Wow, those Mega Drive and Saturn systems through RGB on your HD TV look really shit! Blocky as hell. Even though the CRT is a cheap effort the image is far nicer than your HD TV. I'll have to take some pictures for you guys to see how awful S-Video is on my HD CRT when used with a Mega Drive. Also being a CRT screen you can run low resolution systems with "Natural" image or "Progressive" image. Progressive does look sharper but it adds some nasty shimming to horizontal lines so I mostly leave it off. Yakumo
I don't know which to prefer.. the CRT is obviously far and above but they are all are for retro. Bear in mind when these games were created they were designed for CRT as that was the mainstream display method. I like the sharpness of the HDTV, theres something almost magical about seeing the pixels the console is generating- looking into the art and how it is all composed. Each to their own, I can appreciate each view! Yakumo, I'd love to see some screen shots. I find this discussion very interesting, thanks every one for your input!
Time and money are really inconsequential on this issue, for us Brits - it's never been easier or cheaper to get a nice RGB-capable CRT TV, they're practically free, and the cabling is cheap off ebay. Much more difficult if you live across the pond, but we've mentioned that already. The real issue is space. CRTs are huge, no question, and not everyone thinks it's worthwhile keeping one around just for older games. The scanline filters in emulators are disgusting, it's true. Scanlines in a simplified nutshell, then: almost all older video game consoles ran at resolutions around 240p, TV sets have ~480 lines (there's a caveat here about interlacing, but I won't go into it for now), so for older games every other line was blank, and this meant that black scanlines were visible. These obviously have a considerable impact on the visuals of the game, and consequently developers designed their graphics (specifically, brightness and colour hue) around the assumption that they'd be present. When they aren't - i.e. when you're seeing a badly scaled image on a high-res digital set, or a high-res emulated image - games tend to look massively brighter than they should. Some people really like this and swear they look "better", though I'm sure I don't need to tell you where I stand on the matter. Thanks for the comparison shots. As always, photographing a CRT is kind of a fruitless endeavour, but I still know which set I'd rather play on. I don't know what's going on with the water on the Sonic/HD set, some kind of crazy interpolation filter probably. You might be able to switch that off.
In terms of time/money/effort I was thinking along the lines of I don't need a £20 lead for occasional multiplayer gaming, nor can I be arsed with the time or expense of trying to mod an N64.. aaand I seriously don't have the space. I had the offer of a 32" CRT for nothing but I have nowhere - totally nowhere - to put it or even store it. For my occasional gaming (well, rare retro gaming now) . Thanks for the scanline explanation - I should have guessed that, but it's nice to know now. As for the water in the screenshot, it's probably because it was a moving image- It's probably captured part of two frames. Actually, looking back at the water again, that does look pretty whack in comparison..!*Shrugs and moves on*
I meant to post this link earlier, but I guess I didn't. http://scanlines.hazard-city.de/ More details on scanlines, if you're interested. Anyway, the N64 is kind of the exception in that it needs to be modded, and come on, most RGB cables don't cost £20. A fiver for any of the last couple of console generations. I hear you on the CRT for free business, though, it's harsh to see all these nice sets winding up in the dump.
I don't think I'm going to win this argument ;-) When I move out.. my dream is to have a games room, HDTV for modern consoles, and a lush CRT for retro, everything through the optimal cable. For now gaming is not my priority. Maybe when I retire, eh? And yes, the thought of CRTs getting dumped makes me die a bit inside. The technology is so mature compared to LCD, producing a better picture at a lower price, especially when the mainstream TV isn't in HD yet. I think the primary factor is size- you can get more LCD TVs in a warehouse, they'll fit in smaller rooms.. I totally wish that there were still some being produced for the *niche*, because really, HDTVs and retro games don't mix -it's compromise. Oh, and cheers for the link, awesome stuff.
Blank...? No. That's not correct at all. Systems like the NES or SNES have a vertical resolution that is 240 lines, but that does not mean there are another 240 blank lines.... Systems that run in "240p" are actually just non-interlaced. Your SDTV only runs at 480 interlaced, always. Game systems that run in a 240 line resolution simple don't use interlacing to increase the screen resolution. The black lines on monitors and TVs... are on the TV. You can see them when the monitor is off. I know there's alot of debate about these sorts of things. I do like scanline filters on the PC emulators because otherwise the picture looks odd to me. But I don't play many PC emulators, I prefer using my RGB monitor and real systems. HDTVs just aren't designed for upscaling anything but SD Television or Movies. They aren't meant to upscale retro videogames and look good.
I think you might not have paid attention to the bit where I said "simplified nutshell". It's kind of academic either way; black lines are present on the set. That's the real crux of the issue.
