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RGB, SCART, Component, Composite- Understanding failed Misuse of Terms.


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This thread reminds me that I've been planning to wire a RGB cable for my Mega Drive 1 for the past 8 years or so, but haven't got to it yet. I use it so rarely that the few times I play it, I'm satisfied with composite video. I've got some other RGB enabled systems though which I could plug in and take pictures to compare various displays of mine regarding sharpness, brightness, contrast, saturation etc. (Any lag is a little hard to illustrate in a still picture)

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spending 10x as much money for maybe 5% perceptible difference isnt saving anything.

 

If you're Uncle Scrooge McDuck, sure -- throwing that kind of money away is fine!

 

Actually, he'd never throw *any* money away. You'd have to argue hard to convince him to upgrade from RF to composite...

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spending 10x as much money for maybe 5% perceptible difference isnt saving anything.

It's a little irritating when people constantly use the Framemeister's price as an easy out in this conversation, when the reality is this specific device should only be a consideration for people who are very serious about streaming and recording. For everyone else, there is literally zero reason to use one today.

 

The OSSC isn't by any means "cheap" either, but one can do what Jess has done and spend a little bit of money here for one device that sucks, then spend a little bit of money there for another device that sucks, and end up disappointed after it's all said and done. Add in all the time wasted on top and that once seemingly "expensive", high-end item starts to look a lot more palatable.

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It's a little irritating when people constantly use the Framemeister's price as an easy out in this conversation, when the reality is this specific device should only be a consideration for people who are very serious about streaming and recording. For everyone else, there is literally zero reason to use one today.

 

The OSSC isn't by any means "cheap" either, but one can do what Jess has done and spend a little bit of money here for one device that sucks, then spend a little bit of money there for another device that sucks, and end up disappointed after it's all said and done. Add in all the time wasted on top and that once seemingly "expensive", high-end item starts to look a lot more palatable.

what happens when you end up spending $200 on an OSSC or $400 on a Framekeister and you still end up disappointed with the result?
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spending 10x as much money for maybe 5% perceptible difference isnt saving anything.

 

You've already established in a few threads that you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to retro game console video (xrgb mini is slow, ps2 with supposed digital component), so why don't you just stop?

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I dont begrudge anyone spending their own money on whatever they want. I do get a bit bugged by some of the snobby suggestion that anything less than the most expensive option is a waste of time. In my personal experience, high end devices do produce a great picture on screens with little movement. Noticeably better than the cheaper options. But once a game gets into its paces and any kind of high speed graphical motion starts happening on screen - all the lovely upscaling and pixel accuracy and such really goes out the window, and it really all depends on how great your TV/display is. Getting a $400 Framemeister to feed signal to a $299 HiSense Best Buy Special is basically point less. Thats like plugging a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard into a $50 Peavey solid state amp.

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And there you go with the $400 garbage. Yes, that's expensive--and no one is recommending it for casual use. The OSSC is half the price and it is top-notch. If you are going to have a baseline, let it be that and quit exaggerating what it really costs to get into higher end devices like these.

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Getting a $400 Framemeister to feed signal to a $299 HiSense Best Buy Special is basically point less.

 

I agree. Except I think spending any money at all to do what a cheap/free CRT does is a waste of money, especially when you figure in lag and light guns. If we are going to start talking about saving money well then there really is no comparison.

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And there you go with the $400 garbage. Yes, that's expensive--and no one is recommending it for casual use. The OSSC is half the price. If you are going to have a baseline, let it be that and quit exaggerating what it really costs to get into higher end devices like these.

how is being factually accurate about the cost of these devices garbage?

 

Also - how would playing retro console video games in the privacy of you le own Home, by yourself, as an adult, being considered anything short of casual? Is there a professional retro video game console playing society or industry Im not aware of? All of this stuff is for casual use!

Edited by John Stamos Mullet
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opinions are subjective. Theyre funny like that. When people start speaking authoritatively over others opinions is bad juju.

 

Speaking authoritatively from actual experience is more appealing to me than speaking out of my ass.

 

how is being factually accurate about the cost of these devices garbage.

 

Being factually accurate is one thing. Being relevant is another. At this moment in time, for people that just want to use RGB, component or VGA on a modern display (which I'd wager is probably 98% of the folks involved in this discussion), there's little reason to recommend a Framemeister over an OSSC. So, you use the OSSC as the baseline ($200), not the edge-case scenario ($400).

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..... At this moment in time, for people that just want to use RGB, component or VGA on a modern display (which I'd wager is probably 98% of the folks involved in this discussion), there's little reason to recommend a Framemeister over an OSSC. So, you use the OSSC as the baseline ($200), not the edge-case scenario ($400).

...not quite, the OSSC being a line doubler/tripler and whatnot does not generate std HDMI signals all the time and whatever it does generate is within tolerance if and only if the original console signal is.

So when one buys an OSSC one also has to factor in a TV/Monitor that can handle the OSSC and whatever consoles he is interested into connecting to it.

