Well recently I ran into a guy on the Sega-16 boards who has begun making S-video converter boxes that basically function in the same way as the XMD, they are an external box that uses a cable to accept the Genesis output, converts it to S-video and the box has S-video and regular composite video and stereo audio outputs. His version costs a little more than half of what the typical XMD costs. I was a little worried that the improvement in video quality wouldn't be enough to justify even the modest expense but boy was I wrong! When I first tried Flashback and Decap Attack, two of my all-time favorites, I knew instantly that the quality improvement was substantial. Even the colors are more robust.
Here are some screen shot comparisons made with Streets of Rage, video on my JVC 27-inch CRT TV and all video going through a powered Terk switch box and of course the video passing through Jose's new S-video converter box for the s-video photos. The photos look more washed out that it looks in person due to improper settings on my camera, but you can see the improvements very clearly. Just look at the poster on the wall in the upper left of the second photo. Wow. Worth every penny! No more bleeding of intense reds or blues! It's also nice to have as an external box so I can use the same box with my CDX and Nomad.
