ydcl Posted April 3, 2014 Share Posted April 3, 2014 Hi all, I bought this s-video cable for my Atari Jaguar and did a fairly quick test with Doom on one of my TV's. What am I supposed to expect? I had to change the contrast on my TV since I could barely see anything on Doom. Then it was fine and it did look better. How dark is Doom supposed to be? The red was bleeding off a little bit. Is there a better s-video cable than this or is this the best one? http://www.ebay.com/itm/171281346550?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649 cheers, Yan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kgenthe Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 Depending on your TV you might not see much of a difference at all. Are you using a flat panel or a CRT? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Austin Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 Depending on your TV you might not see much of a difference at all. This is my experience on my Sony WEGA. It displays a great picture as-is even with composite, so the improvement S-Video gives is negligible at best in my case. I suppose it would vary depending on the type of screen, make/model, LCD/CRT, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ydcl Posted April 4, 2014 Author Share Posted April 4, 2014 I have 5 TV's for my vintage consoles in my house, they range from 90's TV's to 2009. I don't put vintage consoles on my 60inch samsung! That's the pride of my home lol. The TV is a tube tv I guess. 32 inch that I was playing on. I do have a 39 inch flat screen that I could try it later on it. Maybe it will look better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Austin Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 I don't put vintage consoles on my 60inch samsung! That's the pride of my home lol. Hey man.. vintage consoles can look amazing on big screen televisions with the right upscaler! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kgenthe Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 The TV is a tube tv I guess. 32 inch that I was playing on. If it's a late 90's early 00's CRT of decent quality, you probably won't notice much difference at all. TVs of that age had decent comb filters that really cleaned up Composite sources to near S-video quality. You'll really appreciate the S-Video cable if you ever invest in a nice upscaler (like the XRGB-mini) as Austin noted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeoGeoNinja Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 In my experience, traditional 4:3 TV's are better at handling older videogames, especially of the 2D variety. I remember, when the 360 first came out, I used a 36" Panasonic Quintrix Flatscreen 16:9 CRT for the 360 via RGB and a trusty old Toshiba 4:3 for my older stuff. However, when I tried (out of interest) running my 2D fighters (etc) on my Saturn, PS2 & DC through the Qunitrix via RGB, it didn't handle those graphics anywhere near as well overall. Yet, it was great for the 360. Really nice in fact Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willard Posted April 5, 2014 Share Posted April 5, 2014 (edited) problem with *really good* scalers like the XRGB is that they are so damn expensive the cost of getting into retro gaming is getting more expensive though. i guess if you have a nice expensive collection it might be worth shelling out to make it look as good as possible. I thought the S-video on the jaguar was a nice improvement over composite. i dont know of third party cables like the one linked in the first post though. does the build quality significantly affect the video quality as long as it meets a minimum standard? or can a reasonably crafted hobbyist cable still be much worse than a high quality professionally manufactured cable? Edited April 5, 2014 by Willard Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ydcl Posted April 5, 2014 Author Share Posted April 5, 2014 I tried the S-video again and the red bleeding letters stopped. I had to plug it in better because out of nowhere it freezes the Jaguar if the slightest thing like my cat moves on the table lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted April 5, 2014 Share Posted April 5, 2014 I tried the S-video again and the red bleeding letters stopped. I had to plug it in better because out of nowhere it freezes the Jaguar if the slightest thing like my cat moves on the table lol. big cat/little cat syndrome. It's a known issue. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ovalbugmann Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 Yeah, I much prefer S-Video over traditional composite connection, it does really help the red bleeding. Got my Jag hooked up to a Sony LCD TV (120hrtz) To do it the best way, I'm using an Atari SCART connector ordered from France`, to a scart switcher with separated audio output(right to the TV) then to a SCART to Component(RGB) box outputting to the TV, as suggested by Remowilliams and it works very good no bleeding at all, it's the clearest connection I've ever had with the Jag. So I don't use the CatBox anymore or or Atari S-Video cable unless I bring the Jag to a friends' house that uses crt tv's still. It's nice having a perfectly clear picture,... there are two sides to this though, because most LCD tvs display resolution based on the input signal you can see the imperfections/blockyness more than the bleeding/softening produced on crt displays, but you quickly get used to how much clearer it looks on LCD and there's no cutting off of the picture. I also think the 100 inch projection TV! that Gunstar(i think) had his Jaguar hooked up to looked pretty cool as well. But, I completely understand wanting to play your Jaguar on only vintage/old skool displays(CRT) to really get the classic videogaming feel - and that is best with a 32" or larger CRT. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+-^CrossBow^- Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 Sorry to dig this thread up but I just made a s-video av cable for my jaguar. I am using the right pin outs as I've found online, but in my discovery the chroma coming out of the jaguar multi connector appears to just be a cleaned up composite+sync signal? I say this because my JVC s-video switcher has a monitor out function. Since I ONLY use s-video on the output is uses a built in mixer when I use a composite source through the s-video out. On true s-video connections it tells me the y/c separator is active. Imagine my surprise when my switcher insists on using the composite mixer circuit when using my Jaguar through s-video? I've only seen this on other system and that was with a poorly made dreamcast cable that I bought premade that was using the composite line as the chroma for the s-video line. So is this was the Jaguar's actual chroma is? Just a cleaned up composite output with luma separate? