Isn't it just horribly annoying how we are supposed to be going forward with technology but at the same time it's like cutting the tail end off? Has anyone else been annoyed by getting a nice new TV, perhaps a LCD for High Def on their Xbox 360, and then plugging in older consoles like NES and MegaDrive to find out it looks so much worse than the old TV you used to use? Wouldn't you think that you buy a new shiney TV everything would look shiney but oh no, your composite video that looked great from your NES or MegaDrive/Genesis now looks like a puddle of puke. I realize the Genesis could be improved by taking that RGB signal and using that either by converting it or using it directly though that's a pain in the ass. But the NES, is there anything you can do for the poor NES? Last thing I remember hearing was all the NES systems (not the arcade ones) generate only composite video and not RGB so you can't even get one to output something cleaner like S-Video. Seems awfully annoying that to really play NES games and some other older stuff I'm better off using some old CRT Tube TV. Esspecially since I got the LCD partially to save space. I could live with not being able to use the lightguns on the LCD, but the crappyness of composite video is just so bad. I realize I could just emulate the NES, SNES, and Genesis on my Xbox and output 480p, but you know how that's just not the same feeling. Anyway, I just had to rant about how annoying it is that composite video looks so shitty and that nintendo never seemed to make a NES console that could output better video. Oh yes and to give you an idea of how bad the picture looks, in Ninja Gaiden there are bars for your life that are a solid pink color rectangle. Well on my LCD, they aren't one flat color, you can see like a constant signal noise going through them. That's pretty annoying when a flat color box doesn't look right.
It makes me a little more reassured by reading posts like this. Glad to see that some people still acare. I tried that whole LCD thing for awhile, but it only lasted as long as it could take to find a nice CRT. If you're going to play old school games directly on the console, you need a nice CRT. Sony's WEGA CRT line (Japanese model only) comes with AV-Multi, which is RGB. There's a guy that sells AV-Multi to 21-pin RGB cables, so you can play all your consoles in RGB, assuming they support it. I've also got an Arcade VGA card hooked up to it. MAME has never looked better. Just about all the other major emulators as well. Can't mode your Turbo Duo? Just buy Magic Engine. Looks 10-fold better than the console outputting S-Video.
I agree with you motzilla. I've played older systems on an hd tv and my god they look like pure shit. Pixilated as hell and you can sometimes barely make out whats on screen. Forget about even playing 64 on an hd tv, most of what you will see is very blurry text and screen noise. I guess I better keep my wega when I get my own hd screen.
We in Europe (and those in the Far East), have known since the early 90s that RGB is the best signal for console gaming... well of that era, at least. Composite is crap! Well done for realising that! And yeah, LCDs are designed for HDMI, not composite or anything oldschool, really. Of course, the lightgun issue is the biggie! Still, you do indeed get jaggies with composhite leads! NES, SNES and N64 didn't have RGB output on PAL models. We're stuck with composite, or S-Video if we're lucky, which is marginally better.
technically no n64 offered RGB natively. the SNES did however, on select models (NTSC only was it?). to be honest though, composhite or not, getting the damn image on the TV was good enough. I used to play my n64 on RF, not even composite. Still had a blast playing all the games and it's one of my favourite eras. On a funny note, composite seemed royalty compared to my usual RF crap. Of course, now i m all VGA-smug
The normal SuperFamicom allowed for RGB out, but the SFC Junior does not (at all). The N64 supports it in the shape of a hardware MOD (similar to a PC-Engine).
If you buy an inexpensive HDTV then your old stuff will look like shit. This is what happens when you become a cheap arse. It's all about the TV's built in scalier. Samsung TVs (Which seem really popular in the west) are shit for older stuff as are 90% of the western brands. The only TVs I've seen recently that look any good with older stuff (CRT RGB is still better mind you) are the Sharp Aquos range and Panasonic's Viera series. I also heard that Pioneer have very good scaliers in their TVs. Yakumo
How's a scaler going to fix Composite video looking crappy? Other than the NES, the other systems are alright since RGB or atleast S-Video can be obtained from them. I wish I'd been able to get a LCD with SCART RGB but I'll settle for S-Video. For classic gaming though it seems the best solution is a good SDTV so far. Unless you know of a magical LCD that has none of these problems. Still I think I might be finding a place to put my old 19" CRT to hook my NES up to.
