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Back when I offered 7800 mods, I was using the electronic sentimentalities board.

Cool - thanks for the information Yurkie. Looks like the other factors mentioned is what makes up the difference then, if ElectronicSent. still assembles the board the same way.

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Do those screen captures ever look awesome!! Better than my rf to vcr to tv.

 

I think I will probably get a best system someday as the shipping there and back plus the 70 bucks for the mod I could get another system for the same price.

Can a person buy the svideo and composite mod board for a screw it yourselfer in a well made kit with everything included and instructions?

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Picture (or in this case video) speaks louder than words - This is Composite (not S-Video) utilizing the ElectronicSentimentalities mod. recorded directly from a CRT:

 

http://youtu.be/Xzn1a-5Eobc

 

Please note, colors are *slightly* off due to the fault of the video recording and appear a little more warm 'live'. There is also some blurring as a result of the nature of trying to capture the CRT image. It appears more crisp/clean 'live'. However, I still believe the recording does it some justice, and you can see why I use the word spectacular to describe the results.

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My modded 7800 from Electronic Sentimentalities is one of my most prized consoles. The fellow is a real professional in quality of work, in communication and attitude, in quick turnaround time, and pretty much in every measurable way. I can say the same thing for Yurkie with Colecovision dealings.

 

By all means, have no reservation about sending your 7800 to Electronic Sentimentalities.

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My modded 7800 from Electronic Sentimentalities is one of my most prized consoles. The fellow is a real professional in quality of work, in communication and attitude, in quick turnaround time, and pretty much in every measurable way. I can say the same thing for Yurkie with Colecovision dealings.

 

By all means, have no reservation about sending your 7800 to Electronic Sentimentalities.

 

Agreed! Wow wish I had noticed this thread before posting my own, I feel like an idiot.. What's amazing is the quality of the S-Video screen shots over composite. Just scored a 36" late 90's Magnavox CRT TV today so psyched to actually put the s-video to use. My New receiver and LCD TV don't even have S-Video inputs. Now I just need a late 90's early 00's receiver for killer Stereo!! This is all going in my "classic gaming dungeon" that is being created as we speak.

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  • 1 month later...

 

Agreed! Wow wish I had noticed this thread before posting my own, I feel like an idiot.. What's amazing is the quality of the S-Video screen shots over composite. Just scored a 36" late 90's Magnavox CRT TV today so psyched to actually put the s-video to use. My New receiver and LCD TV don't even have S-Video inputs. Now I just need a late 90's early 00's receiver for killer Stereo!! This is all going in my "classic gaming dungeon" that is being created as we speak.

Are you posting pics of the 'dungeon'?

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I too have the rev 2.1 board installed in my 7800. However, the composite on my flatpanel is loads better than the s-video. On s-vid I have horrible bleeding on the reds and lots of ghosting throughout. The effects are still present on the composite, but blend in much better and not nearly as noticeable. I also have the issue where the music on Commando is very hard to hear and will event change volume depending on what other sounds are playing at the same time.

 

The only difference I made to anything, was that I have the audio bridged across two RCAs so that I get sound from both the left and right. Not stereo, just added another RCA and have the wire split to both. I was thinking about maybe adding a capacitor in somewhere to see if that helps?

 

I will get some screen shots of the video artifacts I'm still getting on my 7800 later.

 

I did notice one other really strange thing. The composite by itself is better then RF, but not a defined as the S-video is. But the s-video has the ghosting and horrible color bleeding effects. The arches on the bridges in Commando really show this.

 

Now, if I have both the composite and the s-video plugged in at the same time but only view the composite, then the composite actually looks really good with more defined edges and more of the lighter colors showing up properly. The light colored specks in Dark Chambers are a good example.

 

I will need to take pics of those two games later to show what I'm talking about. Again it could be the age of the console used etc, but I'm not sure.

 

UPDATE: Here are some pics I took to show what I'm getting with the longhorn 2.1 mod from ElectronicSentimentalities...

 

This is Commando from my Dev OS modded 7800 on the RF:

 

 

 

Here is Commando from the Composite video out on my LHE modded 7800....

 

 

 

Here is Commando from the s-video out on my LHE modded 7800....

 

 

 

Notice in the s-video shots there is still some jailbars on the left edge of the image along with jailbars and ghosting that can be seen on the extreme right edge of the picture. Also notice the stills with the arches on the bridge on the s-video.. why is this happening?

 

Here are some shots of Dark Chambers on the same modded 7800... First is the s-video output. Not as bad as Commando, but you can still the ghosting on the right edge...

 

 

 

Here is the same shot from composite.... Notice the dots along the ground are no longer visible at all? I know the picture is blurry, but the image is so dark my camera has trouble getting a shot. Still it is good enough to show what I'm talking about.

