PC Engine AV Mod

[PCEngineHell]

Modding my Turbo for RGB was TOTALLY worth it.  Yes, the Turbo's composite is extremely good, but it shimmers like a bitch when the screen scrolls.  On Ys 1&2, when Feena appears on the title screen using the oval crystal to cover her enormous tits, her blue her is flickering back and forth.  Looks bad.  With RGB, all of the shimmering is gone, Feena's hair doesn't flicker and she doesn't use the oval crystal to block her boobs, she shows them in full glory!    But seriously, more details can be seen, the reds are MUCH better (the other colors are only a teeny bit better than composite).

I'm wondering how ccovell or whatever his name is got his NES to output RGB.

https://www.chrismcovell.com/gotRGB/fctitler.html

[ccovell]

Re: Famicom
Jeez, nobody clicked on the "back" link at the bottom of my screenshots page? 

Here's the main RGB page, with short descriptions of the systems that I have gotten RGB from: https://www.chrismcovell.com/gotRGB/


And unfortunately people are already confusing composite(A/V), component, and RGB on this board     Composite and RGB have been around for a long time, and for old systems like the ones on my page, RGB is the purest possible signal.  Component is the standard for newer systems, and it does not send pure R, G, B signals over the cables, but rather a mixed signal Y,Pr,Pb (?) that gets mathematically separated into R,G,B once again.  The upside of Component is that it has standards for progressive scan and HDTV, etc.

[termis]

Great discussion here.  And ccovell and Joe Rediger - good articles.  I have a much better idea about what the advantages are now.  The problem is, as some of you stated - I'd need a new TV in the first place, and that won't be happening anytime soon.

I guess I was more into upgrading the sound system to make the gaming experience more enjoyable.  And considering sound systems can be used for anything, and you don't need to modify individual systems, I found an upgrade in audio to be a "better value" for enjoying gaming overall.

[Keranu]

And unfortunately people are already confusing composite(A/V), component, and RGB on this board     Composite and RGB have been around for a long time, and for old systems like the ones on my page, RGB is the purest possible signal.  Component is the standard for newer systems, and it does not send pure R, G, B signals over the cables, but rather a mixed signal Y,Pr,Pb (?) that gets mathematically separated into R,G,B once again.  The upside of Component is that it has standards for progressive scan and HDTV, etc.

Well as I said, I'm no video techie (and happy to not be), but you guys get what I'm saying.

[PCEngineHell]

Re: Famicom
Jeez, nobody clicked on the "back" link at the bottom of my screenshots page? 

Here's the main RGB page, with short descriptions of the systems that I have gotten RGB from.
https://www.chrismcovell.com/gotRGB/index.html

And unfortunately people are already confusing composite(A/V), component, and RGB on this board     Composite and RGB have been around for a long time, and for old systems like the ones on my page, RGB is the purest possible signal.  Component is the standard for newer systems, and it does not send pure R, G, B signals over the cables, but rather a mixed signal Y,Pr,Pb (?) that gets mathematically separated into R,G,B once again.  The upside of Component is that it has standards for progressive scan and HDTV, etc.

Some people just don't know because they have very little experience with any of it. Alot of people assume because of lack of knowledge that component was normal RGB like that found in scart or jamma,c64 monitors and normal RGB monitors,and they don't know that Component uses things like sync on green and other methods and is a different type of signal. You really have to break it down for people with lots of details because if they have little knowledge of it they wont understand the difference otherwise and all they visualize is those red,green,and blue Component cables and think,RGB.

Also I posted a link to your Fami mod for Joe. I checked over your site,it was all pretty cool stuff.

[Joe Redifer]

Jeez, nobody clicked on the "back" link at the bottom of my screenshots page? 

Geez man, sorry.  I must be too stupid to even deserve RGB. 

Anyway the end result between component and RGB should be identical.  Component doesn't lose any image quality from RGB, it just does things differently to conserve bandwidth.  In the end it all depends on your display, and there are quite a few TVs I've seen out there that do bad component.  Also, I don't have any vertical lines in the blues on my Genesis, but I do see some vertical lines in my Turbo's RGB output.

[CrackTiger]

Believe me, the colors are NOT brighter when using composite, it's the other way around. TOTALLY the other way around. If you compare composite vs rgb in reality (i e not pictures/video) you'll see the massive difference.

Also: I spent $2 total in order to get my PCE to output RGB of perfection. No more, no less.

