Weird RGB SNES scart question

A buddy of mine is connecting his ntsc u/s SNES to his ntsc crt tv via THIS European Scart Cable through THIS RGB converter. I am under the impression that all he is doing is being futile in his efforts. I feel that he would get the exact same picture if he were to have just used THIS s-video cable. because all the scart cable is doing is just making the plug look a little different. its not like the SNES runs a native YPbPr output on it. I could be wrong here. if i am please educate me.

 

I have that SCART to Component convertor and it does give a fantastic picture, especially if you have to use an LCD screen. It is much better the S-Video.

However it will depend on the unit that he is using to display the signal as some have better decoders and filters then others. On the Samsung LCDs I tried, an Xbox looked much more colourful and sharper running through this box then it did via the SCART cable direct and as good as a interlaced component picture. However I have seen some CRT screens with component video in that have a nice picture on s-video then component due to them having a better comb filter for s-video then it had a decoder for the component signal.

Back to your question, as RGB is the purest analogue signal you can get with Component, S-Video, Composite and RF following in that order (although PAL signals will be better then the NTSC ones too) the box will generally transcode the RGB into Component better then the RGB to S-Video that the SNES does internally so in theory it should look better, but then it depends on the display you are using, but an LCD screen should look better with component then it would with s-video and on a decent CRT it should be better too.

 

ok. but were talking super nintendo here. not bluray.

 

It matters to some people.

Anyway to answer your question in the shortest way possible.

He is better off using the set up he has rather than just an S-Video cable, there would be a significant reduction in quality if he switched to S-Video.

 

This.

S-Video=garbage by comparison to RGB. This is just taking RGB and upscaling it to that which is a native resolution for HDTVs if I understand things correctly. Letting the TV upscale an s-video signal is like using actual coke bottle bottoms as glasses and claiming they're as good as the optometrist makes.

This sort of thing would be perfect for a friend of mine but her TV only has HDMI and VGA inputs. Converting the signal a second time seems a fruitless endeavor.

http://cgi.ebay.ie/SCART-Audio-Vide...535?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5642138f1f

Looks like they sell something for it though.

 

i understand that it would look better on an hdtv. but the dude is using an old crt. like i mentioned in my first post.

 

That doesn't change anything. Component on a CRT will still look better than S-Video.

 

+1.

I've used my PS2 with component cables, s-video and composite all on the same CRT and you know what? The color quality out of the component at 480i is amazingly good. Colors are extremely vibrant and the picture is a bit sharper overall.

The upscaling on a HDTV is a matter of taste but being able to use component over s-video means the picture WILL be better assuming the circuitry isn't junk.

 

Oooook, S-video is NOT garbage compared to RGB through a transcoder. For one, luminance is *identical* between S-video and component which is the bulk of what human eyes can discriminate. Two, Pb and Pr are modulated to form chrominance so they have a lower bandwidth, but this was also designed to be imperceptible just like the loss of RGB -> component.

If you really think S-video is that bad then please don't use HDMI; most of the time your display will be receiving YCbCr (so transcoded for video games which use RGB colorspace) video that has been lossily compressed by dropping half of the Cb and Cr samples resulting in something analogous to digital HD S-video.

Everyone knows that RGB is pure, unadulterated video so can we stop talking about it now?

 

OK so garbage but a bit strong choice of wording, regardless on my CRT component color is quite a bit more vibrant than what S-Video provides but that is on *my* CRT. Clearly the mileage with other displays will vary.

I was unaware of HDMI using YCbCr. Would seem DVI is the superior format if only for the fact it only allows for RGB.

 

HDMI has both RGB and 4:4:4 sampling, most things just don't use it because it makes little difference, YCbCr 4:2:2 will save 30% bandwidth for the same apparent quality, and there's nothing to gain when content is already in YCbCr 4:2:2 like from a set-top box or BluRay.

There's a jump from RF to composite, another jump from composite to S-video, a little step from S-video to component, and a little step from component to RGB. There's a reason North America didn't adopt an RGB input: there wasn't enough reason to. Component inputs were only introduced at the dawn of HDTV (480p DVD players) since S-video's chroma bandwidth is tied to SD video.

Now France had a reason to add RGB to SCART, and it wasn't so Europeans could gloat on message boards in the future about their superior interconnect for video games. Because everything French is the best, the French adopted SECAM. SECAM is great for receiving terrestrial broadcasts, but it's hard to put on tape and it's hard to synchronize/mix for TV stations and well, there's a lot more PAL content out there so they designed their new interconnect to carry the lowest common denominator, RGB. If they didn't they would have had to mandate that all TVs include a PAL decoder or VCRs include a lossy PAL->SECAM converter, both of which would be more complicated, costly and would make SECAM look stupid.

 

OOOH BURN

From my experience with S-Video it's fine, but RGB is noticeably less blurry, so I'll go with it wherever possible (the difference between RGB and component has never been noticeable to me, but then I've never had a set on which I could do a fair comparison). Hope you don't really think any of us Euro folk are gloating excessively (after all, we got fucked on the 50Hz thing).

 

If S-video is blurrier than SD component it's probably the decoder because our perception of detail comes almost entirely from luminance which is identical between the two. Maybe your decoder isn't designed to bypass the comb filter like it should for S-video. The comb filter low-passes <3.58/4.43 MHz where the full bandwidth of DVD and some consoles is above 6 MHz.

 

The difference between theory and practice are frequently quite large. :banghead:

 

Maybe so but don't blame it on the connection, comparing S-video and component out from DVD player on a really big CRT from 2 feet away I can't see any difference. This thread is about SNES video which has <50% the bandwidth of DVD so however S-video is handled it should look pretty good. Transcoders are expensive, they require a power supply, they have finite bandwidth, they introduce some degree of distortion and interference (especially if you're patching across multiple cables) so to me all that would outweigh the chroma demodulation error I wouldn't otherwise notice. All this said I really do appreciate RGB where it can be appreciated which I won't go into; all I know is that RGB is one of the biggest gaming fetishes now and with all the hoops people are going through to join the club of course people will see a difference.

 

A further problem is that S-Video connections on HDTV sets tend to be filtered to hell and back. Component, not so much.

Again, this is just the sets I've seen and I understand that that's anecdotal evidence.

 

Calpis, Im glad you actually got my point. Its so funny that almost everyone instantly started talking about ps2s and HDTVs instead of reading my entire post. As far as i am concerned, S-Video is the best picture you can get when you are using a standard SNES and a standard CRT. I dont know why everyone had to get all weird about this topic and lead it in an unrelated direction from my original post.

 

You asked a question about video standards and are surprised that people talked about video standards..?

It's you who needs to read more closely. RGB is superior to S-Video, and RGB converted to component will be slightly higher quality than S-Video. This is the answer to your question.

 

A very appropriate and rational reaction to being wrong.

With a standard SNES and a standard CRT (the tube is indicated here, not connection limitations) the best picture you can achieve is RGB, not S-Video.

End of story.