To clarify a small point, for those who are all tl;dr: RGB 60Hz over SCART will work on most 90s onwards PAL TVs and monitors in full colour. Composite NTSC on a PAL TV or monitor often will not work - you'll get a black-and-white picture.
The alternative is the Famicom Titler which is huge, heavy, expensive, and was available in Japan only. If people were having to sacrifice a decent arcade board for their NES RGB maybe I'd care, but PlayChoice/VS boards and games? As a system it's little more than a NES with a timer, there's nothing interesting about them and there's no shortage anyway. RGsB (or RGB SoG, Sync on Green) is pretty common for >15.6kHz RGB signals, Sony CRT monitors/TVs in particular are very likely to support it.
I never understood why you would do a RGB mod on NES. Atleast on my Monitor it looks very good as it is. Where as with RGB all the colors will be off, you may have color emphasis issues, etc. Plus games like Blaster Master if I recall were drawn to look better in NTSC and if you see them in RGB it won't look as good.
Both Japan and America are in the northern hemisphere so they would not require anything. To be honest, most TVs since the 80s have decent degaussing coils so even going from the UK to Australia is not really an issue and even if it is a $10 degaussing wand would fix it.
Smells like troll but this cannot be reiterated enough: You're a grade A idiot. Some games do rely on the blurring of composite for some effects and quality (as counter-intuitive as that sounds). Something about the fact the N64 was designed for composite means that emulation looks poor. I don't recall where I read that but given every N64 emulator pretty much has every menu "pop" I wouldn't be surprised. But that also might be attributable to the HLE aspect of most emulators.
This exact discussion was had here very recently, but anyway... What I can't understand is why people think composite is "fine" on one console but make such a fuss of RGB on all the others. Personally, as far as the NES goes I'd rather have a screwy colour palette than all the myriad other issues that composite brings. I don't know where you heard that, it's certainly not that clear cut. To reiterate what the others above have said re: "composite blurring", what you may be referring to are graphics where artists have used dithering techniques (alternating pixels in a row which blur into "new colours", or to smooth/blur graphics around them, in NTSC). This technique is used in many SNES and Megadrive games but you don't hear anyone saying either of those platforms look better in NTSC - the overall image quality will always be much higher through RGB. I don't know what the N64 does to its image but something weird definitely takes place. I've heard people talk about some kind of full-screen blurring but I've never got a definitive answer.
I agree that it's a shame to sacrifice a board, although you often find dead boards that probably have a good decoder. Alchy, as you know, I was talking about RGB over SCART, not the computer variants. Yes, of course there's sync on green, but it ain't going into a 1084! There are DEFINITELY models of the Commodore that don't do 60Hz. I'm not using the wrong cables and I have the service manuals somewhere. Are you sure you have the 1085 not the 1084? I seem to recall the 1085 being funny with 60Hz - it was a cheaper version of the 1084. Good point on Japan! Forgot it was so high up heh. No, it's more than just degaussing - and the cheap wands probably wouldn't do the job, anyway (my friend had a serious issue on his arcade monitor and the crappy wand he bought did nothing - I had to bring my oldschool disc round!) In fact, some larger televisions have an alignment switch. You may well also have to adjust the whole setup of the monitor, which isn't recommended if you don't know what you're doing! You'll see colour purity issues and probably convergence issues. It'll be worse the nearer to the pole you are. As said, it's pretty much irrelevant in the same hemisphere, though ;-) Hmm, where was the NES RGB discussion? I can't seem to find it.
I don’t agree. Just look to the arcade for proof. The limit of mosaic transparencies is seen in RGB purity many times in the past. All system 16, model1, model2, ST-V, playchoice 10 and many more. The use of composite video at home was just a cost issue almost nobody had a RGB display. RGB was mainly for professional equipment, arcades, tv studios, media departments... Almost all video game magazines used RGB base screen shots, and printed manuals and video game boxes even for the NES. composite or RF video did not help with the video on any system I had. I could still see the mosaic transparencies. No game tricked my eye to make me think there was true transparencies and or more colors had been used. Don't even get me started on pixel crawl the main reason I got in to RGB modding! Maybe it’s a cures my eyes and ears crave higher fidelity with video and sound.... I love my set up and I'll never go back.
I felt these screenshot comparisons were interesting... http://www.disgruntleddesigner.com/chrisc/gotRGB/rgb_compare.html Suffice to say, even if some games were designed to take advantage of the problems that are inherent to Composite, I think I'll stick with RGB whenever possible...
Hmm. What's with the odd font/sizing? I think he meant SPECIFICALLY for the NES. Yes, some NES games did use composite blurring. Furthermore, as calpis said in the other thread, there's an effect that's not covered AT ALL by the RGB PPU, and the colours are off.
Could've sworn I posted this yesterday: http://retro-sanctuary.com/comparisons - differing.html So yeah, like Druid II says, it's all down to taste. I don't know why anyone does this, it's just distracting. I'd disable it, given the chance.
Read the topic once more. This post was about what people do for RGB in the states, I even post my setup pics. Then you have people crying RGB is not the way to go for some reason or another.. I had a bunch of valid points about RGB and then you focus on my font? Nuff said carry on....
No, the topic was about whether it's possible to get RGB monitors in the States. And noone's saying RGB isn't the way to go - people are saying that the RGB mod for the NES specifically isn't proper RGB. Of course, I wouldn't expect someone who likes to convert their RGB to other formats and have a telephone exchange under their television to understand this point ;-) As for the font, you didn't do it earlier in this conversation, or anywhere else on the forum. Why start now?
Which reminds me: Calpis, if you read this, the proper-RGB PPU you've created for your SoC design, is there any way of turning that into a kit that could be used on a normal NES? I wonder if there'd be any commercial interest in such a kit.
Yeah I think the more pressing matter is sheer rarity of analog RGB displays in the states. As RGB has such immense prevalence in Europe, people there understandably find it so difficult to grasp.
If someone made a drop-in PPU replacement for NES that output RGB and was 100% accurate, I'd take it. But the Arcade PPUs that output RGB as it has been stated don't handle color emph correctly and don't have accurate colors. Some are just plain wrong as I recall. Also just again, for me on my Sony PVM the NES looks very sharp and nice. There is not the horribly noticeable composite defects that you would see with other systems or on other displays. While I'm sure RGB would look even more sharp I guess, the cost/benefit ratio isn't there and the extra problems by currently available solutions are a big drawback to me.