It's true. Even if the Turbo/PCE's composite was good for it's time, it doesn't change the fact that the color is totally drained from the picture and dithering turns into unnatural colors. I'm no techy spec-head, so I won't try to guess at the causes of the degradation, and it's besides the point.


http://members.shaw.ca/turboduo/svideo.html

Take a look at the cinema shot with the blonde haired soldier. The two skin tones get 'blended' with an ugly puke green. Regardless of the why's and how's, you get a clear picture with RGB/S-Video that lets you see the real graphics, just as the developer's intended you to never see. 

In the case of Forgotten Worlds, Capcom never intended their arcade game to be strained through PC Engine hardware anyway.

The other major thing, is that the colors look vibrant and are similar to emulation.


https://superpcenginegrafx.net/wii_video_temp.html

In the link above, if you compare the S-Video screenshots to the emulated ones, they're very similar. Which shows how good the S-Video/RGB mod is.

Further down you can see how colorless the composite Turbo/PCE screenshots look compared to emulation and the Wii. But if you look at the rollover images of the Wii vs Turbo/PCE S-Video they're about the same. Then look at the Wii vs Turbo/PCE composite rollovers. The Wii composite image still looks nice and vibrant, but the Turbo/PCE image looks like it got crossed with a b&w image.

So even if the Turbo/PCE composite was one of the best back in the day, it certainly does kick the crap out of the graphics before they reach the screen, compared to the Wii's composite.

The Turbo/PCE S-Video mod as I understand it, is a hack of the RGB mod. So the RGB will look even better(not much) on a TV that supports it or when transcoded(or whatever) into component and played on a TV that supports 240p.

And like Seldane said, on a real TV, the difference is more noticeable than screenshots and photos.

[Spector]

But can't you just turn the colour dial up on your TV to compensate for loss of colour?   

[CrackTiger]

But can't you just turn the colour dial up on your TV to compensate for loss of colour?   

You can and it does help some games in some places, but best case scenario it's still nowhere near as nice as the RGB/S-Video mod and only makes things like the dithering vommit effect worse.

[PCEngineHell]

I take it the screen caps are done via capture card. Im kinda curious as to what card because some cap cards do a horrible job of capping composite signal because they have zero comb filter power to speak of.

And even so,the Bomber Man comparison looks no where near as bad as Deans fudged lowered color pics. Im not saying composite is better then s-video,cause its not,but I had Forgotten Worlds back when I saw that Deans page there,back around when I first joined,and compared his pics to my Tvs image and mine looked much better,more along his s-video pics color wise. His pics looked like the color was lowered on purpose and the tint was played with. Seemed like a ploy to sell mods. I think I will have my friend,who still has the game for Pc-Engine,run it in composite on his Sony Wega when he gets back home next week,and take pics for me to post here.

[Seldane]

But can't you just turn the colour dial up on your TV to compensate for loss of colour?   

Actually that'll only make it worse. Composite blurs the picture and a phenomenon known as "color bleeding" is very noticable. Increasing the color value will only make matters worse. Much worse, the color bleeding will ruin the picture entirely.

RGB is video in its purest form, there's no "compression" or any any cheap techiques used, it's just that - pure, beautiful video.

Let's say we have three buckets of paint. One red, one green and one blue. By mixing these colors we can make a wide variety of hues and it will look really good, as the buckets of paint are seperate and clean from the very beginning.

Composite, on the other hand, is cheap. Someone poured all the color (red, green and blue) into one bucket and then tries to seperate them, and mix them to make all the other hues but it looks like crap since he's already mixed all the colors in the same bucket. Get my point?

[ccovell]

Yeah, that Forgotten Worlds comparison is a little bit misleading.  On a real TV, the dithering pattern through composite generates a bit of noise and interference (kinda like the flickering hair in Ys) that is more detailed than a capture card can grab.  He should at least capture two fields (1/60th of a second) at a high resolution (720x480 or so) and merge those together to give a more accurate representation of what our eyes see on the TV screen.

Regarding which has brighter colours, RGB or composite, it really depends on the display device.  RGB definitely has purer colours, but composite has "hotter" reds and blues on my TV.  The gamma levels of TVs and video monitors are also different.  So everyone's mileage may vary.

[CrackTiger]

I take it the screen caps are done via capture card. Im kinda curious as to what card because some cap cards do a horrible job of capping composite signal because they have zero comb filter power to speak of.

