The New Cables For Classic Consoles Thread

[+-^CrossBow^-]

As I said the cables do work and they look good, but the Genesis is providing a much more vivid and sharper picture compared to the systems I have on RGB SCART. Maybe it is the auto switcher? I haven't connected any of the consoles directly to the OSSC because like many of us who have some RGB consoles, I got more than one to connect up LOL!

 

Although if the SNES keeps dropping video on me I'm likely to move it back to s-video and put it on the 7SC.

[BawesomeBurf]

Ah nice, I just got that Dreamcast Audio/ Video Cable with S-Video in the mail a few weeks ago but haven't had a chance to try them out yet. Good to know that they are decent quality. I was kind of worried because you can't really see the S-Video part of the cable, looked like a standard Composite.

 

I picked up the HD Retrovision Genesis component cables with Saturn Adapter last year and have been extremely pleased with the results. Makes the 2D games look really sharp. 3D games look good as well.

[genesisguy]

Thanks for sending me over here blainelockair.

I guess my first concern would be lag over any picture quality. HDTVs are getting better but I remember when they first came out the NES and Genesis looked crappy on them.

 

I'm more versed in the NES lately. So my best example would be how nice the Retro AVS looks on my HDTV. The Retrotink is close but not as sharp.

That all said after watching a youtube video on the Mega SG at My Life in Gaming they talk about some of the settings in Mega SG that work with "dithering" and sort of take the square edges off some of the pixels. I guess the belief is that programmers played to the CRT monitor limitations when creating some of these games.

 

I know have a retrotink, HD Retroware cables, Retro AVS and a Mega SG shipping to me. Young Genesis guy used the same RF switch to go between his Genesis and NES as a kid burned out TV his parent's scrapped for the basement.

Things were certainly easier than.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

The dithering that was being mentioned is how the Genesis and Saturn and I'm sure other systems (Jaguar for sure...) simulated more colors on the screen than was actually being used. Due to the persistence of the image on the CRT phosphors and lack of high resolution, made the dithered parts of the screen actually appear to be a different shade of color or create the illusion of transparency. When you do with s-video and above on nice quality displays, that effect is lost. So the MegaSG has an option to simulate that dither blending technique when playing these old games.

 

As for lag, you will always have some lag. With the recent advancements in current display tech, the lag is getting much better (Panel refresh and response), but so is the tech people are releasing to convert the analog over to HDMI as well. Technically, even with todays current emulation FPGAs there is lag. The TV still has to convert the digital data it receives from the HDMI cabling and process it through its image processor to create what you see on the screen.

 

I can see the appeal of these new FPGA devices to those who are new to retro gaming in general. But for someone like me who owns all of these original consoles and over the years has spent time to modify them for better picture and audio. They are just priceless to me and not replaceable. As long as my current systems are working and I've a means to display and hear them in a great manner, I'm not likely to use these FPGA consoles or get them anytime soon.

 

Now, to get back on topic, I have found that HDMI cables are not all created equal either! I've had some short high quality cables that ended up still giving me handshake issues etc. and have cheap HDMI cables I spent about $10 on still working great today.

[DJ Clae]

The Saturn didn't need dithering to simulate more colors. It used it for transparency when graphics from one of the VDP's was overlaid on top of graphics from the other VDP.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

The Saturn didn't need dithering to simulate more colors. It used it for transparency when graphics from one of the VDP's was overlaid on top of graphics from the other VDP.

Not to the degree that other systems did no. But they did use it in games. And I did state Transparency at the last of my first sentence. In fact the dithering was usually more for that pseudo transparency effect than anything. SOR on the Genesis in the Bar scene with the lights, Sonic's waterfalls being well known of course.

 

I think the one Saturn game I've seen it used a lot would be Radiant Silvergun.

[cybercylon]

I wonder if anyone has tried using an HDretrovision cable via component through a framemeister? The framemeister is noted for introducing some noise in the RGB signal, so I wonder if component would work better.

 

Do the HD retrovision cables scale things correctly (can't remember). That might be one reason to run them through an OSSC, framemeister or another decent upscaler.

 

I've though about giving an OSSC a try. They haven't been in stock for while. I see a lot of them on eBay. I know it is an "open source" project, but I am suspicious those might be made with iffy parts.