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Composite on modern tv

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First post, by DonutKing

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I have a number of old consoles- mega drive, master system, snes, etc
These consoles all use composite output.

I recently bought a plasma tv which looks awesome for bluray or DVD over hdmi, but looks arse for anything composite.

The tv can scale up to fill the screen and keep the 4:3 aspect ratio but it just looks terrible. Whereas on my old CRT that I've kept exclusively for consoles, they look great.

I know some of these consoles can be modded for RGB output but my tv only supports composite, YUV or hdmi input.

Just wondering if anyone has any advice on making these consoles look good on modern tv's? Maybe an external unit or something? Or should I just keep the old CRT?

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.

Reply 2 of 64, by d1stortion

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I'm not sure what you mean by "scale and fill up the screen but keep the 4:3 aspect ratio" because that will mean either black bars or cutting parts of the image off. But either way you gave yourself the answer: consoles up until the sixth generation (PS2 and the like) look best on CRT TVs, period. I heard that there is an expensive upscaling device for the Wii, but those games are 16:9 for the most part and are therefore fine on modern TV sets anyways. With the old consoles the aspect ratio really is the biggest problem.

It will be gradually more and more difficult to play these games the way they were supposed to back in the day. I have this problem first hand, since I quite recently acquired a 14" Trinitron FD TV for my console needs. While it works fine, moving bright colors have somewhat of a smear to them on black backgrounds, much like LCD screens with high response time. I assume the electronics degraded over time. While the average consumer certainly doesn't have any reasons to care for all this, for people who still like to play those "obsolete" consoles (or vintage PC games, for that matter), it's a huge shame that no new 4:3 displays will be made anymore.

Reply 4 of 64, by Mau1wurf1977

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There are RGB to component converters. Also heaps of scalers.

You can also try S-Video but less and less TVs have that standard these days.

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Reply 5 of 64, by DonutKing

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The problem with RGB to component converters is that the ones I've seen are all about $90 and then I'd have to mod nearly all my consoles to get RGB.

I guess I'll just keep the CRT but I have nowhere to set it up. At the moment it sits in the bottom of my wardrobe and I set it up on the coffee table when I want to play it, then pack it up when I'm finished.

On the plus side I can plug the video into my crt, plug the audio leads into my new tv and it outputs into my sorround sound over optical s/pdif... And sounds awesome 😀

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.

Reply 6 of 64, by Gamecollector

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If your plasma tv have SCART - you can just use RGB-SCART cable.

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Reply 9 of 64, by Jorpho

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mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
robertmo wrote:

I have a vga cable for gamecube and it looks great on lcd

Nice! Is it NTSC compatible? 😁

If I'm not mistaken, it would only work with the older (DOL-001) models of the Gamecube that have digital out.

Reply 10 of 64, by mr_bigmouth_502

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Jorpho wrote:
mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
robertmo wrote:

I have a vga cable for gamecube and it looks great on lcd

Nice! Is it NTSC compatible? 😁

If I'm not mistaken, it would only work with the older (DOL-001) models of the Gamecube that have digital out.

Fortunately enough, I actually own one of those! It's the same one I got back when I was about 8-9 years old. 🤣

Reply 12 of 64, by fillosaurus

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I have no problem with my Playstation 1 and the almost 1yr old 32" LED TV. I still have a 17" CRT TV so I did compared how my PS1 looks. The only thing that is weird is that on the LED TV the aspect ratio is more like 14:9 than 4:3.
I also tested my NES, SNES and N64 on the LED TV. They look ok, can't remember about the aspect ratio, but I will test them again.
My PS2, on the other hand... I tested only 2 games: FF X and FF XII. While X looks ok, XII is pixelated.
The one I did not test yet is a SEGA Megadrive; I got it at fleamarket, without video cable. I improvised something with paper clips for testing only, so I am certain it works, but that's it.

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Reply 13 of 64, by DonutKing

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I've fiddled a bit and I've found that turning off motion smoothing and turning P-NR to max helps clear up the picture a bit. However you do miss out on certain visual effects particularly rapidly flashing ones. For example a lot of spell effects in final fantasy are less spectacular, and the hand cursor in battle menus just has lines through it instead of blinking.

Ultimately I think I will have to hold on to my old CRT TV.

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.

Reply 14 of 64, by fillosaurus

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I did notice a difference between PS1 and PS2 while playing FF 9. Spell effects and the twirling battle entering looked better on PS1 (SCPH 9002) than on slim PS2 (SCPH 77004). Not a TV problem, but compatibility.

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Reply 15 of 64, by DonutKing

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Yes that's a problem too. I haven't tried my PS1 on my TV yet, only the SNES Final Fantasy games.

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.

Reply 16 of 64, by d1stortion

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fillosaurus wrote:

I did notice a difference between PS1 and PS2 while playing FF 9. Spell effects and the twirling battle entering looked better on PS1 (SCPH 9002) than on slim PS2 (SCPH 77004). Not a TV problem, but compatibility.

Yeah the dithering with PS1 games seems kinda more noticable on the PS2...

Reply 17 of 64, by Samir

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One idea that I used to use back in the day for converting various signals was a VCR with composite inputs. Then the output could be the regular coax on channel 3 or 4. Using a coax to rgb modulator, you can probably get this to work on modern tvs.

Happy gaming!

Reply 18 of 64, by Jorpho

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Samir wrote:

One idea that I used to use back in the day for converting various signals was a VCR with composite inputs. Then the output could be the regular coax on channel 3 or 4. Using a coax to rgb modulator, you can probably get this to work on modern tvs.

I suspect that if this produced acceptable output, then cheap composite-to-component converters would be commonplace.

Reply 19 of 64, by Samir

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Jorpho wrote:
Samir wrote:

One idea that I used to use back in the day for converting various signals was a VCR with composite inputs. Then the output could be the regular coax on channel 3 or 4. Using a coax to rgb modulator, you can probably get this to work on modern tvs.

I suspect that if this produced acceptable output, then cheap composite-to-component converters would be commonplace.

There's just not enough demand for it. It's easier to have a coax to rgb converter since there's a ton of electronics that used coax. A compositve adapter would be too niche.

I forgot that there are composite to coax modulators out there too. Any tv that has a tuner can probably use one of these. I'm not sure about the quality, but since these are typically used in security camera installations, it can't be terrible.