And even so,the Bomber Man comparison looks no where near as bad as Deans fudged lowered color pics. Im not saying composite is better then s-video,cause its not,but I had Forgotten Worlds back when I saw that Deans page there,back around when I first joined,and compared his pics to my Tvs image and mine looked much better,more along his s-video pics color wise. His pics looked like the color was lowered on purpose and the tint was played with. Seemed like a ploy to sell mods. I think I will have my friend,who still has the game for Pc-Engine,run it in composite on his Sony Wega when he gets back home next week,and take pics for me to post here.

I've noticed the same thing with various screenshots. Although I previously used ATI AIW video cards, my latest PC has a Hauppaugge PVR 350(?), which is an actual capture card. I know that the dvd video it captures is much better than the video cards I had before, but I didn't take enough screenshots or have the S-Video mod before.

The difference between composite and the S-Video mod I have varies between games. Forgotten Worlds is a good example of a nice looking game that suffers the most through composite. I used Bomberman '93 as the example on the Wii page, because it's a VC title which shows the best looking/most solid Turbo composite and is nice and colorful.

Were the sceenshots on D-Lite's page taken with a digital camera? Because that throws all kinds of variables into it.

The one thing I did with my screenshots was capture them at the lowest 2 resolutions my card allows and didn't resize them.

Yeah, that Forgotten Worlds comparison is a little bit misleading.  On a real TV, the dithering pattern through composite generates a bit of noise and interference (kinda like the flickering hair in Ys) that is more detailed than a capture card can grab.  He should at least capture two fields (1/60th of a second) at a high resolution (720x480 or so) and merge those together to give a more accurate representation of what our eyes see on the TV screen.

Regarding which has brighter colours, RGB or composite, it really depends on the display device.  RGB definitely has purer colours, but composite has "hotter" reds and blues on my TV.  The gamma levels of TVs and video monitors are also different.  So everyone's mileage may vary.

Yeah, that was just a quick page I threw together back when I first got my PCE modded. I still plan on doing a real composite vs S-Video mod page, but am concentrating on the Virtual Console stuff right now.

The reason I used Forgotten Worlds as an example in the first place, is because the difference on a few real TV's was most noticible with that game, even if still screenshots don't tell the whole story.

Although I've always planned to use various videos as a comparison, I don't think that my card captures fps higher than ntsc dvd.

But like you said, every TV set is also different and it depends on the combination.

From my personal experience, playing Turbo/PCE games with the S-Video mod looks like I'm running Magic Engine from my PC to a TV.

[Joe Redifer]

Capturing 2 fields in fun!  I can't make the GIF animate as fast as it does on a TV screen in real life, but the picture below shows the shimmering effect that quite a lot of Turbo games have in composite.  NES games, too.  They must use a similar composite encoder (and sound chip).



CrackTiger, does anything like this happen on your system with S-video ?

[CrackTiger]

Capturing 2 fields in fun!  I can't make the GIF animate as fast as it does on a TV screen in real life, but the picture below shows the shimmering effect that quite a lot of Turbo games have in composite.  NES games, too.  They must use a similar composite encoder (and sound chip).



Black_Tiger, does anything like this happen on your system with S-video?

There isn't any shimmering with the S-Video mod that I have.

Last night I captured a captured a couple Forgotten Worlds videos to see the difference in motion again.

On the one TV I have at my computer, the blonde soldier's portrait didn't have that green effect, instead it shimmered, which looks better.

But, whenever the game scrolled(all the time), all the fine detail and dithering had that same ugly effect(blue stripes in the middle of brown shading).

So the blonde soldier screenshot was a good example of what Turbo/PCE composite looks like 90% of the time.

I don't care if developers planned for the shading in PC Engine games to be ruined or not, that stuff is not cool.

[Keranu]

Capturing 2 fields in fun!  I can't make the GIF animate as fast as it does on a TV screen in real life, but the picture below shows the shimmering effect that quite a lot of Turbo games have in composite.  NES games, too.  They must use a similar composite encoder (and sound chip).



CrackTiger, does anything like this happen on your system with S-video ?

I'm aware of the shimmering effect, but it certainly doesn't look that bad on any TVs I have used . Besides, the shimmering doesn't bother me at all, I think people just like to be nit-picky.

[Spector]

I like a bit of shimmering myself; a perfectly clean picture can appear a bit lifeless to me. It's almost like the old vinyl/Cd argument again. I prefer vinyl for old music, and composite/rf for old consoles.
Maybe I'm just an old fart 

[Joe Redifer]

We all must justify what we have or don't have, I guess.

