Howdy people, I've been wondering this for a little while now... Since SCART is a European standard with little to no implementation in the States, what do you use instead to hook up your consoles and DVD Players? What is the highest standard? I guess this is the one positive aspect to gaming in Europe - RGB SCART gaming is pure bliss, not a single blemish on the screen and razor sharp. We link our DVD players through SCART too, (by standard) and you can also set these to RGB. Every TV since, say, 95/96 has supported RGB SCART.. I even believe the Sega Saturn MK1 came with a RGB SCART as standard (which I think pissed some people off since those with older TVs had to buy a seperate RF modulator). So, without RGB SCART, what did/do you use?
The best NTSC users have (Japan is the same as the US) is S-Video but the problem here is that on new HD TV sets S-Video looks worse than composite for some crazy reason or at least it does on game consoles from the 90's. My baby son's cheap ass DVD player is connected to the TV via S-Video. Colours looked washed out and the image isn't as sharp as Scart RGB. My HD DVD player is connected to the TV via D-4 (Japanese component type socket) for up to 1080i image while the Wii is via Component just like on a HD TV in the UK. So basically the bottom line is that if you can't get a true RGB compatible TV you're best with S-Video or composite depending on the console for older consoles and component for anything that can output a HD image. Here's a quick guide to what looks best on my TV (of course other TV makers may give different results. I have a CRT Victor (JVC) HD set ) Famicom - Composite Master System - Composite Mega Drive - Composite (S-Video looks god awful for some reason) Wondermega - Composite Saturn - S-Video Dreamcast - S-video although I use VGA mostly) Neo Geo - Composite Super Famicom - S-Video although not really that much better than composite to be honest Wii - Component But what you really should do is buy yourself an up-scaler box such as the XRGB series. This is what I use to get RGB from my Mega Drive, SFC, Saturn and Dreamcast (When not using VGA) on my TV. Yakumo
Great info.. it seems odd to not use SCART for DVDs; it seems the natural method for giving DVDs true quality.. although thats probably just because that's all I've ever known :thumbsup: I bought an NTSC N64 off eBay (When I'm full-time again I want to get an NTSC Saturn, SNES and Genesis..) and I use a third party S-Video lead for it, with my 19" HDTV.. There is a notable benefit over composite, and its good enough to not make me strive to try a RGB mod I tried my Dreamcast on this same TV with composite and it looked shocking- on MSR the night stages were simply unplayable.. so in the future I need to look towards a VGA box for that..
Does the VGA output on the Dreamcast make a huge difference compared to S-Video? I realize it will be better, but does it make a HUGE difference? My HDTV does not have a VGA port - only a DVI - and I don't want to pay the money to convert the VGA if it is not worth the cash. I wish we would have had RGB SCART as a standard, but I'm sure a lot of the major studios and publishing companies had a lot to do with holding us back in the dark ages until HDMI came out.
RGB SCART is truly beautiful.. like I say, I think it's the only good part of gaming in Europe! As for VGA vs S-Video.. You could test by outputting your laptop to your HDTV by S-Video and then by VGA. In the name of science I'm typing now using my HDTV through S Video.. it's just less distinct, totally usable.
S-Video is very blurry compared to DVI - so I guess that should answer my question. Only certain games take advantage of the added VGA resolution though right?
I've never really seen much difference between VGA and DVI in all honesty - my sisters/ex girlf/dads screens are all 17"+ through VGA leads and they're all pixel-perfect. Never had a direct comparison.. As far as I can gather, only certain games support the VGA box- those that don't will not output through it, forcing you to use another method- though the best games nearly always support it. And I was also of the belief that the Dreamcast's output was 640x480. By using a VGA lead you are getting a much better quality signal transfer and progressive scan. You don't gain any extra resolution.. You would need these ideas verified by someone with a VGA box, though!
It depends on the console what you can use. PS2, GC, and Xbox all suppotred Component Video which is comparable to RGB and better if you can use 480P. For older consoles S-Video tends to be best but the ones that output RGB can be transcoded to Component Video and hooked up that way if needed. Also some of us just buy a professional RGB Monitor and make our own adapter to use Euro SCART RGB cables. I do agree that RGB makes a big difference on systems that have it. But that's more Composite Video sucking terribly and S-Video only being average. I don't think you'll find anyone that will say they are happy we didn't get RGB SCART standard here. It really would have been nice.
SCART isn't a video standard, it typically carries composite/RGB, and can carry S-Video. USA didn't "have" RGB, anyway, in terms of official cables for the vast majority of consoles. PAL/NTSC are colour encoding schemes, which have no bearing on RGB. They have different resolutions and refresh rates but most recent consoles (Dreamcast and after) can accommodate both for RGB, and most European sets are happy with this as well.
I use a scart connector for all my consoles and I am in the US. I just use a scart to component video converter box. Looks outstanding!!
As Mottzilla suggested, we just use Component for everything that is reasonably new. I find Yakumo's DVD situation to be odd, as I don't think I've ever seen a DVD player without Component video on it. But everything I use is encoded into progressive RGB as RGB is all my projector takes for high resolution.
Ah, I should have wrote that better. The cheap ass DVD player does have component out but I use S-Video because my Wii and HD DVD player are using the TVs only two HD Composite inputs. It's only my baby sons DVDs that get played on the cheap player anyway so it doesn't really matter. @Midxwinter - Dreamcast through VGA looks far better than even RGB! you get a true 480x640p image. I remember first playing Pahnatsy Star Online through VGA and noticing loads of graphical details that I had just never seen before. There is a down side though, quite a few PAL games don't support VGA (about 90% of Japanese games do) and low resolution 2D fights tend to look a bit blocky. Mind you, that's only the fisr 2D fighters. Stuff from Guilty Gear onwards looks fantastic. Capcom Vs SNK ect all look great through VGA. Yakumo
DC on VGA is still RGB, just at higher res than "standard" TV RGB... RGB looks as good as your PC monitor, but with scanlines in case of 240/288p stuff and good TVs Small example of RGB : (Sorry for the huge pic, but people just have to see it )
Do you know if VGA was supported by most of the American released games since America and Japan are quite similar normally?
Midwinter.. http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2006/05/dreamcast-vga-cable-compatibility-list.html http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/dreamcast/file/916412/36035 The GameFAQs one has different lists for PAL/NTSC.
I can't say for US only titles but anything that came from Japan the had VGA support over here will also have it on the US version. It was removed from PAL games due to timing issues or something. My Japanese and US Skies of Arcadia both work fine in VGA but the PAL version doesn't. Yakumo
I use vga on my hdtv with dreamcast, and it looks damn good. Highly recommend if you have an hd tv. Though downer is somegames don't support it (i.e. bangai-o). Though to be honest n64 looks like shit on a hdtv, and the bigger the screen, the more blurry the image and text is, even on s-video.
The Dreamcast games that have VGA mode disabled are generaly arcade ports that weren't originally runnin at 640x480 resolution. This included a lot of Capcom and SNK fighting games, and the theory is that those companies didn't want their games to look like old, badly-scaled technology.
