Star Fox (SNES) S-Video vs Composite

[Kebo]

So I got an S-Video cable today for my SNES, and it made every game look tangibly better except...Star Fox. In fact, it made it look worse. It seemed like these little circle things were now more visible on the ships and buildings and it really detracted from the look of the game. I use an LCD TV. Is this an aberration, something wrong with my cord or TV? Can anyone else out there test the differences between S-Video and composite for Star Fox on an LCD? It seems like it wouldn't be my cord if every other SNES game looks better.

[Ziggy]

When I got S-Video for my SNES I kept the RF hooked up so I could switch back and forth to compare. The games I switched back and forth with, I noticed an awesome improvement. I didn't play Star Fox though. I've played Star Fox 2 recently, however, and didn't notice anything bad. I'll test out Star Fox (1) tomorrow after work though, and give you my results. I still have the RF hooked up, so I can easily compare it.

[Flake]

I've yet to get ANY SNES games to look decent on an LCD tv, with the exception of VC games on my wii.

[Ziggy]

Really? Even with the RF adapter, NES and SNES games don't look bad on my LCD HDTV. With composite, they look about the same as on a CRT. With S-Video, the SNES looks fantastic. I guess it will be different from TV to TV.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

I've never seen any standard definition image look good on any high definition TV/

Solution:

Spend $10-$30 on a quality used CRT TV.

[Kebo]

I lined my LCD up with my CRT monitor running an emulator of Secret Mana and I would only give the CRT/emulated version a slight nod in quality, mostly because of the color. I think the SNES games look great on this LCD (It's 16" or so) but Star Fox is bugging the hell out of me. I wish I had a good way to show what I'm talking about here, is there any one at all able to test the differences?

[Hobie-wan]

Maybe they intentionally shaded things in a way intended for composite and RF to look for Star Fox? I know some later Genesis games use vertical band for shading instead of checkerboards because composite on CRTs would muddy that into a 'new color', but when viewed on a cleaner s-video or RBG connection it ends up looking a bit ugly.

See this Vectorman screenshot. http://www.mobygames.com/game/genesis/v ... tId,33903/

Notice the usual sort of checkerboard dither on the title letters, but the vertical striping on Vectorman himself? I dont' have Starfox to test, but they might have used some similiar techniques on the polygonal shading to either save processing time or whatnot. All on my SNES games I've played since getting my s-video cable and plasma TV look fantastic.

[lisalover1]

Threads like this make me sad that I have an SNES Mini. I would have gotten SCART for it ages ago if I had a regular SNES.

Anyway, what you are seeing is common for early 3D games. Developers used the standard low resolution to hide graphical artifacts and errors. For example, when the Bleemcast emulator came out, it ran PS1 games at twice the original resolution, plus anti-aliasing and bilinear filtering. While the games looked great, games like Metal Gear Solid had some "graphical errors" that were actually not errors at all; they were just hidden in the original low resolution.

[CRTGAMER]

I've never seen any standard definition image look good on any high definition TV.

Solution:

Spend $10-$30 on a quality used CRT TV.

Agree.
Or get a HD CRT, great for the Retro consoles, as long as its not a LCD.
You avoid all that LCD "Dot Crawl" inherent to lower resolution systems.

See my LCD vs CRT signature link.

[Kebo]

Well, I have a CRT TV, from around 1999-2000, and the games look worse on it. Probably because I can see the scan lines or whatever they're called and the fact the image isn't right up against the screen like an LCD (I sit about 1.5 feet from it). I'm fine with slightly worse color and clarity than CRTs. I'd eventually like an HD CRT, but I can't afford it right now.

I'm happy with every SNES game's quality on my LCD except Star Fox. I'm just trying to find out if that's how it's supposed to look, or if something is wrong with my cord, game, SNES or TV.