Just keep in mind that if you like arcade screens, you like RGB.

[CrackTiger]

I tried capturing some video of Forgotten Worlds the other night to see how it would turn out.

It's not the best example of all the differences between composite and S-Video and the demos aren't the best visual examples to use... but if you still want to take a look-

This is a HD split screen-
/pcevideo.avi


This one cross fades between the two, and just happened to line up so that the cross fading in the second half is pretty much useless 

/pcevideo2.avi

[PCEngineHell]

All that tells me is your cap card may not like capping composite signal so much.Pretty much all the color looks sucked completely out which isn't natural even for composite. Like I said,Ill have my friend take some pics of it running on his Sony Wega.

[CrackTiger]

All that tells me is your cap card may not like capping composite signal so much.Pretty much all the color looks sucked completely out which isn't natural even for composite. Like I said,Ill have my friend take some pics of it running on his Sony Wega.

The difference actually looks worse on all my real TV's, including my Sony that's the model that was replaced by the Wega, but looks the same, and couple friends Wega's.

Honestly, I don't think that composite looks so bad on it's own, because the graphics are still there. Its only when you compare it to S-Video that it doesn't look as good.

If you want to take a look at my Wii vs TG-16 video page again, you'll see that the Wii's composite looks identical to the Wii's S-Video, and both have nice vibrant colors.

So unless my cap card's prejudgiced against Turbo/PCE composite, it should be a fairly accurate portrayel of the difference in general. Except that some of the artifacts from the Turbo composite got lost in the video conversion.

[PCEngineHell]

The Wii is a completely different system with a res output much higher. Even the emus on the Wii output at 640x480. Maybe your tv has sucky composite quality too,like my Samsung.....Everything looks like ass on the Samsung composite wise except newer systems.
Anyway,like I said,Ill have my friend take some pics later this week after he gets back home and I will post them here for more comparisons

[CrackTiger]

The Wii is a completely different system with a res output much higher. Even the emus on the Wii output at 640x480. Maybe your tv has sucky composite quality too,like my Samsung.....Everything looks like ass on the Samsung composite wise except newer systems.
Anyway,like I said,Ill have my friend take some pics later this week after he gets back home and I will post them here for more comparisons

Since the Wii is different, shouldn't it still look less than perfect if my cap card is no good with composite? My Duo's S-Video is still low res.

Like I said, the composite on about a half dozen TV's I tried looks like that compared to the S-Video.

I just tried it out on my brother's Sony Wega and it was the same deal. The composite looks like it has a grey transparency over it. However, his larger (32" - 36") screen seemed to reduce much of the flickery dithering effects.

[PCEngineHell]

I believe Keranu had a problem capping composite from one of his systems,but the others were fine on his cap card.
Not only that,your comparing composite out from the Wii,a system that produces a higher res and was built in 2006,with higher grade components for composite output,running a game in emulation on a 256 bit graphics chip.

That and this is like saying every composite signal should be at the same strength and interpreted the exact same on any and every product,and in a perfect world it would be,but its not a perfect world,and every tv model uses different chips for its comb filters for composite input,and cap cards are very much like this also,some of them having very weak comb filters because they are mainly designed to cap s-video quality and are designed to be compatible with composite.  You can take a composite signal and use it on 2 different tvs,one that is built to do very good composite,and one thats just made to be compatible with it. Ones built to be compatible tend to do really well with newer electronics like Dreamcast,PS 2 and Gamecube on up,and dvd players,and tend to look average with older electronics like VCRs,composite laserdisc players and older game systems.

These days it is getting harder to find  a tv that produces good picture quality off of a composite signal of a older system. So you saying composite looks like ass on all your tvs just tells me your tvs suck at composite,and are prob best left doing s-video work. It seems like your trying to turn this into a debate like your experience dictates everyone else's with composite,which it doesn't,and every ones set up is different and their milage will vary picture wise. What would be cool is for everyone to post pics of their system running a game to show their pic quality. I know this is kinda hard compared to using a cap card,but were not supposed to be talking about cap cards here,not everyone plays their game systems on cap cards,as most use Tvs.

[CrackTiger]

I believe Keranu had a problem capping composite from one of his systems,but the others were fine on his cap card.
Not only that,your comparing composite out from the Wii,a system that produces a higher res and was built in 2006,with higher grade components for composite output,running a game in emulation on a 256 bit graphics chip.

