Just purchased a Sega Saturn RGB cable on eBay

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claudio
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Just purchased a Sega Saturn RGB cable on eBay

Post by claudio »

In case anybody has a HDTV or is planning on getting a HDTV you may want to get a RGB cable for your Sega Saturn.

RGB (after i did a little research, correct me if im wrong) is almost like a component video cable with 3 seperate video signals. here is where i did the research.
http://www.gamesx.com/rgbadd/caveatrgb.htm

This is the RGB cable i purchased on eBay
http://cgi.ebay.com/Sega-SATURN-RGB-Vid ... m153.l1262

I just purchased a 37" Plamsa TV and on 4:3 mode the Sega Saturn games definitly looked to pixilated. I hope this RGB cable does the trick and make things better.

Ill find out soon, good thing Sega Saturn has RGB support !
Funk, E
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Post by Funk, E »

It's not going to make the resolution higher, you know, it's just going to make everything look sharper.
elph
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Post by elph »

I hope your TV supports RGB input.
claudio
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Post by claudio »

yes my TV has RGB input, its a plasma from 2003 and even has VGA inputs as well which ill hook my my xbox 360 to my VGA port instead of component.

i understand the resolution wont be better, but ill take a sharper picture, i want the best i can get out of my saturn plugged into a
HDTV.
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Doctor Fugue
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Post by Doctor Fugue »

Forgive me if I sound stupid...

TVs in North America don't support these kind of cables, right? I've got my Saturn hooked up through S-video but would be interested if there was an even better way.
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claudio
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Post by claudio »

well, my TV has RGB input, and im in New York.

also, i read a article a while back in video game collector magazine about RGB output in many systems and how to do it, its a USA magazine, so i would assume that its possible in USA as long as your TV has RGB input.

i just ordered it today so i wont find out how its done for another week or so.
elph
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Post by elph »

In North America, it is very uncommon for an SDTVs to have RGB inputs. I don't know much about HDTVs because I don't have one, nor will I have the buying power to get one any time soon.
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lordofduct
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Post by lordofduct »

It isn't common for US televisions to have RGB, but some do.

Though VGA doesn't quite mean RGB... VGA is a type of RGB signal but at a much higher sync speed then standard RGB from a Sega Saturn. Most of the consoles output a 15hz and most VGA devices don't go lower then 30hz.


I'm going to bet Claudio did his research about it first though and made sure...


As for your "Correct me if I'm wrong"... you are pretty correct. Component (well the commonly described video signal called component) is YPbPr. Technically any video signal split into several parts is considered component... thusly S-vid and RGB can be considered component. The term is used because the video is split into it's components which make up a whole. Where as the term composite is used to describe video that is combined or composed completely into one signal (i.e. RCA and RF modulated). S-video is usually called composite only because the techy's of the TV world decided to.

Either way you are referring to YPbPr when saying component... so the last paragraph is just informative on semantics. Either way yes, component and RGB consist of 3 different signals that carry all the video and are combined together. The difference is application and colour scale. RGB uses the RGB colour scale which is all colour based. Where as YPbPr uses the YUV colour scale which is based on a monochrome signal and chrominance or colour offset. This way you don't have 3 signals that carry the same B+W signal so as to reduce redundancy.

Anyways... I'll cut this off here and leave with WHY the US went with YPbPr so much in the HDTV standard over putting RGB into them. This was all because they wanted to transmit high definition data over media, wires, and airwaves in a more compressed manner. YUV colour stamp requires far less space to be stored because of the lack of redundancy. It's just brightness (B+W) information with colour offset information to the white information in the picture. It was used as the primary way to encode MPEG2 for DVDs so that better quality picture could be stored in the 5 gigs of storage space. Hence delivering a YUV signal to the television is more efficient instead of RGB which requires transcoding.

Same goes with digital video which is also usually stored and transmitted in the digital version of YPbPr... dubbed YCbCr.

[edit]
oh and the comment made about the resolution is accurate. RGB will not fix the pixelated image of your video games. Actually you'll notice the pixelization even more because the image will be much cleaner and sharp due to less cross talk over the signals.

Also double check you RGB input on your HDTV... RGB has several different ways of being transmitted. Some ways include:
2 dedicated sync lines for horizontal and vertical
a composite sync encoded into one of the colour lines (commonly called sync on green)
and the most common is a dedicated composite sync line where the H and Z are stored on its own line.

The third of which is the sync distribution type of the Sega Saturn, Genesis, Dreamcast, SMS, and most other consoles (to adhere to the 2 SCART standard of transmitting RGB)
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claudio
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Post by claudio »

thanks for the info, i do actually have a RGB jack in the back of my TV,

my Plasma TV is a phillips from 2003, probably the experemental stage in HDTV's, its a nice tv actually, and the image looks great.

thanks for the info, i think racketboy with your help should make a website covertopic about video games and video signals.

i havent gotten the RGB cable in yes so ill try to post and make a comparison between s-cable and rgb on my hdtv when i get it.
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