It is a HUGE difference. - It is twice the resolution with 480 lines per frame vs 480i (240 lines per frame) and twice the frame rate at 60 full frames per second (60fps) instead of 60 interlaced frames per second (30fps). The step from 480i to 480p actually is higher than that from 480p to 720p. ...and it is RGBHV, much better than RGBs via RGB SCART. Check if your TV accepts DVI-A or DVI-I and all you will need is a $3 cable. If it only accepts DVI-D it won't work as that's a digitial signal. DVI-A however actually is VGA and DVI-I is compatible to both, DVI-A and DVI-D
For the longest time I had all my consoles hooked up to a 36" (ish) Toshiba CRT via composite because the S-video input was broken. For my vertical shooters on Saturn, DC, and Supergun, I played connected via composite to a tated 13" Samsung TV/VCR combo because that was the only input. Finally a couple months ago I purchased an Xbox 360 VGA cable and started playing through a 17" NEC Multisync 77F CRT and the pic was gorgeous. The monitor will output 1280x1024 so things looked quite nice. Knowing that my other consoles/games have looked like sh*t for so long, I purchased an XRGB2+ and some RGB cables from Chaotic Jelly for Saturn and the Sigma Raijin - I only wish I had done this sooner in my life. Games look incredible! I'm sure that running a signal straight to an RGB ready CRT would look better, but the XRGB does a nice job of converting to 31khz and adding scanlines "brings the image back" to low res glory. Also, just got a Treamcast vga box for the DC. Now I just need SCART cables for the PS2, SNES, and possibly Wii and 360 and I will have successfully converted from running 2 crt's via composite, to one NEC monitor - 360/DC native vga, and the rest piped throught the upscan converter. I love my setup now...it is more focused and I feel like the money was well spent for the best picture quality I can get, taking up minimal space.
Do you have a recommendation of where to find the best deal on the VGA to DVI-I cable? (I have a DVI-I plug on my TV) Also does anyone know if the VGA box works on the American and the Japanese Dreamcast or do I need to buy the respective box for each of my consoles? EDIT: One more question: Most of the VGA boxes I am seeing for the Dreamcast online do VGA out and then have the smaller RCA jack. Is there a model that I don't have to go buy the adapter for the RCA?
This thread has been quite eye-opening for me. For years, I have been running almost all of my consoles through my CRT TV via composite. Not being a perfectionist (I don't mean that in a derogatory sense), I didn't care; I could see what was going on in the games, and that was good enough for me. I know I'm probably going to get some stick for this (quite rightly, I'll admit), but some of my consoles -- including my Mega Drive and Saturn -- still run through RF. /me ducks. I've got my Dreamcast running (when the bloody thing works) through RGB SCART (simply because that's the only lead I have for it), but I never really noticed any huge differences between that and composite. I should probably point out that I wear thick glasses, so my eye-sight is far from perfect. My CD-i uses SCART of some variety and looks damned nice through my (cheap) CRT TV (I've never tried it through my HDTV), although I only now realise that all of my consoles can probably look that clear - if not better (judging from the images in this thread). I'll definitely be spending some money to improve the visual side of my consoles - it'd be crazy not to. I also picked up a nice old Commodore 1084S monitor shortly before Xmas, primarily because my Amiga looks like crap through composite (and a scan-doubler plus flicker fixer are too pricey, so there goes the option of running it through a cheap, modern monitor) - only to realise that the input is RGB (I had assumed it would be some Amiga-only connector). After some Googling, I've discovered I can run my consoles through that, too! Sweet. Although it's only 14"... Over to the issue of scan-lines. I never understood why people would want to emulate them - mainly because I've always been a fan of sharp pixels (I've spent most of my life as a "PC" gamer, using nice monitors and high resolutions). But having seen randyrandall's comparisons of an HDTV and SDTV, I think I've changed my mind. When I saw the HDTV output, I thought "that looks damned nice!". Then I saw the SDTV output and was genuinely surprised at the quality - I truely had no idea you could get that quaility through a normal TV. Yes, I am that stupid. Apparently. Thanks for the explanation of the scan-lines, Alchy - I now understand why they're important. Thanks to everyone else, too.
There are some cheap ones at ebay: http://shop.ebay.com/items/?_nkw=vga+to+dvi-a No, they all work on all Dreamcasts since VGA is a worldwide standard. http://shop.ebay.com/items/?_nkw=vga+dreamcast - The RCA connectors on some of these models are actually TV outs. The Dreamcast itself generates the VGA, not the box/adapter/cable.
Given that you live in Merry Olde England, it's so easy for you to get this right. You'll probably not get much from it, actually. So, uh, never mind about the RGB recommendations. I'm humbled that someone bothered to listen to my ranting. Thanks.