The XRGBMini allows perfect HDMI signaling if need be (at the cost of the occasional stutter, inevitable to maintain perfect HDMI timing) or a pass-thru mode (that though can desync if the TV can't handle it).

To be fair I purchased the XRGBMini when it was ~310US$ so obviously I have a different point of view. I think I have consoles that can be in pass-thru mode and others that must be in HDMIlock mode as my gaming TV has relatively little tolerance to variations on the HDMI path

(btw this is the reason why the dearth of new FPGA HDMI consoles do tweak the base clocks ever so slightly, so that they can generate perfectly timed HDMI signals without full framebuffer and ensuing stutter).

 

Finally wrt SVideo, it heavily depends on the TV set, as I said one too many times I have this Vizio LED TV 1080p that as long as it can latch on it it's very very good, while 2 other TVs in the house are marginally better than composite (so much so that I think inside the signal paths are merged but I've never validated it), at the same time the not-so-good TVs seems to latch on pretty much anything while the Vizio on SVideo is way pickier than over composite.

 

Oh ... and in my experience the Genesis/MD is among the worse in term of composite on modern TVs so one would want to use SVideo/RGB if one can.

 

NOTE: I have no space for anything but a 13" LCD so that's what I have (and a crappy one at that), wrt LED/LCD panels the max I can fit in my gaming space is a 32" so that limits my options too. I got lucky with that Vizio, I didn't plan on it, actually I was using a Sharp 32" that my wife has since got back because she thinks the 29" Vizio is too small ... for once lucky me.

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Ok, well I guess your idea of what represents a baseline and mine are a bit different. I would have thought the myriad of $50 to $100 devices ( like the Retrotink) that produce acceptably decent to genuinely great results would be the baseline, an OSSC would be the best cost doesnt matter for performance option, and the FM would be the ultra high end nobody can really tell the difference but let the rich have their toys option.

 

Call me cheap, but unless you have a middle to high end display (Sony or Samsung in the $1200 to $4000 range) in most cases you arent really going to get an appreciable difference. So throwing a fantastic rgb conversion device in the middle of a 30 year old game console and a bargain grade TV really isnt going to help.

 

So maybe I sound like an ignorant, but needing to spend $200 to $400 on conversion devices and then another $2000+ on a kick ass TV, just so the pixels on Penny Hardaways headshot in NBA Jam look really crisp - sounds locobananas to me.

Edited by John Stamos Mullet
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...

Call me cheap, but unless you have a middle to high end display (Sony or Samsung in the $1200 to $4000 range) in most cases you arent really going to get an appreciable difference. So throwing a fantastic rgb conversion device in the middle of a 30 year old game console and a bargain grade TV really isnt going to help.

....

This is actually a misconception, el-cheapo modern LCD/LED TVs are actually pretty good all considered, unfortunately the cost of the upconverters like OSSC and XRGBMini has little to do with their manufacturing cost but more to the fact that they are not mass produced.

The cheap XYZ->HDMI from china used to fill the niche to allow connecting old SD VCRs, DVDs, Camcorders that did emit a 480i signal (like they should) to HiDef TVs via HDMI (assuming they did a better job than the TV).

The 240p trick played by old consoles is really what gets them plus the full framebuffer required to guarantee compliant HDMI signaling (to be fair the newer HDMI specs seems to standardize also non std signals so all of this may change in the not so distant future).

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Ok, well I guess your idea of what represents a baseline and mine are a bit different.

....

... actually, on a different note, given this thread spawned off of one about miscommunication, is it possible that you actually have an honest decent-to-good experience on your composite consoles?

If that's the case maybe that is why you think the improvements are generally unworthy of the hassle.

 

If I had only seen composite on my LED TV via my Duo-R or SNES Jr (no mods) I would never had bothered, they look pretty good as it is, but as I had a Genny and that was utter crap, it was painfully obvious to me I had to do something.

Maybe you have one or more TV sets that do a decent job out of the consoles you have connected on composite, could that be the case?

I think somewhere you mentioned you have a relatively small-ish collection of consoles, maybe you have no problem child among them or they kind of work well with your TV sets.

 

I thought my Vizio+SVideo & mod was all that I needed and for a while it was true (aside the hassle of modding I mean) ... but then once I added a couple more consoles (PAL to be fair) and boom, I crossed the line and it was no longer sufficient (couldn't use direct SVideo [or composite] at all and el-cheapo SVideo->HDMI was borderline unacceptable for those new acquisitions).

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...not quite, the OSSC being a line doubler/tripler and whatnot does not generate std HDMI signals all the time and whatever it does generate is within tolerance if and only if the original console signal is.

So when one buys an OSSC one also has to factor in a TV/Monitor that can handle the OSSC and whatever consoles he is interested into connected to it.

The XRGBMini allows perfect HDMI signaling if need be (at the cost of the occasional stutter, inevitable to maintain perfect HDMI timing) or a pass-thru mode (that though can desync if the TV can't handle it).

