In the red square you can see the bottom of the A blurring the black on the bottom of the H, and on the top of the H the red is bleeding into the black on the right edge of the letter. In the green square the pink of the M is showing classic signs of interpolation (in fact, the whole letter does), rounded corners where it should be square and so forth. Is this nitpicking? Yes, obviously, in this case it is. But it also has an effect on the game, especially when things start moving - deinterlacing will kick in, and the result is almost always ugly on internal scalers. Combine this with inherent the lag from digital processing in general and you've got a fairly nasty situation. To be fair, that S-Video doesn't actually look that bad, I've certainly seen worse - but I wouldn't put up with it myself. I know Lyris browses here sometimes, and he's much more of an expert on these issues than I'll ever be, so if he felt like piping up on the subject then I think we'd all be better off for it. I have yet to see a composite signal that looked nice on anything, at least in comparison to RGB, or even S-Video. Composite on a HD set is horrific, anyway.
Thanks for the insight. I can see what you mean for sure, but as said, I don't notice it sitting away from it. As for deinterlacing, do you mean the rather funky effect of sharp edges on moving objects becoming 'spiky', as if every other line is out of place? If so, strangely, I really haven't noticed this on the N64 (perhaps because its through SVideo and a lower res, so blurrier when scaled), but I have noticed it on the Gamecube through my Wii. Cursed PAL systems only play GC games at 480i, and I (if looking for it) can see this effect, especially in games with razor sharp edges like Four Swords. This is through component. If my screen was bigger, I imagine in the 30"s, these effects would start to piss me off.. In a way I wish you could still commercially buy CRTs! Our living room Toshiba is a CRT and it produces totally lush images with vibrant colours and no bleed. It's the same size as my mates Daewoo, and the Daewoo has colour bleed so bad I actually vomit. In Smash Bros Melee, you know the icons for lives (the face of the character)? Well, the whole icon actually changes tint depending on it's surrounding! That TV is dreadful for gaming..
Yeah. For the N64 it won't be so noticeable, since most games won't be running in 480i, but the set will still be deinterlacing the signal (since the signal is blanking every other line), and scaling. I think quite a few PAL games support progressive. You'd need to hold down B at boot, as I recall. Is he running his games on composite/RF? Suggest he picks up an S-Video or RGB cable (EDIT: you're in England, he needs an RGB SCART cable). Or just buy one for him. A lot of Daewoo CRTs are cheap and shit, though, so it may not make a difference.
Nah, no PAL Cube games have Progressive. I was quite bitter about this for a while and thought about collecting NTSC Cube games rather than PAL.. but heck its not worth the arseache. Holding B on boot just enables 60hz mode. I think MP2 might have progressive scan but only in 50hz mode or something. I'd rather have 60hz full speed over progressive scan. My comparison is between the Gamecube running through composite on both TVs. Our lovely Tosh is refined, sharp, bold, crisp.. his Daewoo is flat, weak, has colour bleed and just looks diabolical. He doesn't give a rats arse what his games look like though, he'd play on a 5" B/W tv with mono sound from a tinny 1950s speaker..
At Home, I use my Panasonic Projector for my gaming needs, from NES/Famicom to X360, and Super NES with S-Video never looked so great. Saddly, my PAL S-Video is black and white. And Composite looks really bad, but it does this on all non-CRTs, if I'm not mistaken. At Work, we have a huge ass old Grundig CRT, even does Progressive over VGA (640x480@60), was a hassle to get Vista in this mode. But the Video is pure bliss. I totally need this baby at home for some old school gaming and Laserdiscs. We even have a NES hooked up there, with composite leads, looks gorgeous. I once tried my Famicom with FDS too.. I want. Work TV There is just one big and heavy downside. And it really depends on the upscaler / comp-filter used for S-Video / Composite quality against RGB or YUV. Now for my equipment, Projector and TV Card, S-Video looks great. Crisp and Clear. On the other hand, is it true that RGB also does not look good on most HDTV Sets. RGB-Scart that is.
Fair shout. I never had the set to run progressive scan on my Cube when it was in use anyway, so I wouldn't know. Mine was chipped for imports and I was sure there was a way... probably just running NTSC games. Honestly, buy an RGB SCART cable. You won't regret it. In fact, if you buy it and you genuinely don't see a difference, I'll paypal you the cost of the cable. You can obviously tell the difference between a shit video signal and a good one, so I'm confident you'll notice the benefits. RGB at 480i will look almost as nasty as S-Video when upscaled/filtered/whatever - the problems aren't solely with the signal fidelity, in fact it's mostly the set once you get to S-Video and better.
