My Genesis Looks Terrible on my LCD

[racketboy]

I finally got my switchbox and extra cables in today so I could have my Dreamcast, Saturn, and Genesis hooked up to my LCD and speakers.
However, this was the first time I actually tried my Genesis out on my LCD.
I'm using a Composite connection, but it looks horrid.
I've had a Gamecube hooked up via composite through a TV tuner card before and it didn't look that smeary.

Any thoughts?
Is this normal?

[metaleggman]

The internal deinterlacer and scaler inside your monitor is most likely of inferior quality. So, ghosting and image degradation will appear. The best thing to do would be to get another capture card. The capture card takes the image and makes it the same resolution and deinterlaces the input image with software, which is usually much higher in quality. Then, this outputs over your computers VGA, so the monitor is playing a native signal. This is the bad thing about LCDs. They only perform optimally when at native resolution. For example, my Dell LCD has a 24ms response time, but I don't see any ghosting because I play most of my games at 1024x768. Same goes for my LCD HDTV. If I play at 1366x768, I don't have any ghosting, but playing 480i or 480p can cause ghosting.

It's just the nature of your monitor I'm afraid.

[racketboy]

The internal deinterlacer and scaler inside your monitor is most likely of inferior quality. So, ghosting and image degradation will appear. The best thing to do would be to get another capture card. The capture card takes the image and makes it the same resolution and deinterlaces the input image with software, which is usually much higher in quality. Then, this outputs over your computers VGA, so the monitor is playing a native signal. This is the bad thing about LCDs. They only perform optimally when at native resolution. For example, my Dell LCD has a 24ms response time, but I don't see any ghosting because I play most of my games at 1024x768. Same goes for my LCD HDTV. If I play at 1366x768, I don't have any ghosting, but playing 480i or 480p can cause ghosting.

It's just the nature of your monitor I'm afraid.

My monitor is a higher-end Dell. S-Video looks wonderful on it. In fact, now that I think of it, I've played my Saturn with composite and looked nearly as good as the S-video (I was impressed).

[metaleggman]

My monitor is a higher-end Dell. S-Video looks wonderful on it. In fact, now that I think of it, I've played my Saturn with composite and looked nearly as good as the S-video (I was impressed).

Well, then it may just have to do with Genesis. If you have a different version hanging around, you may want to try it. Then again, it could just be Genesis output signal in general, so all Genesis consoles will result in this poor video quality.

I know with my LCD, if I hook up my slim PS2 to it, it looks like crap except in 480p. They just don't like each other.

Those are the only explanations I can come up with, considering the Saturn looks fine on composite.

[marurun]

I find that LCDs just never look good unless you're running at their native (max) resolution. Never never never. It's one of the sad things about LCDs that makes me wish CRTs weren't being phased out. It's also one of the reasons when I finally get an HDTV it's going to be a tube TV.

[metaleggman]

I find that LCDs just never look good unless you're running at their native (max) resolution. Never never never. It's one of the sad things about LCDs that makes me wish CRTs weren't being phased out. It's also one of the reasons when I finally get an HDTV it's going to be a tube TV.

I would be very careful buying a tube HD screen. Let me tell you, my parents have one and there are definitely some issues. The biggest issue is the overscan cuts of quite a bit of the HD image. Not very nice, considering most HD games only take zero percent overscan displays into consideration when creating their games. There's the fact that none of them are perfectly flat and can cause both image distortion and color distortion. Because of how huge the tube is, you have to adjust for geomagnetic distortion, don't worry though, it's not too of a big deal. Then there's the space issues. Those suckers can get hot and extremely dusty. Do not put them in a cubby hole or w/e either. It really sucks for cleaning and really sucks for plugging in new inputs. That, and few CRTs nowadays are actually of good quality. I'm not saying don't get one, just be very careful and make sure to check reviews and get a top tier one.

Oh, and if you already know all that stuff, sorry for underestimating you! Just want to help a possible buyer.

By the way, if you ever want a flat panel in the far future, SEDs and FEDs are very promising quality wise. Better and cheaper than Plasmas with better than CRT image quality. Beautiful things.