Right, the Framemeister certainly has advantages. One of them is ease of use. Plug and play, you turn it on, select your input, and you don't really need to think about it. Plus there's the added functionality with lower-end analog signals as well as its settings flexibility and zoom functionality (of which I actually used just last night while playing SNES DOOM, a game that normally takes up slightly less than 3/4 of the screen real estate; I was able to make it nearly full screen thanks to the FM).

 

As I've said previously, due to how I mostly game these days, the FM is my preferred device. It is *not* the device I will recommend to newcomers though, because in many scenarios it's unnecessary. When you start recording however, that flexibility, ease of use and better compatibility with capture devices goes a long way. Assuming your TV is compatible, you won't run into these problems with the OSSC. Capture cards are a whole other ball game.

 

Regarding OSSC compatibility, you are correct that your TV needs to be compatible with 240p signals first before investing in one. Assuming one's display still has older analog inputs though, this can be tested before buying the device. Likewise, research can (and probably should) be done--there are forums dedicated to the OSSC and folks have documented what televisions are compatible with it.

 

Ok, well I guess your idea of what represents a baseline and mine are a bit different. I would have thought the myriad of $50 to $100 devices ( like the Retrotink) that produce acceptably decent to genuinely great results would be the baseline, an OSSC would be the best cost doesnt matter for performance option, and the FM would be the ultra high end nobody can really tell the difference but let the rich have their toys option.

 

Call me cheap, but unless you have a middle to high end display (Sony or Samsung in the $1200 to $4000 range) in most cases you arent really going to get an appreciable difference. So throwing a fantastic rgb conversion device in the middle of a 30 year old game console and a bargain grade TV really isnt going to help.

 

So maybe I sound like an ignorant, but needing to spend $200 to $400 on conversion devices and then another $2000+ on a kick ass TV, just so the pixels on Penny Hardaways headshot in NBA Jam look really crisp - sounds locobananas to me.

Sure, a baseline for any device that'll take and upscale RGB should probably be one of those $50 to $100 devices you are talking about (I'm ignoring the Retro Tink because that's not intended for RGB/SCART, though it does do component; it's a good choice for people not looking to get into RGB at all). That said, for the best quality you are going to get with RGB on a HD display, then the OSSC is the logical baseline, not the FM.

 

As far as televisions, it is false that you need an uber-high end display to see a difference between low-end and high-end scalers. While I can only chime in anecdotally, my $500, 47" LG LED TV (bought in 2013, mind you) is crystal clear with no blurring, shimmering or shaking when in motion. Likewise, a cheap Asus 23" monitor I picked up earlier in the year for use as my main gameplay monitor while streaming and recording (acquired for a measly $100 mind you) has given me zero issues as well and everything is razor sharp. Both are 1080p displays, but I personally have no need yet to upgrade to anything higher.

 

It is a discussion, where people are going to point out misinformation.

That's pretty much it. I have no issues with opinions. Everyone is going to have preferences, particularly when certain costs are involved. The information at hand has to be right though.

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... actually, on a different note, given this thread spawned off of one about miscommunication, is it possible that you actually have an honest decent-to-good experience on your composite consoles?

If that's the case maybe that is why you think the improvements are generally unworthy of the hassle.

 

If I had only seen composite on my LED TV via my Duo-R or SNES Jr (no mods) I would never had bothered, they look pretty good as it is, but as I had a Genny and that was utter crap, it was painfully obvious to me I had to do something.

Maybe you have one or more TV sets that do a decent job out of the consoles you have connected on composite, could that be the case?

I think somewhere you mentioned you have a relatively small-ish collection of consoles, maybe you have no problem child among them or they kind of work well with your TV sets.

I can relate to this. I recorded for a long time via composite and always thought it was fine. I would even hook the Dreamcast up to my LG flatpanel with composite, the Jaguar with RF, and thought both looked fine (just the thought of it now kind of makes me shudder).

 

It wasn't until sometime in early 2015 when I started streaming that I began taking note of my video quality. Up until then it never bothered me, but when I'd finish my stream and go watch someone else for a bit, I was shocked to see how much better their footage looked compared to mine. Mine was soft and de-saturated, while theirs was sharp and vibrant. It was like emulator quality visuals, but they were using real hardware. That was pretty much enough for me to start looking into a high quality scaler. Things like the FM had been recommended to me multiple times in the years leading up to that, but I always shrugged it off as being perfectly content with my recording quality. Looking back at it years later, I wish I made the upgrade sooner.

 

I still think composite (and particularly s-video) looks great on a good CRT. The problem is, I am no longer in a position where I can do that and still get the best capture feed possible, so I have to play on a HD display. Likewise, a lot of folks either can't have or simply don't want a CRT, which is why this discussion is important. The CRT area of the topic has been beaten to death here over the years, so I apologize to sound like a broken record there.

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this isnt a contest. Its a discussion. Im going to block you now. Bye Felecia.

Do you hear that? It's the sound of Keepdreamin not talking. It's like a spring morning with birds chirping and the wind gently blowing through the grass. Isn't it lovely? Everyone should experience that.

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