With my original Cube I had a RGB SCART. I had a RGB SCART for my Dreamcast and I have one for my Mega Drive and Saturn also. It's pure bliss, perfection for any retro console. For our general Smash Brothers needs composite is fine, I was just making comparison for comparisons sake- our lovely Tosh doesnt take component (I think its rare for CRTs to do so over here, I've never seen one that does) so I just use the composite, it looks pretty damn lovely.. Only occasionally does the Wii get used downstairs so its not worth the bother investing when it's usually through component in my room. RGB SCART from my Saturn looks totally LUSH on my HDTV. I'll grab some screens another day but it smacked me as looking pixel perfect. My MD bands on my HDTV through RGB SCART (playable but annoying.. pic here and here, you can see how damn sharp it is..) don't know why, but it looks perfect on CRT.
Composite does not look lovely. Not ever. Tsk! Also, there are plenty of CRTs that take component. There are a few sets (literally two or three) that will even accept component over SCART, but they aren't worth mentioning really. The chances of it being pixel-perfect are zero. The chances of it being decent-looking are close to zero, but I'd still be interested to see how your set replicates scanlines. My suspicion is that it won't. And my suspicions are proven correct. Scanlines should be present, and they aren't; bad deinterlacing. You might as well be playing it on an emulator.
Dick mode is engaged whenever I play these older games, it's true. I won't play older consoles on anything other than a CRT with RGB, at least not without moaning about it a lot. I have the luxury of being able to play them at their best, though, and I value that a lot. That said, I run a setup that'd probably make most hi-def gamers cringe. My set manages 848x480 over VGA on my 360. It's passable for me, but I'm aware that while I pass highly critical judgements over older gaming rigs, I'm probably being a massive hypocrite. My one true fear is that some day I'll have to find room for both a decent hi-def set and a nice SD CRT. I don't think I'll ever be satisfied without both.
Same with me, and probably a lot of people, but unfortunatly an HDTV set is what I have. I would rather play the games then not play them and I don't have the room. Sucks but it's true. There needs to be some magic TV for everything, seriously. At least my HDTV outputs stuff in a playable form. Saturn and Dreamcast look alright, especially DC over VGA, everything else looks pretty ugly. At least I can play 360 with badass image quality though, and Wii with okay image quality. Thankful for that since I actually play 360 more then anything since I got one. My old CRT was a crappy 19" with composite that sparked out one day so I nabbed a 27" HDTV for a good price. Wish I could use this magical RGB I always hear about though, lol.
I guess it's all about where the priorities lie. My gamerscore is something around the 3k mark, which tells you how much 360 I've played over the last year and a half. By contrast, I play Umihara Kawase on SNES daily, and my PS2/PSX/Megadrive all see pretty regular action too. When I play on the 360 it's mainly on the XBLA titles anyway, so I don't tend to miss the 1080p. If I really cared I'd just buy a new monitor for my PC and get a HDMI switch box, but (and here dick mode begins again) I have serious reservations about the contrast levels and colour replication on flatscreen sets. Poor capability for SD content aside, until HD sets get better image quality I'm sitting it out. OLEDs are apparently going to sort that, but I've honestly not looked into how long it's going to take. I should take another look at Eizo screens, but they're so fucking expensive, and I'm way too broke to actually buy one.
Yeah, color does suck on LCD's a lot of the time. Mine looks really ugly over component but HDMI and VGA looks great, but no doubt about CRT's having better colors. I still love LCD's because the resolution is higher then if I played on a CRT so it evens out and looks better anyway and it's small. Perfect for LAN's and saves enough space I get some more room to hook shit up to it. My dick mode usually just pisses people off because I end up whining about connections, but I think I will pitch a fit if people are using RF nowadays, or if they could use something better. I.E I went to a buds house a few years back, and they were playing smash bros on gamecube on a 40" DLP.....with RF. Awesome. I guess component is tough to come by on Gamecube but jesus. S video and composite are still going to look better. Might as well go with the best you can if you cant have the absolute best. My friend plays 360 on a 19" over composite, but it has an svideo port. Refuses to buy an svideo cable. Then complains about it looking bad. Also has a VGA CRT moniter....so yeah. THAT annoys me. Better picture quality and sound makes games better I think. They are called VIDEO games afterall, but if you just plain can't get the best, might as well just try to enjoy the game anyway and make do. I can't wait till oled gets cheap!
