makes no sense, it's probably because I'm very tired and bored.
You could A) use emulation. An Xbox with a mod can spit out component or S-video, 480p+, with filters so it looks better than the original. A PC can do the same, plus DVI\VGA out if you have an HDTV, plus you can mod original pads to work on PCs for that authentic feel, or even build a PC inside an NES case (google it). or B) see if you can mod a pure svideo port on the back. I know it can be done on the Genesis if you're willing to solder it, no idea on the NES.
id agree with opethfan, a modded xbox is the way to go, much as i love my older systems they just look awful on my lcd panel, so a modded xbox with components, and i happily play nes, snes, sms, gg, gba, amiga, atari, n64 etc in glorious 480p (or 720 if the emu supports it) and if you want that old school look, just flick the scanline option on!
LCD monitors don't really do Composite video well, it's mainly due to two reasons, 1) is because they put in crappy comb filters into the TVs to seperate the chromance and luminance signals from the composite video signal. Mainly as they expect you to use S-Video or better, also the comb filters are more geared towards TV broadcasting or video signals so they seem better. 2) Is because the resolution of the screen is such that the monitor has to fudge in the gaps, again not as noticable with broadcast signals but consoles look awful. CRTs because they blur the images slightly do make this less noticable but LCDs take it and make it 10 times worse. The S-Video covertor converter you mention sounds like it has a decent comb filter and probably a noise filter too but with consoles they don't do that great and will probably give you a slightly better signal and you'll probably get no to little dot crawl but the picture is still going to look crap. Dot crawl is when the luminace and chromance signals are operating near the same frequencies and they start to cross talk (ie interfere with each other). For example yellow text on a blue or cyan background will have a slight checked pattern running around it. NTSC is much worse then PAL because it calculates green where as PAL has a colour correction signal to improve it (one reason why NTSC TVs have that lovely Tint control...). Solutions? But a Sharp Famicom Titler as that does have S-Video output and use a convertor to play US games.
Converting composite to s-video and then getting s-video converted by the TV's scaler is going to be just as much of a mess, if not more. Rather than that, buy a composite to HD scaler (google "hd scaler). You can pay as much as you like for them, from £60-£2000 and probably a lot more if you looked in the right niche.
Hori sell a upscaler for consoles that looks pretty good. I used to use one for my Mega Drive on the TFT monitor. The colours were a bit bright but you can adjust them along with tint, contrast and brightnes via the box's on-screen menu. The picture wasn't as good as a MD running via a XRGB box on a regular TV (Which I now use) but it was a hell of a lot better than the pis poor composite out you get from a Mega Drive on ANY TV. No dot crawl at all but there was a little bleeding on the red colour. Check out Google for Hori Upscaler. They have a newer model out now than the one I have so it may be improved. Yakumo
For the record...the way to get NES to output RGB/S-Video is to change out the PPU to one from a playchoice...or one from certain Vs. Units. Really not a great idea in my opinion....considering you get the same thing with a famicom titler.
Yes but the Playchoice PPU doesn't have the correct palette so the games do look rather odd, the SFT has a correct palette PPU and can be converted to RGB if you wanted too.
Very interesting to hear I was atleast partly correct. As for emulation, I already have a Xbox, the point was getting a good way to run the original hardware. It seems like I basically would need to spend a hell of alot of money on a Famicom Titler (there was one for over 500 on ebay) for S-Video and then get the Genesis S-Video modded (not near as costly as the NES). Far too much trouble than using my old CRT atleast for the NES. Such a shame though needing to have 2 TVs hooked up. =( I should write letters to Nintendo and Sega and complain about the lack of S-Video on the NES and Genesis and demand they start producing new units with S-Video. It seems though I'll probably just use emulation and the LCD or the CRT. Far more economical.
A good way? Do what all true retro gamers do - keep your CRT TV!!!! Seriously, it is the best way. Yakumo, why didn't you use RGB for the MD? You have that funny RGB thing like SCART in Japan, right? Or even S-Video!
Meag Drive only had 21 pin RGB cables but Japanese TVs after the early 90's did away with 21 RGB, the idiots ! So all we were stuck with is piss poor composite or S-Video, the later of which the Meag Drive doesn't have a cable for That's why Micomsoft brought out the X-MD RGB boxes. they would take the RGB from the MD then allow you to out put it via 15 Pin RGB for old monitors or S-Video. Yakumo