That and this is like saying every composite signal should be at the same strength and interpreted the exact same on any and every product,and in a perfect world it would be,but its not a perfect world,and every tv model uses different chips for its comb filters for composite input,and cap cards are very much like this also,some of them having very weak comb filters because they are mainly designed to cap s-video quality and are designed to be compatible with composite.  You can take a composite signal and use it on 2 different tvs,one that is built to do very good composite,and one thats just made to be compatible with it. Ones built to be compatible tend to do really well with newer electronics like Dreamcast,PS 2 and Gamecube on up,and dvd players,and tend to look average with older electronics like VCRs,composite laserdisc players and older game systems.

These days it is getting harder to find  a tv that produces good picture quality off of a composite signal of a older system. So you saying composite looks like ass on all your tvs just tells me your tvs suck at composite,and are prob best left doing s-video work. It seems like your trying to turn this into a debate like your experience dictates everyone else's with composite,which it doesn't,and every ones set up is different and their milage will vary picture wise. What would be cool is for everyone to post pics of their system running a game to show their pic quality. I know this is kinda hard compared to using a cap card,but were not supposed to be talking about cap cards here,not everyone plays their game systems on cap cards,as most use Tvs.

Most of the TV's I've played Duo's on don't have S-Video.

But if most TV's can't do the Duo composite justice, then shouldn't most people expect the washed out picture anyway?

The whole point of the Wii vs TG-16 video composite comparison was to illustrate the difference between the two systems. As you said, the Wii is moderner and more hi-tech.

The Duo composite still looks nice and I wouldn't have thought that it could get much better until I got the S-Video mod.

[Joe Redifer]

I took some pictures of my TV screen with my digital camera (at a slight angle).  I am not the best photographer in the world, and the exposure setting may be a little off.  Plus I took the pictures as JPEG instead of RAW and I resized them and compressed them as JPEG again, so take that as you will.  Here is the page I set up with rollover pics:

Clicky clicky to see da rollover pics!!

The same TV was used for both composite and component, and the settings on the TV were not adjusted between pics.  Yes, component (from RGB) is brighter.

[PCEngineHell]

Really it looks like your total contrast on everything itself is higher. Some people like that alot,some people like a mid contrast more,with a lower black level as per THX settings. I heard the contrast issue was commonplace when you tap RGB off of the Pc engine,and you have to play with the signals to get it how you want it,briter or darker.

Your  pics are fine btw.

[Joe Redifer]

Actually I think they are a bit overexposed because some of the details seem lost in the component screens.

PS - Contrast (or Picture) adjusts the whites.  Brightness adjusts the blacks.

[CrackTiger]

I took some pictures of my TV screen with my digital camera (at a slight angle).  I am not the best photographer in the world, and the exposure setting may be a little off.  Plus I took the pictures as JPEG instead of RAW and I resized them and compressed them as JPEG again, so take that as you will.  Here is the page I set up with rollover pics:

Clicky clicky to see da rollover pics!!

The same TV was used for both composite and component, and the settings on the TV were not adjusted between pics.  Yes, component (from RGB) is brighter.

It's hard to fully guage the composite shots because of the darkness, but I can see the blue stripes in the brown gradients and the component shots sure do look nice and are much clearer.

I took some photos earlier when trying out FW on my bro's TV, but I'm the worst photographer and thought that the few usable pics that kinda turned out weren't accurate enough to post.

But after browsing Chris Covell's composite vs rgb screenshot page again, and seeing someone else is also posting their results, I now feel confident show the couple pics I was able to match up(but they're not professionally lined up like Joe's  )-

https://www.superpcenginegrafx.net/f.html

[PCEngineHell]

Actually I think they are a bit overexposed because some of the details seem lost in the component screens.

PS - Contrast (or Picture) adjusts the whites.  Brightness adjusts the blacks.

As I said

some people like a mid contrast more,with a lower black level as per THX settings.

On 2 of the 3 tvs here,and 2 of the 5 vga monitors brightness is listed as"blackness" or "black level" and not brightness,which is more correct and fitting,cause as you said,it adjust the blacks. THX settings tend to require you to really lower your blackness levels alot,which is totally fine with me because 2 of the 3 tvs and the 3 main vga monitors I use have darkglass. I got really picky about this after getting into laser disc collecting and started buying only darkglass monitors or tvs..