Lol, i have my 360 hooked up via component ( until my new 360 arrives, heres hoping it is hdmi equipped!) to my 42" plasma ( only supports up to 1080i:crying and it looks amazing! One of my best friends has his 360 hooked up to his SD 62 inch projection, with composite, and its almost unbearable. He always though i was talking shit until he came over to my house one day and seen it on my TV. He went out the next day and bought a S-Video cable:lol: While it still looks like crap, its definately a step up from when he was using composite. I will say, however blurry the picture on his set is, its fucking huge! Thats the only thing that makes it somewhat playable.
Sorry but what you send in is what you get. =( They need to torch the old 360's and give everyone jaspers.
See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Issues with DLP sets aside (laaaag), most people just don't know their video connectors, and I'm not always entirely sure I can blame them for it. RF, composite, S-Video, RGB, Component, VGA, DVI, HDMI... and then SCART... I know what all these mean, but why would anyone who just wants to play a game know what they mean? I was playing some N64 just before new year's and found that the house I was in had a Gamecube and an N64 (almost no games for the former, sadly). The Gamecube had the standard Ninty composite connection, but the N64 was on RF - an ugly lump out the back going into the same connector that the Gamecube used. They'd been playing Goldeneye for months on RF without even realising that a better cable was right next to it. So when it comes to HD sets it doesn't surprise me that people don't think to look for anything other than the RF port, because that's where the games come from, right?
True. I see a lot of people buying big HD sets and hooking up cable and dvd players up with crap too. I forgot to say, a big advantage of HD sets/360/Wii....Widescreen. Widescreen is awesome. Really cool to watch DVD's and such somewhat properly.
It's not just gamers. My mum got a 42" plasma TV (because she wanted to rearrange the room so she'd be sat further away from it, go figure ) and I was particularly pissed off that the guys she got to install it built it into the wall without even attaching cables to half the inputs - she has a DVD player and VHS plugged in (by SCART) but they didn't even trail HDMI or component leads :banghead: Also when I tried to watch a DVD on it there were evil jagged sparklies everywhere, all over the sharp edges, making it totally unwatchable. I had to dig around for ages to spot that they'd left the DVD player in component-over-SCART mode, but the TV was expecting RGB SCART and was screwing it up. It's a really simple mistake but nobody seems to care these days so they have no incentive to get it right :katamari: Rant over Stone
Very much agreed! I totally understand your view and I can relate in many ways, but for instance, composite simply 'does the job' and looks decent enough for games of Wii Sports and Brawl! I get annoyed at wobbly lines, interference and patchy colours.. if the CRT was my main method of playing, then yes, a RGB scart would be my automatic purchase! I have seen other TVs so a shit job with composite (in comparison)- my old old Daewoo 14" looked "okay", hence why I ran My Dreamcast then Gamecube on it with RGB SCART even when I was like 12 or 13. My next TV, a Philips, looked much better (I suppose the better blacks hid the 'fuzz') so I used my Xbox just through composite. and that TV hated RGB (everything came out a murky brown for some reason, white would be orange..) You must appreciate that we don't always have the time/money/willpower to be able to achieve this ourselves. I'll settle with what's best within the realms of effort and cheapness. To agree with PhreQuencYViii , "I would rather play the games then not play them and I don't have the room. Sucks but it's true." I also get pissed off when people use RF or whatever and don't see the point in upgrading. Just ordered myself a Dreamcast VGA lead.. I'd love to buy a good CRT for SD gaming but I don't have the space, and I need the money for running my car, food, and general living! I barely game anymore, so whats the point. I've played my Dads 360 (compenent 1080p scaled down to 1440 x 900 if you must know, looks good enough) on and off but I have other things to do now! And what are scanlines and why are they desirable? I have never understood. Especially why people will 'emulate' them, that just looks rancid. Oh, and Stone, this pisses me off no end, too. Just a simple look in a menu would sort this out. I can't believe how people can just not care whenm things look blatently shite and could be sorted with a cheap cable or quick setting change.
Here are comparison screenshots of the MD and SS on HDTV and CRT through RGB. My MD has a very bad region mod, it only runs Sonic 1 properly (at 60hz though =]). Saturn is just a bog standard PAL one.Please also ignore Makka Pakka's head, I forgot to move him... Mega Drive RGB HDTV Mega Drive SDTV RGB Sega Saturn HDTV RGB Another comparison here and here.. The SDTV is just a cheap Alba DVD Combi but it really does look good with RGB. The HDTV is a cheap Samsung.. cost me £200 a year and a bit ago. We just bought my Dad one for this Xmas for his Xbox, the same model, for £150..
