Today I was wondering why no one makes and sells component cables for old consoles that output RGB. Wouldn't these be ideal to use in an age when CRT are a dead breed and LCD TVs are more common? An extra bonus would be that US TVs do not have RGB Scart cables but they DO have component. Does this make sense, or am I missing something really, really obvious? I am assuming that RGB on component* is the same RGB found on scart/rgb out on consoles. Same with the audio. *I am aware that component connection can handle progressive resolutions.
TV needs to support 240p over component RGB isnt component (signals are different) Sync is handled differently Thats off the top of my head. Though I know there are chips that will take RGB in and give component out - so making something would certainly be possible.
yup a cable with a chip inside which converts rgb to YPbPr can be done (as long as the transcoder chip gets its 5V from the av out port of the console) and be used as long as TV supports 240p over component as BadAd_84 said. though instead, you can buy a rgb scart to component encoder and buy rgb scart cables for consoles.
Biggest problem is as said above, modern HDTV's 42" and lower typically don't accept anything lower than 480i, so you need an upscaler
Oh so the signals aren't the same, got it. Which is the cleaner signal though, rgb on scart or component?
rgb is cleaner, being the internal video used by many consoles. In normal use most users would notice little to no effect.
As you mention, in theory RGB is cleaner than YPbPr video but not by much depending on the quality of the components used to convert the colorspace. Some 0,1% tolerance resistors and some good quality operationnal amplifiers are all you need. Of course the component quality must also be matched on the receiving side (TV). Provided that your PCB design is adequate to ensure high speed analog signal integrity, you could end up with a theorical result as clean as RGB. I put theorical because there is always a slight degree of attenuation and quality loss as in all electronic systems. Were it gets tricky is depending on the cable quality used to transmit the image. RGB video is far more influenced by electromagnetic interference than YPbPr. RGB signal is also spread on a bigger bandwidth than YPbPr meaning it has statistically more chance to get impacted by random interference. YPbPr is in it's core a partially differential transmission which has been proven to offer a slight tolerance to random noise. So to summarize, if you use RGB, buy high quality cables and you'll get the best of it. For YPbPr (component),you don't "have" to buy the best cable out there (especially if you're transmitting low res signals) but there are chances that on either end of the transmission, the manufacturer will not have used the best components to convert the signal. But as time go, there is more and more chances that this whole thing will not matter anymore. For the sake of simplicity, TV makers will probably end up converting every analog input to a digital signal to pass it along in a single DSP to display it. As HDMI becomes the only consumer standard for non retro gamers, it's less and less demanded that TV support Component, S-Video and even VGA. I've recently checked TVs to upgrade my setup and some of them didn't even have Component and/or VGA input!
What will happen once TV manufacturers drop analog connections completely in favour of HDMI? Will we all have to buy a FrameMeister?
Very few TV in North America can support RGB naively, you'd need to pick up specialty monitors like Sony PVM. For those in North America, Component is second best we can get now day, HDMI being the best but it's digital signal and not compatible with analog signal without converter. Check places like Goodwill and Craigslist, you can still get older CRT TV for older games. I bet in 10 years we'd be able to pick up a nice 20"-ish LCD TV with component for under $25, fully working. So let the companies try to screw us by making newer TV with only HDMI and RF support. They don't get a dollar from used market at all.
the main issue is not much which is better or what not. It's the lack of consumer TV that can handle 240p. Other than 8-bit era pascom monitors there weren't that many and nowadays with all fancy HDTV/UHDTV it'd be very challenging to find the consumer TV that will handle 240p
How many times has this exact question been asked? We should have a sticky thread devoted entirely to RGB.
Personally, there's no discernible difference between raw RGB (SCART or otherwise) and Component (YPbPr) converted from RGB. However, as others have said, many HDTV's nowadays don't like 240p over Component. Mine doesn't! However, if you have 27 or 32 inch CRT that takes component in, converting from RGB rather than using the old composite or S-Video cables is a huge improvement. If you want a clean image on a newer HDTV, like the one you see via emulator on PC, you have to spend a few hundred bucks on a quality video upscaler.
