VGA ought to look better on a HD set. It's providing a progressive signal (so no deinterlacing needs to be done by the set) and only a small amount of scaling should be necessary, depending on the resolution of the set. By comparison an S-Video signal needs to be deinterlaced, then scaled, and it's more likely to have laggy blurring/sharpening filters applied to try and make TV/film look "good" (making most older games look awful in the process).
Well I have my saturn hooked to my hdtv through s-video and it looks fantastic, same when I use to have an snes and hook it through s-video. Then again my tv has a very good scaler on it. Guess it depends on what system and hdtv it is. Anyone know if it's possible to do a component mod for a saturn like you can for a genesis?
Really, it's all about the scaler you have. I have a nice external one...and it's amazing. SNES never looked so good...despite being blown up so its about six feet wide and in progressive scan. Problem is that a lot of HDTV manufacturers skimp on em.
Scaling aside, the main problem with HDTVs is that they're typically set to make RF and composite signals film signals look somewhat passable, and this is usually through the use of horrible amounts of filtering. Add in the overbright "eye-catching on the shop floor" default colour/contrast configuration and you've got a recipe for ugliness. A decent scaler can help but I've yet to see an internal one that's acceptable for old games. Obviously a purpose-built external scaler for games is much more likely to be decent. Which do you have, out of interest? The Micomsoft ones seem to be the most popular choice.
The TV my parents brought in 1986 has a SCART, it still works and seems to have no problem with NTSC 3.58 or PAL60. Picture from the brochure here: http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-5/1013521/DSCF1651.jpg Gotta love European TV design from back in the day :thumbsup:
VGA can be forced on the DC with certain boot disc. It isn't 100% but I have only ran into two games that I couldn't get into VGA and that was Echelon Skies of Arcadia and Bangio. The rest can either be patched or forced into VGA as far as I can tell.
Indeed. The most important thing is really the comb filter. Most newer TVs have god-awful comb filters, since it's not really a priority any more. I had one of the high end 32" SD Trinitrons back in the states, and s-video almost looked as good as component! In comparison, the newer 50" HDTV I picked up did a much poorer job on composite and s-video. Color bleed and artifacts were much worse, and there was more visable noise in the picture. Size difference aside, the difference was clear. Really, anyone using old low-res consoles on modern TVs (that's serious about quality) NEEDS an external up-scaler such as the micomsoft units. Scalers and comb filters suck, so the best bet is to feed the tv something close to its native display. Too bad they are too expensive for most of us .
I'm nothing but chuffed with S-Video on my Samsung 19".. It's been a joy to play on, bearing in mind I sit a bed's length away Here are a couple of quick and dirty shots..
Any RGB outputting system can have RGB converted to Color Difference (aka Component Video) with little effort and just spending some money. You get a SCART RGB cable for the system and then a SCART RGB to Component Video transcoder device. By the way, it is possible to mod the N64 for RGB output.
Since everyone else is posting pictures, i'll throw mine in too :thumbsup:. These are some pictures from a PC Engine. The first pic is factory composite. The PCEs are known for having really nice composite, but of course it can only be so good. The second pic is a modded PCE using a circuit I build around the CXA1645 video encoder, commonly found in late model Genesis and Playstation consoles. Just more proof that S-Video can look amazing, on the right set. (Damn modern TVs :banghead. Composite: S-Video:
Thanks for sharing, grahf :thumbsup: Through S-Video the edges are cleaner for sure, especially noticeable around the detail of the lettering. MottZilla, I'm aware you can mod the N64 for RGB, but after basically massacring a Mega Drive 'doing' the region mod I'm not too confident in my abilities there ;-) . I've read about it, and that it can provide a 'weak' signal. Plenty happy with S-Video for my small amount of gaming!:thumbsup:
I don't like being a dick over shots that are already compromised in terms of quality, but both of these exhibit all the telltale signs of nasty upscaling. Blurring, bleeding, interpolation. Hard to tell what's the fault of the camera vs the screen, but it looks just like every other HDTV to me.
..really? I consider myself very fussy when it comes down to visuals (I don't even consider composite an option really) and, like I say, I'm chuffed with how it looks.. played through several games and been totally happy. Bear in mind I sit back from the screen, and from that distance, I'm very happy =) I'll take a couple at 7mp and link them for comparisons sake. I'm interested to know what you think :thumbsup: oh, and the TV is streteching the 4:3 image to 16:10.
I have one made by a company called Focus Enhancements. Not specifically made for gaming...It's original purpose was to be used with old high end analog projectors...which is what I use it for. The thing probably cost a few thousand dollars ten years ago...but I got it for 50 bucks...because...well...its old... It converts interlaced ntsc video to high resolution RGB in progressive. Will output anywhere from VGA to 1080. I know the XRGB series is popular for gamers...as I believe it has special settings for super low game system resolutions...but for my purposes, things generally look great...Set properly, all of my old game systems look non-goofy projected. I'm always surprised that serious gamers don't look into high end external scalers...the kind that start around $500 or so....and then go nuts, price wise. I know my scaler isn't awesome, but I can certainly appreciate how well it works compared to the one in my Dad's plasma screen. My neo geo looked like shit on it....but great on my projector. Whenever I'm done with school and find myself with more money, I'll be investing in a nice, high end scaler along with whatever new TV I get.
Diddy looks a little chubby, but it's hard to tell aspect ratio from the photos. I assume your set will let you adjust this anyway? Honestly I wouldn't have guessed it on the F-Zero shot, but then I don't know either game very well. Anyway, if you want to see what I'm talking about, look at the black/white blurring between the numbers in "1998" on the F-Zero image - this is exactly the kind of thing that crops up all the time and distracts me from the game on HDTV sets. My TV has a noise reduction setting which introduces similar artefacts, and I hate it.
For comparison sake, here are two screenshots of text from my N64. Composite S-Video And heres the link to the 7mp image of my screen for judgment.
Sorry for the Double Post...I expected somebody to say something about the way N64 looks...and I agree with you, Alchy, this is a case of bad upscaling... For the record though....I have yet to see a TV on which N64 Looks good upscaled. My scaler does some pretty nice stuff...but N64 just looks like shit on it. I think theres something about n64 games that just confuses scalers... I just ran a little test on my own system with Conker's bad fur day and then Mario Party. Looks like the devil...up close anyway...I know my issues are magnified by a huge screen...but something about N64... Edit: Damn. Looks like I Need an n64 S-video cable. Maybe it just outputs lousy composite...as everything else I have looks great through composite.
Blurring that minimal doesn't distract me, but I can see why it would. Up close (and in these shots) I see exactly what you mean, but sitting back from such a (relativly) small screen I really can't see it enough to have it stop me from enjoying my game. I used composite for a couple of days before my S-Video arrived and that was tolerable. For my needs, I find it just great, especially when I can't much afford to be extravagant right now Edit: And yeah, my TV will let me display 16:9, 16:10, 4:3, or 2 'Zoom Settings' which basically stretch 4:3 to widescreen width and lop offthe top and bottom whilst maintaining aspect ratio, allowing you to move it up and down.. I play my Wii at 16:9, all my 4:3 games I stretch to 16:10 as it really doesn't look that bad at all and gives me some extra screen usage. And I use the zoom option on TV (Analog RF *pukes*)
