Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[dragdeler]

-

[Naturegirl1999]

So I got this fancy USB 3.0 video card, it's kind of the more professional tier that bridges the gap between analogue and digital, like I could output my monitor on an oldschool tv if I wanted to, or upscale analog signal up to 1080p30, swap between interlaced and not... a bunch of stuff I don't need; I just took it because it has native support for the specific software I'm using, so instead of "going trough the system drivers" the software and hardware communicate directly.

It works as advertised, been playing PS2 for a day now, then I wanted to try the SNES... Then I found out the SNES has a 256×224 resolution which my videocard manufacturer doesn't consider "broadcasting standard". Yes because the SNES and Megadrive were just too obscure of a gimmicky plastic urban myth for the resolution to be considered somewhat mainstream - standard you might say.


GUUUUUH fuck my soul 

I have en emulator for Windows called ZSNES. It is free and has lots of games already on it when you get it

[dragdeler]

-

[hector13]

Pilotwings. Blast from the past there.

[McTraveller]

I plugged my old SNES hardware into our TV and just got a black screen and no audio.  Power light was on, so the outputs were working, but had no signal to provide

[dragdeler]

-

[McTraveller]

One problem I had was that my composite to scart adapter was broken, test only composite signal that should give you an indication if that were the case.

No SCART adapter here. I can't remember if I tried using the TV out, or just the composite out... I may have to try again.

[Lord Shonus]

So I got this fancy USB 3.0 video card, it's kind of the more professional tier that bridges the gap between analogue and digital, like I could output my monitor on an oldschool tv if I wanted to, or upscale analog signal up to 1080p30, swap between interlaced and not... a bunch of stuff I don't need; I just took it because it has native support for the specific software I'm using, so instead of "going trough the system drivers" the software and hardware communicate directly.

It works as advertised, been playing PS2 for a day now, then I wanted to try the SNES... Then I found out the SNES has a 256×224 resolution which my videocard manufacturer doesn't consider "broadcasting standard". Yes because the SNES and Megadrive were just too obscure of a gimmicky plastic urban myth for the resolution to be considered somewhat mainstream - standard you might say.


GUUUUUH fuck my soul 

The SNES (and other old consoles as well) resolution being non-standard is a genuine, well-known problem. It is one of the biggest reasons why input lag is so bad on modern TVs (unless you get some sort of upscaler or mod your console for HDMI, your chances of any kind of action game being playable on anything but a CRT is quite low), because it is quite difficult to scale up.

When these things were coming out, the modern notion of pixel-exact resolutions didn't really exist, because (unlike a LCD) a CRT has an enormous ability to compensate with no delay as a consequence of the analog signal. There was a set broadcast resolution set by whatever governing board was relevant (NTSC for the US and Japan, PAL in most of Europe, and SECAM in France), and VCRs stuck to that standard, but computers and game consoles were not required to do so and generally didn't. Every 8-bit computer and /16-bit console outputs a slightly different resolution than every other one, even if they're nominally the same number of pixels. It is a huge problem in the retrogaming community, and the reason why we hoard CRTs (I have 8 floating around) as if they were dragon's treasure.

[dragdeler]

-

[Lord Shonus]

Huh I knew there was some merit to the old screens but Idk the image I'm getting on this never bothered me one bit.

It isn't the image quality that's the problem, save for purists (LCDs have extremely sharp pixels, while CRTs have more diffuse ones - this means that games designed for CRTs had a blending effect that is lost on an LCD, and is the reason why emulators have so many filter options). The problem is that converting an analog 240p signal to a digital 480p/1080p/2460p/ect one takes processing power, and most TVs don't have a lot of that built in - and they have to upscale because an LCD display only really has one resolution. For recorded video, this is no big deal - you'll never notice the difference unless you have the signal split between two TVs and are watching them side-by-side.

For gaming, however, there's a significant effect. If the picture on the display is what came out of the console .2 -.8 seconds ago, you'll find any game that requires precision timing (be it a rhythm game, a platformer requiring pixel-perfect jumps, or the traditional meter-based golf game, for example) will become much more difficult because your input will come in noticeably late.

