Sega Saturn S-Video cable vs. composite

[crisis]

I just received a Sega Saturn S-Video cable purchased through eBay. I'm going to hook it up this weekend and do a cursory comparison between it and the composite connection. I have a 30" WS HDTV, and pixellation is a lot more apparent on some of the older consoles.

With the Dreamcast, when I switched from a composite to S-Video cable, I saw quite a noticeable difference, even at the startup animation. I hope the Saturn will be the same.

Last question: I know that there's a VGA box for the Dreamcast. I would love to somehow reroute >480i DC signal back to my television. Anyone tried any methods that would yield a component or HDMI connection to connect the DC back to the TV? Is just an upconverted signal, or does the VGA adapter bring out something more in the DC?

[alexkidd]

I have my saturn on a 27" HDTV. Let me know the results you get because I'm trying to decide if I'll get an s-video cable too. Do you play with the image stretched or with bars on the sides?

[crisis]

The cable was very cheap (<$10 with cable and USPS First Class shipping). If it works well, I'll post the eBay seller's information.

I will try and take some snaps comparing some screens with both cables, as well.

[neohx_7]

S-Video will obviously look much better. That is if you want to see better luminance, color clarity, and pixels. Anyways VGA on the Dreamcast = pixel perfect. The games will look like an emulator with no filter. Street Fighter Alpha 3 might make you vomit and Soul Calibur will make you weep with joy.

[alexkidd]

My other hobby is Laserdisc video. I have a pretty great collection of films.
Video quality with S-Video on Laserdisc depends on the TV. If you have a cheap TV and a nice LD player the S-Video will definately improve your video. If you have an awesome TV and a crappy laserdisc player from the 80's, using AV cables will actually look a lot better than S-Video. It's a matter of your TV doing a better job w/ it's built in filters than the player's filter.
I'm not sure if this applies to video game machines, but I've tested it on lots of tvs and laserdisc players.
I used to have a Dreamcast with the VGA box on a 20" apple CRT. OMG it was freaking amazing.

[crisis]

I spent a couple of hours rotating between S-Video and composite feeds. The S-Video difference is definitely noticeable on my television. In some cases, the clarity exposes some rough areas. In most cases, it gives everything a great clarity against the backdrops. For the colors, it's almost as if someone pressure washed all the backgrounds and restored them in their pristine state. Just bear with that analogy as good as you can

My TV is a Panasonic CT-30WX54 30" Widescreen Pure Flat HDTV-Ready TV. The camera used to snap the photos is a Canon Powershot S2 IS. I did my best to use the exact same camera settings, distance and angle for each comparison.

The example photos can be found at http://grandgroove.org/~crisis/saturn/. It's good to view them in the full 5.1MPx glory to see the differences.

Let me know what you think!

[alexkidd]

thanks a lot, I had been wondering if I should get one and now I think I will for sure. Sometimes I wish I had a really nice Sony WEGA standard def TV instead of my HD. My DVDs and HD look great on it, but my older video games and LD's suffer a bit on the HD display.
Maybe if I get the space in a bigger apartment/house I'll have two setups, one for pre-HD media and one for HD.