[racketboy]

I find that LCDs just never look good unless you're running at their native (max) resolution. Never never never. It's one of the sad things about LCDs that makes me wish CRTs weren't being phased out. It's also one of the reasons when I finally get an HDTV it's going to be a tube TV.

I would be very careful buying a tube HD screen. Let me tell you, my parents have one and there are definitely some issues. The biggest issue is the overscan cuts of quite a bit of the HD image. Not very nice, considering most HD games only take zero percent overscan displays into consideration when creating their games. There's the fact that none of them are perfectly flat and can cause both image distortion and color distortion. Because of how huge the tube is, you have to adjust for geomagnetic distortion, don't worry though, it's not too of a big deal. Then there's the space issues. Those suckers can get hot and extremely dusty. Do not put them in a cubby hole or w/e either. It really sucks for cleaning and really sucks for plugging in new inputs. That, and few CRTs nowadays are actually of good quality. I'm not saying don't get one, just be very careful and make sure to check reviews and get a top tier one.

Oh, and if you already know all that stuff, sorry for underestimating you! Just want to help a possible buyer.

By the way, if you ever want a flat panel in the far future, SEDs and FEDs are very promising quality wise. Better and cheaper than Plasmas with better than CRT image quality. Beautiful things.

I have a 27" CRT HDTV and am pretty happy with it.
My only complaint is it doesn't have a VGA or DVI input and that it flickers sometimes when changing resolutions like when navigating though parts of Media Center where it has to generate video thumbnails.

[marurun]

I do know quite a bit about CRTs, LCDs, and Plasma. I also know very little about SEDs and FEDs. What are they? Do they deal with the resolution problem?

Here's the way I look at it. Computer CRT monitors have effectively been "high definition" for a damn long time now and are excellent at switching resolutions and display modes without a noticeable hit to image quality. Any display system that has discreet pixels I would think would have problems with multiple resolutions.

[opethfan]

I love my LCD TV, and hate it. It can be very finicky.

For example: PAL DVDs (which run at 50Hz) don't work if my DVD player upscales them to 720p or 1080i, the image is moved, blurred, etc. I have to set the player to 480p, which is a bummer, since all my Studio Ghibli DVDs are PAL.

Gran Turismo 4 doesn't always work properly either. Connected with Comp cables, it sometimes causes lines and flickering with the text at the start of a race, often on Clubman Stage 5, almost as if the lines separating. 480p works fine, but with 1080p, the dials (especially the rev bar on the bottom right) is squished horizontally, so one or 2 of the bars overlap another one.

MGS2 has a lot of jaggies during the opening titles, like the PS3 issue a few months ago. Maybe it's because the TVs set to stretch though.

It's pretty infuriating though.

[lordofduct]

it's just an extremely low resolution your feeding the little bugger.

I have a 1080p DLP screen and my genny games just look putrid on it... well, somewhat putrid. But it hardly bothers me. I'm modding my JVC X'eye so that it has S-vid and hopefully that will make it look a little nicer.

Just look at it, your stretching a 256x224 picture up to whatever your monitor is. And the video signal of that 256x224 image is coming through a crappy little composite cable. There's only so much the deinterlacer and scaler in your TV can do to this poor poor little picture.

Now eggman brings up a good point about the quality of your deinterlacer. But I don't think it's that your monitor has a shotty one, oh no, it is probably pretty damn good for an in TV built scaler/deinterlacer... downside to this though, there are much better aftermarket ones sold out there. It doesn't make yours sub-par, it makes yours average.

I used to send my genny, NES, Saturn directly to the TV via composite... looked like snot smeared in a rag. you get ghosties, the image seems blurred, and text is impossible to read.

First I upped my connections to as high as possible (for the most part S-vid), and then I got an aftermarket scaler. I use a HDMI 1080p scaler built into my Marantz AV receiver. This thing has done magic to the picture... now I wouldn't call it a giant leep in improvement, but it certainly has cleared up some stuff... I can actually play Jurassic Park on SCD now and be able to read all the text on screen.