Some LCD TVs, particularly SD ones, have good enough upscaling hardware that they can keep this too low to notice. It isn't common, even on expensive sets, because the designers didn't anticipate anybody wanting to do it in the first place.


Fortunately, there are options - standalone upscaling boxes are available on the market, and a good one (the Retrotink 2X is a bottom-barrel solution - you'd be better off with an OSSC because it works better and isn't quite as restricted in input types) will output a perfectly formatted digital signal with no noticable delay. Modification kits are available for most systems that allow them to output in those higher resolutions to begin with, eliminating the problem. Perhaps best of all, there are new FPGA-based systems (NOT the Retron-type emulator boxes - those are absolute garbage that should be avoided at all costs) that behave exactly like an SNES/NES/Genesis but output in HD. This comes at a cost - an upscaler will run in the range of $200-400, mods cost $100-$200 per system, and the FPGA boxes are $200-$500.


EDIT: You need an adapter to use composite or S-video with an OSSC, which means an additional cost. It only supports SCART and Composite in out-of-the-box. The only one I've worked with was modified, and I did not realize this until double-checking.

[dragdeler]

-

[Lord Shonus]

Here's a rough synopsis.

The most basic possible output from a console (or other device) is RF-out using the TV's antenna connection. The earliest TVs and consoles required you to take forked connectors and attatch them to screws on the TV, but this was replaced by the now ubiquitous coaxial cable and connector in the US, and (as I understand it) the Belling-Lee connector in Europe. This is the absolute worst option - not only is the signal fairly poor to begin with, but getting a solid connection is very difficult and you tend to get a lot of noise interfering with it.

One step up from that is COMPOSITE video - the yellow plug. This is superior in every way to RF, due to having a cleaner signal to begin with and because the connector is much better. You still get a lot of artifacting and color bleed, so it isn't perfect. This is the "default" connection in the modern era.

The next step is COMPONENT video. This is usually very similar to a COMPOSITE connection, except that where a COMPOSITE cable has three plugs (video, left audio, right audio), the COMPONENT cable has five (three video, two audio). This splits the signal into three parts (exactly what those parts are is a very complex subject) to prevent too much bandwidth going through one cable. This results in a superb picture, but the downside is that not all that many consoles actually have support for it - it was a fairly late arrival, and the advent of digital standards such as HDMI obsoleted it fairly quickly. This is supported by PS2/3, Xbox/360, Wii, and sometimes Gamecube.

S-video is a simpler form of component video, with three data wires sharing a common ground (instead of the three data wires and three grounds in the case of component). The picture isn't quite as nice as three-wire component due to the common ground, but it was supported out of the box on a ton of systems (SNES, PS1, PS2, N64), needing only the correct cable. There are times when you do not want to use it, particularly with PS1 - you can result in a picture that is much too sharp, and several games look really bad this way.

The final connection type is RGB, which transmits the data over many wires to get the maximum bandwidth. Very few consoles support it without modding - IIRC most SEGA stuff does (via SCART cable on the Genesis, VGA on the Dreamcast, and I'm not sure about the Saturn), but not much else.


Where SCART fits in is tricky. SCART is just a connector, and can carry any of these signal types. There's been plenty of disappointed retrogamers that shelled out hard cash for a "RGB cable kit" only to find that it was just composite running over SCART.



As an aside (because I feel obliged to spread this information), original Xboxes suicide due to a cheap capacitor that will rupture and spray the motherboard with acid. If you have an OG xbox, you need to open it up and cut the clock capacitor. Tutorials are available.

[dragdeler]

-

[scourge728]

How does the gamecube only sometimes support component

[Lord Shonus]

For reasons only known to Nintendo, the Gamecube does not support component out of the normal A/V port the way other systems do. Instead, they have two A/V ports on the back - one for the ordinary Composite or S-video cable, the other for the proprietary (and very expensive) component cable. At least, the original DOL-001 version does. The later DOL-101 revision removes the port and the associated connections, as nobody paid the absurd price for the cable.