[Keranu]

Interesting links, Joe and Black.

For Joe's pics: The component seems a lot brighter, but the composite pics look unusual dark. Maybe it's just the camera but it seems like it shouldn't be that dark to begin with.

For Black's pics: Call me crazy, but I think the composite actually looks better since it blends the dithering and makes the game look more colorful, even though the colors aren't as vibrant. A really good example of this is looking at the darker shade on the mountains.

[Seldane]

Man, how do you guys take such good pictures off the TV? I've tried that myself and it just looks like crap every time.

[Keranu]

Man, how do you guys take such good pictures off the TV? I've tried that myself and it just looks like crap every time.

Good question.

[Joe Redifer]

I put it on a tripod, put the camera on a two second timer, press da button, switch to component, press da button again.  All of this happens when the lights in my room are off and the TV is the only light source.

Also, I think the composite being dark may be the result of the way my TV handles composite.  Well actually that composite is converted into s-video by the JVC switcher, and the NES composite doesn't seem dark.  I wonder...

I'll try to take a couple more pics and adjust the composite so the brightness level is more even with my component.  That would be more fair I think.  And requests as to what games I should take pictures of?

CrackTiger...  It might be the JPEG compression of the pic, but I think I can see a tiny little bit of blue color bleed in the dude's legs on your s-video pics.

[Keranu]

And requests as to what games I should take pictures of?

J.J. and Jeff  . Actually anything with a lot of dithering would be best, like Strip Fighter II if you have that (rare game).

[CrackTiger]

Interesting links, Joe and Black.

For Joe's pics: The component seems a lot brighter, but the composite pics look unusual dark. Maybe it's just the camera but it seems like it shouldn't be that dark to begin with.

For Black's pics: Call me crazy, but I think the composite actually looks better since it blends the dithering and makes the game look more colorful, even though the colors aren't as vibrant. A really good example of this is looking at the darker shade on the mountains.

The composite pics all turned out way better than the S-Video photos, since I did the S-Video ones first and sorta figured out what I was doing towards the end. If you saw them both running in person, you probably wouldn't prefer the composite overall.

But if you like detail getting blended out, then the Virtual Console games are just for you. 

Man, how do you guys take such good pictures off the TV? I've tried that myself and it just looks like crap every time.

Like I said earlier, they pretty much all turned out like crap. I was lucky enough to get those two pics of each to turn out well enough.

I just followed the instructions I remember from the first year Nintendo Power comic: turn out all the lights and sit the camera on a pile of stuff with a level surface on top. Which meant I cradled my bro's Xbox360 box on my knees as I tried to squat in front of the TV set.  I also had to figure out the hard way to start a real game and pause it before snapping photos.

I put it on a tripod, put the camera on a two second timer, press da button, switch to component, press da button again.  All of this happens when the lights in my room are off and the TV is the only light source.

Also, I think the composite being dark may be the result of the way my TV handles composite.  Well actually that composite is converted into s-video by the JVC switcher, and the NES composite doesn't seem dark.  I wonder...

The composite of my Duo/Turbo systems always appears extra bright and washed out, like it's being displayed on a crappy projection TV or something.

Black_Tiger...  It might be the JPEG compression of the pic, but I think I can see a tiny little bit of blue color bleed in the dude's legs on your s-video pics.

It could be, but all the S-Video photos turned out with extra glowing colors than they appeared on the screen. Especially that big vagina. I know I didn't hold the camera very steady with the S-Video pics...

Man, how do you guys take such good pictures off the TV? I've tried that myself and it just looks like crap every time.

Good question.

[Joe Redifer]

Here are some more comparison rollover pics I took:

joeredifer .com/turbovideo/swap2.html

I don't have JJ & Jeff or Strip Fighter, but the Fantasy Zone comparison has lots of dithering!

[PCEngineHell]

Those are alot better,esp the Fantasy Zone pic,because it shows the problems,not just color wise,that composite gives compared to RGB..

[Keranu]

So awesome, thanks! That's actually what I usually do when I take pictures of my TV. Image saved  .

Here are some more comparison rollover pics I took:

joeredifer .com/turbovideo/swap2.html

I don't have JJ & Jeff or Strip Fighter, but the Fantasy Zone comparison has lots of dithering!