I saw an RGB Famicom on Yahoo Japan one time. It went for over 40,000 yen. I'm sorry, but this is simply not true. The best scaler in the world is still scaling something that wasn't meant to be scaled. It will look like shit, regardless of the connection or TV. To understand this, you have to know a bit about the hardware. The XB, XB360, and GC don't offer the original modes to begin w/, so I'll only reference the PS2. This will get long, but I think is worth the read. If you play 15khz games on a 31khz only monitor or TV, it will look like a gigantic turd. Many 'classic' games today reprinted for the PS2 and whatnot put out an interlaced signal. Why? B/c it looks better on 31khz displays, which the industry is moving towards. This is b/c the PS2 will scale better than any TV. The irony is, for those of us that have proper CRT's (RGB set aside) the interlaced visuals look noticeably worse. To boot, they throw on a "fuzzying" filter as well to alleviate the jaggedness when running old school on new hardware. TEST ONE: 240p versus 480i on a 31khz display A good way to test this is to try something in true low-res mode (240p) and something in fake high-res (480i) on an LCD. Dodonpachi DOJ or ESPGaluda (either in TATE mode) versus any older 2D game outputting an interlaced signal. Mushihime-sama, Ibara, Dragon Blaze, any Taito Memories, or Metal Slug 3 & 4 just to name a few. Play this on an LCD/Plasma screen. While neither will look great, the 240p will look way worse than the interlaced signal on the high dollar screen. I tested this on an Aquos, FYI. TEST TWO: 240p versus 480i on a 15khz display Now to see the differences of these modes in the same game, the best way is to buy some of the latest Sega Ages 2500 packages. The Gunstar Heroes one is a great purchase anyway, for a whopping $20 or so. It comes with 4 different modes. 480p, 480p w/ fake scanlines, 480i, and finally 240p... the latter being the games "original" resolution. There is another setting called "filtering". Most games which were originally 240p are now being reprinted and outputting 480i w/ a filter thrown over it (as if interlacing it wasn't bad enough). Play w/ these settings. Get an old CRT, even w/ a composite connection. Turn filtering on in 480i. Then turn it off and put it in 240p. My 10-day old son can tell the difference. If you also have a nice flat screen, hook it up and play with them. The closest you will get to the original is 480p w/ fake scanlines. It is low-res emulation (and is in most emulators, as most know), but is leaps and bounds over anything else any 31khz monitor can offer. Nobody seems to put this in their games though. I'm not sure what's worse: The fact that developers don't care to spend 8 minutes putting the original mode in, or that nobody seems to notice. This is generally the basis of my rant against the direction the gaming world has gone (when I'm not complaining about the content & style of the games in the first place). Johnny gameplayer now makes up the highest spending demograph of the market. He's most likely young, and will take a crappy, low-polycount 3D game over a very detailed bitmap-based game (game content set aside for another thread). The execs only give a shit about keeping the dough in, so programmers are not paid to care about the fans that are tired of this gray area between standard def and high def fucking up the games they love. On that note, Sony has now completely screwed up emulation of all 15khz PS/PS2 games on the PS3 as the system does not support 240p output. It can now be clumped together w/ the aforementioned systems which cannot output true low-res signals (Both Xboxes & the GC) as the worst consoles to play your classic games on if you care about how they were originally supposed to look. It is simply impossible to do so. This is why all forms of XBL to me are a complete waste of time. I can play them in MAME on a low-res monitor and have them look better... way better. The biggest letdown of a system in this field is the DC. It is capable of low-res output, but most games do not support it. In fact I think of all the 2D games, less than 10 (maybe even 5) are in their original display mode. This article written by Recap is pretty informative. This thread at gamengai also discusses which 2D PS2 games are in their true output modes. *I hear the Wii can output 240p, but does not support RGB. Dipshits.
Well I just got my old 19" CRT out of my closet, moved things around and set it next to my LCD, and hooked up the NES. How sad that this 80$ TV has better looking Composite than my 400 something dollar LCD monitor. Sad... just sad. But the good news is I can enjoy my NES again without appauling video.
Yea, the only way i'm playing any of those classic games is on my Wii at 480p using component or my 360 at 720p also using component. I don't mind seeing the pixels, I just want the clean image w/o the crappy RF/composite articfacts!
The thing is that even with the Xbox and emulators running at 480p, it looks good, but it's still an emulator, which makes a large amount of the experience disappear. Same thing with newer generation ports. You can't beat the original hardware which now includes a specialty item of a regular SDTV. Who knows, maybe down the line SDTV CRTs will be collector's items. I hope not though.
Well, "looks good" is definitely a personal choice. I believe some of the Xbox emulators have nice low-res emulation (fake scalines) which help alleviate the problem assuming you're playing on a progressive display. In 480i? Forget it. Well, most of the official re-releases we see (Taito Memories, for example) are indeed, emulation... you're just playing an official emulator and on some type of official hardware, even if it's not the original. The problem w/ emulation is that most people lack the proper hardware, or don't even know it exists. The Ultimarc Arcade VGA Card is a Godsend. Hook this up to a 15khz monitor and be in low-res heaven. MAME, Magic Engine (albeit not the latest version), ZSNES, KGENs (I believe it's called) all support 15khz modes. Other than some emulation issues (most of the above have fantastic emulation though) the display is spot on. I would have anyone take the pepsi challenge to spot out the differences between them. Actually I said it. I assumed the Wii would not support 240p, but a user at shmups & my forum told me otherwise. When I say no RGB support, I mean "no analogue RGB" support (which is what we're talking about here). That might be on NTSC & NTSC-J units only. Perhaps some of you kids in the UK can tell us if there's a Wii scart cable.
Is that official? I'd have to look through the thread at gamengai. It might be Europe which has an RGB cable. Still... means there might be some homebrew 21-pin RGB cables for those w/ Japanese monitors (and of course the other various flavors as well). Basically changes the whole idea of Virtual Console.
I had thought about this exact problem last year when i got a new TV. I decided to go with a 32 inch CRT TV. Its not high def, only 480i/p but it has componet, composit, s-video, and digital ports. So its good enough for the 360 and stuff, but I get AWSOME picture on my old consoles to ^^. I paide 400 for it at Wal-Mart so I got a steal.
Well I'm doomed to two TVs because I must have my 360 hooked up via VGA to get the highest possible resolution out of it. The only things about my CRT I don't like are that it is composite only, no svideo, no component, and its big and heavy. ;p Otherwise its nice. But like I said, must have my high def 360. I realize now though that I could save space if I just got like a VGA switch box and had my 360 hooked up at my PC's monitor. But oh well. The strange setup of monitors will be fun... babu, most if not all Lightguns won't work on anything but CRTs, and they won't work on higher scan rate CRT TVs (like 100hz refresh rates) either I believe. So if you have a CRT that actually can do 480i (in reality and not just upscaling/displaying it), you'll be ok. Basically you most keep a nice SDTV around for that.
