Star Fox (SNES) S-Video vs Composite

[Limewater]

It's supposed to look that way with S-Video but not composite? Or both? My composite version of it looks pretty good, my S-Video of it looks pretty bad.

Yes. To directly answer your earlier concerns, nothing is wrong with your cart, television, or cables. Most SNES games don't often have to resort to that checkerboard so simulate new colors. Starfox does. You will also see some ugliness in Dirt Trax FX.

These games will look better with composite because the composite cable will smooth out the checkerboard pattern a little. The S-Video cable won't do that, so these games will actually look uglier.

For most games, though, the SNES's 256 color palate meant that they didn't have to do the checkerboard trick to get all the colors they needed on the screen. I think they just had to do this with the early Super FX games, and maybe a few others where the artwork was not redrawn from the Genesis version.

[BoringSupreez]

I took two pictures, one S-video, the other composite (if composite means yellow, white, red). Sorry for the not so good photography, but I have a hard time taking pictures of TV screens. I had to take like 12 pictures to get two that weren't in the middle of a frame. The first is the S-video, the other the composite. And they are from an unmodded SNES, and are from a CRT TV. No mods or emulation here.

DSC023511.jpg (201.92 KiB) Viewed 2837 times

DSC023581.jpg (163.21 KiB) Viewed 2836 times

Not that big a difference. I think that the game actually looks better slightly blurred, since it's so primitive looking.

[CRTGAMER]

It's supposed to look that way with S-Video but not composite? Or both? My composite version of it looks pretty good, my S-Video of it looks pretty bad.

Most SNES games don't often have to resort to that checkerboard so simulate new colors. Starfox does. You will also see some ugliness in Dirt Trax FX.

These games will look better with composite because the composite cable will smooth out the checkerboard pattern a little. The S-Video cable won't do that, so these games will actually look uglier.

I took two pictures, the first is the S-video, the other the composite. And they are from an unmodded SNES, and are from a CRT TV. No mods or emulation here.

Not that big a difference. I think that the game actually looks better slightly blurred, since it's so primitive looking.

The pics do have a slightly sharper image in S-Video revealing the checkerboard color variation a little more clearly as Limewater was mentioning.

Kebo, did you read my LCD vs CRT post? I wrote a little about "Dot Crawl" issues of a LCD on lower resolution Retro Systems.
I am still unsure if it is the "checkerboard" or moving "dot crawl" that you are having problems with.

[Kebo]

I took some close-up pics with a camera, best I could do. I guess sometime I could take pics of the CRT versions as well, feeling a little lazy.

Composite #1 for Star Fox:



S-Video #1 for Star Fox:



Composite #2 for Star Fox:



S-Video #2 for Star Fox:



Composite for Secret of Mana:



S-Video for Secret of Mana:

[lwcook]

Nope, thats totally normal. Happens with emulation too...Star Fox is just not a game that benefits from being "clear."

[CRTGAMER]

I suspect on a good in-tune focused CRT with S-Video, the image would look better then LCD. Checkerboard effect wouldn't be as pronounced due to scaling to LCD display, but more to the native CRT "gun effect".

Look at BoringSupreez 's S-Video on CRT compared to your S-Video on the LCD. Resolution on the Starfox wings dropped on the LCD.

As example, on my LCD vs CRT link I compared PS2 game Black on a LCD and CRT. The LCD had that same "Dot Crawl" effect as the Star Fox wings. On the HD CRT very smooth and not blurry almost as if the resolution went up. Really suspect the LCD scaling is part of the problem, even Secret of Mana pic comparison the blurry composite looks better.

[Kebo]

The secret of mana pic must be deceiving in some way (the camera is about 3 inches from the screen), because it looks definitively better than the composite version in every way in person.

What I hate about CRT is precisely what is in BoringSupreez's screenshots - those little cells or scan lines, whatever they are called. I cannot stand them in any way shape or form, they make it look hideous and ugly to me. The only way I could ever go back to CRT is if they were entirely absent.

Here's a less close-up comparison:

Composite Secret of Mana:



S-Video Secret of Mana:



My camera is pretty old and the TV is somewhat reflective so they both look a little better in person than the images, but the differences still show up whether I look at them with my eyes or take a picture.