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zerosquare Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 It's supposed to be a proper Y/C output. Are you sure your cable is wired properly? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+-^CrossBow^- Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 (edited) Yes...I have the Chroma coming off 8A and the Luma off 8B. The s-video cable I used has the grounds shared between them so I attached the ground at 4A. I don't even have anything close to the edge near the #10 pins. In doing a bit more comparison, I've noticed that either the s-video chroma is shared internally with the composite somewhere on the jag, or... has the composite been hiding the fact that the Jaguar is in fact a dithering graphics machine?! The dithering on all the colors is what initially set me off looking into this, because I only get the dithering when I use a composite signal going through the s-video output and have forgotten to change it to composite output, or if the s-video chroma is shared with the composite signal. On composite output the jaguar's colors are very solid and uniform. But on the s-video out, I see dithering squares in nearly all colors. I can confirm there is a difference between the composite and s-video though as I used Stones N Bones from Pinball fantasies as an example. On composite, the score readout and upper level above the playfield on the left hand side have a lot of rainbow aritifacting in those sections. Where as on the s-video connection the score is indeed pure white and the upper playfield shows a dithered white and grey pattern to simulate transparency. I will try and take some pics to show what I'm talking about in a bit. Update - I added pics to show what I'm talking about.... Here is a pic of the s-video output I get. The score readout is nice and white, but what is up with the dithering pattern on the purples in the upper right there on the playfield? Here is the composite output. Notice the rainbow artifacting I get on the scoreboard readout and also on the upper playfield section on the left? Here is a closeup of that section of the playfield through the composite output. Notice the colors are uniform and blend in nicely. And here is the closeup of the same section on the s-video output?! Again, you can clearly see the dithering squares on the purple and also in other parts of the playfield. so again, is the jaguar actually dithering all these colors and I never noticed it because of the artifacting from the composite and now I'm seeing the jaguar's graphics in their true form for the first time? If so, I might just stick with composite for most of the games... I've never seen anything like this dithering pattern before on any other s-video outputs except when my video switcher thinks I'm trying to output composite signals through the s-video. I see this same thing happen when I purchased a Dreamcast s-video cable that was actually using the composite and chroma shared on the cable, or when I forget to switch my output selector to composite when a composite signal is fed into the switcher but I leave the s-video output in place. My s-video switcher will produce this dithering pattern on s-video when I use a composite input and want to output to s-video. Edited August 3, 2014 by -^Cro§Bow^- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zerosquare Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 I would advise using a cable with separate grounds and wiring them separately on the Jaguar side, or wiring a female S-video socket on your Jaguar and using a standard but high quality male-male S-video cable. Some S-video cables use cheap and unscreened wires inside, instead of the proper two coax cables ; it can cause that sort of problems. With that being said, I've noticed that the S-video output on the Jag is not as good as it could be; there's a bit of smearing and dot crawl (the thing that looks like dithering) where there should be none. Using the RGB outputs and an external S-Video encoder gives a better picture. But the picture should still be OK. I'd check the cable first. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+madman Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 To me that doesn't look like dot crawl. If there was dot crawl, I would think you would see the same effects in the "K E Y" bonus spots, but there are none. I think you are just seeing the color gradient in better detail in s-video over composite. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rex Dart Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 To me that doesn't look like dot crawl... I think you are just seeing the color gradient in better detail in s-video over composite. I think so too. Notice that the checkerboard dither is still there in the composite image... just blurred heavily. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+-^CrossBow^- Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 My assumption as well. Simply put the jaguar was relying on the artifacting to make the appearance of more colors on screen then there actually was. Given this, the jaguar seems to produce more like a 8-bit 256 color palette over a true 16-bit or higher colors with the dithering that is going on. Even the Jaguar logo that comes up when first powering it on has the dithering pattern in it. Also forgot to mention, but the dithering squares don't move. They are static with the graphic and move with the playfield. So they appear to be deliberate, but man.. it is ugly and would have been best if they went with a closest match color banding vs the dithering. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zerosquare Posted August 4, 2014 Share Posted August 4, 2014 The Jaguar supports both 16-bit and 24-bit color (although 24-bit is rarely used), and does not have any kind of hardware dithering. See Rayman for an example of what kind of graphic quality can be achieved: https://atariage.com/screenshot_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=1128 The Jaguar boot logo doesn't have any dithering either. The best way to be sure would be to run Pinball Fantasies on Virtual Jaguar and see whether there's any dithering used. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UHATEIT Posted April 4, 2018 Share Posted April 4, 2018 (edited) I am sorry to rehash an old thread from so long ago. I am sure checkerboarding and dithering is a topic that has been beaten to death. I have tried a couple of different AV cables and when I use them it's obviously better than RF but get more blur/fuzz especially in the red areas. I love that when I use the svideo cables I have that is cleans/sharpens that up quite a bit. But I get significant checkerboarding ever since getting svideo cables.I have 2 different svideo cable setups. One which is the red/white audio and Svideo ONLY (which actually has 2 cables going into the back of the plug. And then I have another one which has the Svideo and also the yellow AV cable as well. I have heard that with most cable options getting a dedicated svideo only is the way to go vs the ones with the yellow added since it can often not ground properly and split the signal to the yellow cable making it active still. I guess that is what results in the checkerboard look.I noticed this significantly when I installed the CD player unit to the top of my Jaguar as all of the CD games suffer from significant checkerboarding and also the carts that are plugged into the top of the CD unit as well suffer from it, just not as badly. For anyone with an Svideo plug being used on their Jaguar do you get significant checkerboarding? And if so, have you noticed it to be amplified with the CD unit installed? Since the cable doesn't plug into the CD unit itself I would doubt it would contribute to it. Edited April 4, 2018 by UHATEIT Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zerosquare Posted April 4, 2018 Share Posted April 4, 2018 Can you take a photo of the picture you're getting, and of the cable you're using? Back when I used S-Video, I don't remember noticing significant checkerboarding (there was a bit of it, but not much). I can't comment on the effect of the JagCD since I haven't got one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UHATEIT Posted April 5, 2018 Share Posted April 5, 2018 Can you take a photo of the picture you're getting, and of the cable you're using? Back when I used S-Video, I don't remember noticing significant checkerboarding (there was a bit of it, but not much). I can't comment on the effect of the JagCD since I haven't got one. I tried taking shots with my cell phone and I couldn't seem to get a good pic of it. I have 2 aftermarket Jaguar Svideo cables tho (one with red/white/yellow and svideo, and the other with just red/white and dedicated svideo only). I did some testing and found that when I try to use my splitter even with the dedicated svideo one it looks terrible with tons of checkerboard. When I connected that dedicated one to the TV itself the checkerboarding was still there but went down a lot. The one that has both yellow Av and the svideo is the one that still looks terrible connected to the splitter OR the TV itself, which I think is a common issue with those type of combo cables splitting the signal to both the svideo side and the yellow side and causes that issue Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+-^CrossBow^- Posted April 5, 2018 Share Posted April 5, 2018 The checkerboard patterns is exactly what I was talking about when I used my home made s-video cable during the time this originally came up. Since then, I went back to just using composite because the checkerboard/dithering pattern was way too distracting. I've got the same effect on my TurboDuo, but that is mainly because there isn't really dedicated s-video output from the 6280 chip in those. So you have to use the composite with resistors to strip out the extra and use that for chroma. That is why dedicated video encoder boards are used for TG-16 and PCE stuff now. The other option I've used and it still had the same effect, but was a tad blurrier was that I've used a Nintendo multi-AV out with s-video from off my Jag using one of Judas-Prime's converters. I will need to revisit this and see although I've been tempted to purchase ones of the newly designed and made s-video cables for the Jag that Best sells, but they aren't cheap! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UHATEIT Posted April 5, 2018 Share Posted April 5, 2018 The checkerboard patterns is exactly what I was talking about when I used my home made s-video cable during the time this originally came up. Since then, I went back to just using composite because the checkerboard/dithering pattern was way too distracting. I've got the same effect on my TurboDuo, but that is mainly because there isn't really dedicated s-video output from the 6280 chip in those. So you have to use the composite with resistors to strip out the extra and use that for chroma. That is why dedicated video encoder boards are used for TG-16 and PCE stuff now. The other option I've used and it still had the same effect, but was a tad blurrier was that I've used a Nintendo multi-AV out with s-video from off my Jag using one of Judas-Prime's converters. I will need to revisit this and see although I've been tempted to purchase ones of the newly designed and made s-video cables for the Jag that Best sells, but they aren't cheap! I noticed the ones from Best they have are a combo cable at $44. I didnt want to spend that much. I bought the dedicated svideo one from ebay that people have posted $26 for, which just has the svideo and the red/white audio. I plugged that into my TV directly and it looks pretty damn good with minimal checkerboard. I just did a long playthrough of Battlemorph on CD and it looked great, wheras when it was plugged into my svideo switcher (4 in 1 out) it would look terrible with all the checkerboard. Made it look better. That leads me to believe it is the switch being cheapo and the cable being better. But when I Used my combo cable I got the dithering/checkerboard regardless of if I used the switch or direct yo the TV and it was bad enough I don't want to use the combo anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+-^CrossBow^- Posted April 5, 2018 Share Posted April 5, 2018 I also use a switcher, but it is nice quality one. I use an old JVC JX-S700. It is a powered one that doesn't introduce any signal loss. But again, with my Jag and the TG-16 the checkerboard patterns are present in S-video. But again, I need to test that with the new adapter I got from Judas-Prime to be sure. Pretty sure they were still there though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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