 

 

 

And finally, this is the composite video out on Dark Chambers when I plug the s-video cable back up but leave it on the composite video out... Picture get clearer and the background dots have reappeared?!

 

 

 

I really want to like this mod board I received..but I'm just not getting the quality from it that I expect. Especially after the amazing difference the video mod board did in my 5200 and similar mods I've done on my Sega systems. But since I removed the RF modulator completely and the mods from LHE disable the RF anyway, I'm now stuck with this and pretty much use my other Dev OS 7800 instead on RF... Disappointed I am.

 

 

Edited by -^Cro§Bow^-
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You're playing your 7800 console(s) on a modern flat panel TV - Looks like an Insignia (I have one of those too). I've only had fair to lousy results with any of my 7800 consoles hooked up to modern flat panel displays whether RF, Composite, or S-Video. Panasonic LCD/Plasma, LG LCD, Insignia LED - All look like crap when compared to connecting them to a CRT, IMHO. Your composite and S-Video captures are both being stretched as well which will cause further distortion.

 

Some modern flat panels may handle the signal better (Especially if focusing on S-Video) than your results, but at the very least your palette will be skewed - Hue 1x looks more green-yellow than gold - to say the least.

 

Your example captures for Commando highlights that well. I captured a while ago the same console - A Yurkie mod (Per Yurkie, utilizing a 2.1 LH engineering board) on a modern flat panel and a CRT. The difference between the Panasonic LCD and a C1702 CRT in this example is obvious:

 

post-18-0-09392200-1397097028_thumb.png

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Yes..but then all the rest of my consoles I've modded to s-video look really good. The stretching is because I have all the composite and s-video devices connected to a JVC SX-700 AV switcher. From there the video out of both composite and s-video go into an upscaler that outputs the final video to HDMI into my flat panel. This flatpanel will not let me change the screensize when from the HDMI inputs. So everything on HDMI is widescreen regardless. You can't tell in the photos I took, but the image doesn't cover the entire screen. It still leaves about a 1/4 of total space unused as borders along the sides. Also not all games look as badly as Commando does. Others like Double Dragon look quite good:

 

 

 

 

The colors I can sorta live with, but it is the jailbar and artifacting effect that is really annoying?! Again the RF is almost better. I'm going to try the other composite mod that doesn't use the LHE board design and see what results I get from that. I've also thought about just creating a similar amp to that used on the genesis and SMS and run the combined luma and chroma through that and see what results I get.

 

I'm with ya on the flat panel being part of the problem and this Insignia doesn't have the best contrast ratios...but it is 42"...LED and only cost me $235 at the time I bought it so for the Wii, WiiU, PS3 and other systems it has been excellent. Wasn't until the 7800 that I started to see this...

 

 

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Hue 1x suffers the worst for colors (What's used in the ground for Commando), some of the other differences as you noticed, are not too bad. You can 'help' the issue somewhat by changing your tint/hue settings to lean more red. Not too much though, or what should be green will start looking brownish.

 

The Atari 2600 and Atari 5200 suffers a similar fate with colors and why some are under the misconception of a more greener looking 2600 Pitfall and yellow-green/green-yellow Hue 1x display palette.

 

The stretching (but not completely) results with my Panasonics too. Funny enough, the aspect ratio you wind up with is similar, if not exact, to how the ProSystem emulator displays. Somewhere between a 4:3 and a 16:9.

 

The inexpensive price of the Insignia was one of the factors for my purchase as was the decent HD picture. However, my LG's and Panasonics don't perform great with the 7800 either. I didn't have that jailbar effect on the LG or Panasonics like I did with the Insignia though. Also, I did notice that earlier console models ('AT84'/'AT85') seem to perform better than newer ones ('A1'/'A3' and especially 'X') respecting overall video output quality. The differences were probably not even noticeable when everything was just RF and CRT. Utilizing S-Video and HDTVs you definitely notice differences, especially when you test across multiple displays (types) for palette colors :)

 

Last note...A few games (I.E. Tower Toppler, Desert Falcon, Jinks) need and utilize NTSC artifacts to fully display properly, so it makes all the games and console shine best when used on a CRT. IMHO, it's worth picking up at least one C1702 or a similar display type, or splurge some more and go for an appropriate Sony PVM.

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  • 1 year later...

I emailed him. He never replied. I need a new modded 7800, mine doesn't play 2600 carts anymore.

 

He'll likely get back to you eventually, or I'd just try again. He's a busy guy. He doesn't sell 7800's pre-modded, you need to have one already that you ship to him to be modded. Including shipping both ways and what he charges to do the mod, it's around $100 (give or take a little) to have it done.

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