Thanks for all the help. I viewed most of those VGA adapters for the Dreamcast and I didn't seem to see one that had standard RCA out - only the mini plug. They have the standard if you are using composite or S-Video but if you switch back over to the VGA it only outputs through mini RCA. That is ok though because I have a mini-RCA to standard I just found. I had been using it for my record player to plug in to my IMAC.
Oddly enough as the original Japanese versions have VGA enabled. Looks like a fantastic machine. I actually had a similar, yet even older TV until recently (when it broke :crying: ). - Does it accept RGB via SCART ?! That cheap Alba SDTV looks absolutely perfect. :love2: - I love how a camera is incapable of capturing the colors of CRTs. BTW: It seems that the Samsung does recognize the 240p signal, and thus doesn't use any deinterlacing. - My brother got one too and the picture is exactly the same, it actually looks surprisingly good when fed with 240p via RGB SCART. Be sure to set contrast to 100 and backlight to 7 or 8 (and adjust brightness accordingly). ...I use Sonic 1 for all my screen adjustments ^ ^ For Wii you can buy an alternative VGA solution that's probably the better but more expensive choice: http://gamechoiceclub.com/navigateProduct.asp?product_id=9303 It converts the Wii's digital YCbCr signal to VGA. No real RGB, but a fully progressive signal and probably the overall best solution for Wii. I disagree. Especially if your eyes aren't the best you deserve to have the best possible picture! What's wrong with your Dreamcast ? If it doesn't read GDs anymore it can be fixed in a few minutes with nothing but a regular screwdriver. RGB-SCART is great when using it on a CRT, but if you're using it on your HDTV then I recommend a Dreamcast VGA box as the Dreamcast's VGA mode is one of the best things this beast has to offer. That's a sweet monitor that I heard a lot about, but honestly I doubt it beats RGB-SCART on a regular SDTV (read: those without "100Hz", widescreen, and all that humbug). I have to say that I am not much of a fan of scan lines and prefer a crystal clear image but I have to admit that I love the way 240p via RGB-SCART looks on a CRT. I am not sure what you mean... Are you referring to the headphones plug ? (it's called TRS in the US, yes?)
Yeah - the headphone jack, or the jack you are meant to plug your computer speakers in to. They way I am understanding the VGA switch is: If you switch to Computer mode it outputs video to the VGA plug and audio to the headphone jack. If you switch to TV it outputs video to S-video or composite and audio to RCA. Aypok - DCEvoCE is right about the turn of a screw to get it back up and running if it is just having read errors. I had to perform the same surgery on my launch model a few days ago and it works like a champ again.
I think I should take some of the money I spend on games and buy myself some new glasses. I have two and they both have different problems: the first features the classic rebooting issue. I opened it up, cleaned the power pins (I found some guides on-line) and it worked fine. For two weeks... I tried again, but it reverted to its old rebooting ways after another few short weeks, so I gave up. I'm willing to admit that it might be my own fault for not cleaning the pins correctly. I picked up another one in the summer, which, if I recall correctly, doesn't read discs. After five minutes of playing around with it, I assumed it was a serious problem and put it in to storage. I'll dig it out this weekend and try the solution you mentioned - thanks for the info. I really do miss being able to play my Dreamcast for more than five minutes at a time... I had considered getting a VGA box, but decided against it when I saw the prices (£20 when I last looked - probably two or three years back, now...). If I can bring my Dreamcast back to the world of the living, I'll be sure to get one. True enough. I bought it specifically for the Amiga (with hopes of getting it to work with my Atari ST), so I'm still happy with it (the Amiga looks great through it!). You're right, though; I should probably put my efforts in to getting the consoles working through my CRT (which, while not huge, is much bigger).
Midwinter, I just ordered a VGA lead from Racketboy.. http://www.racketboy.com/store/dreamcast-vga-cable-box.htm Yes, the Alba does look pretty sweet with RGB, but any CRT that supports it looks just as good =) The technology is so mature that even cheap sets can look great! An oddity.. My TV will not play Mega Drive or NES games on the Wii Virtual console.. you'll hear the sound but have no image. Hit the Home button, and the Home menu becomes visible.. TurboGrafx games play fine, this is all through component.. And Aypok, I'm glad the time I took to take these pictures proved useful for you, and others.. =)
Won't work with non-PAL Wiis, as NTSC machines output S-Video trough the same connection. So you will be stuck with a red-tinted picture. I have to disagree, as quite some games do not support progressive, and if your display device is incapable of accepting interlaced signals over VGA connections, just blanks out with a 'out of range' message (some Wii games and most Virtual Console titles of Nintendo systems run in 480i).