Maybe you really do have to see it in real life, but the differences are very small, in my opinion. It just seems like things are a tad brighter and sharper in component. I don't mean to be an All-American hero here (even though I am), but I say component is not worth it if that's how much it improves . Also people can call me crazy here, but I thought some of the colors actually looked better in composite on Joe's site, especially the Legendary Axe.

[Joe Redifer]

The component is brighter and therefore my pics of them are a tad overexposed.  If I change the shutter I get a giant bar across the screen when I take pics.  Also, did you not notice the giant vertical bars in the clouds in Fantasy Zone?  They flicker back and forth like crazy.  Also the stem of the flowers towards the bottom of the screen are pretty messed up in composite.  It is definitely worth it for someone who appreciates video quality.  Definitely not worth it for people who don't care and/or can't notice.

[Keranu]

I noticed the clouds in Fantasy Zone and that kind of stuff doesn't really bother me. In fact, sometimes it looks kinda cool .

[Seldane]

Just what makes composite so "american"?

[termis]

Just what makes composite so "american"?

In general, I think Americans tend to be late adopters when it comes to consumer technology.   Being late adopters isn't always bad (hell, I rarely buy 1st generation models), but certain things make so much more sense... i.e. the metric system!

[Keranu]

Just what makes composite so "american"?

Because Americans don't need no stinkin' RGB .

[GUTS]

God yeah I wished they would have taught metric when I was in high school, to this day I can't wrap my head around shit measured in metric.

[Spector]

The component is brighter and therefore my pics of them are a tad overexposed.  If I change the shutter I get a giant bar across the screen when I take pics.  Also, did you not notice the giant vertical bars in the clouds in Fantasy Zone?  They flicker back and forth like crazy.  Also the stem of the flowers towards the bottom of the screen are pretty messed up in composite.  It is definitely worth it for someone who appreciates video quality.  Definitely not worth it for people who don't care and/or can't notice.

The problem with RGB is that it's sometimes too clean and clear, and it can appear lifeless. There are computers/consoles I have that clearly look better in composite/rf than in RGB, simply because of all the dirt on the screen. This might not apply to the PC Engine though. What I am looking for in my mod is a picture quality that is as good as what people had back in the day, not what is considered the best now. And since no-one had RGB then, I guess that would be A/V.

[CrackTiger]

God yeah I wished they would have tought metric when I was in high school, to this day I can't wrap my head around shit measured in metric.

Metric's a lot easier to learn than imperial, since it all makes sense. Once you figure that much out, all there is to learn is the vocabulary (deci, milli, hexa and litre, gram, metre, etc).

Although Canada's officially metric, most people are comfortable measuring in pounds, miles and feet. Just don't ask the average person here how many imperial units make up the next unit. 

[Keranu]

The problem with RGB is that it's sometimes too clean and clear, and it can appear lifeless. There are computers/consoles I have that clearly look better in composite/rf than in RGB, simply because of all the dirt on the screen. This might not apply to the PC Engine though. What I am looking for in my mod is a picture quality that is as good as what people had back in the day, not what is considered the best now. And since no-one had RGB then, I guess that would be A/V.

I agree. I think something we should keep in mind when it comes to these older consoles is what setups the developers used to design the games. I'm sure the developers tested their games on standard TVs using RF or composite back then so maybe they designed the graphics with RF or composite in mind so it would look nicer on the TV.

[GUTS]

Personally I would have to side with Keranu on this, I think composite or S-Video is good enough for anything 16-bit or older since all those old system relied somewhat on the video output to smooth the graphics out (like the dithering in Genesis games).  RGB just looks too blocky and sterile, it makes them look like old computer games and they lose part of what made them special as console games.

[PCEngineHell]

Ditto on everything but the Genesis composite,since the Genesis offered RGB out normally without needing a hack,and that there was optional s-video breakout boxes made,I think its ideal to use something other then composite on that system if you can. I used to be fine with Genesis composite back when I was younger and used average tv sets but that no longer suites me these days.


BTW Joe my son said he read your KPJ AES died a ugly death. Sucks to be you man,sucks to be you. Contact OSG or Razoola,maybe they can help without you paying tons to Kenny again. I fixed two consolized MVS systems like a year and  a half ago that both I think came from Kenny possibly. The problem was the AD chip on the encoders were not soldered down well and had to be redone. The consolization looked like Kennys stuff,coulda been Arcade Kingdom too,and the encoders were Neobitz junk. The problem was either Kurtz didn't solder the chips down good,or they were the do it yourself kits and the person doing the consolization did a shoddy job putting them together.