PS2 SCART drastically superior to component?

[Genesis Knight]

This is on a fat PS2. I bought some offbrand component cables thinking that it would be the best route for image quality on my Panny plasma. The picture sucked, to say the least. So I tried again with Monster PS2 cables since I'd heard some people say that they were actually quite good. The picture is still very dark and drab, and fiddling with brightness and contrast never helped.

It pissed me off that PS2 shmups, etc., looked WORSE than similar games on the Saturn and PSX. So on a whim I pulled out my PSX SCART RGB cable and ran it through my RGB->YUV converter and lo and behold - a perfect image. Crisp, bright, colorful, and sharp. I've placed an order for another cable and I'm not going back.

So how can this be? Did I have two bad component cables? My oXbox and Wii look great over component on this television. But damn, after a few days of playtesting the PS2 seems to have been born for SCART!

Any other experiences with this?

[turbolegs]

I bought a cheap component lead for my PS2 from a local game store here in the UK and the quality was great.

It does however depend on the TV being used, on my Television in the living room it didn't look nearly as good as on my PC monitor.

I'm really happy with the overall image quality but was appalled to find that ICO just doesn't work with it as well as a handful of other games.

[Genesis Knight]

I think that's due to ICO being a 240p game which often looks like crap on HD monitors over component. I got lucky because Panasonic plasmas deal with 240p pretty well, but it's a common experience.

[isiolia]

Did you enable the progressive scan mode for it?

I do remember being less than impressed when I hooked up my PS2 over component after getting my LCD TV...but that had a fair bit to do with clarity more than anything else.

[Genesis Knight]

When using component I enabled progressive scan where available. It definitely looked better. But both interlaced and progressive were markedly better over SCART than Component. I would say that interlaced SCART was almost as good as progressive Component in my case.

With the exception of ICO and a few others, don't almost all PS2 games output to the TV at 480i/p? Don't the Saturn and PSX output at 480i as well, or do they output at 240p?

[isiolia]

Most PS2 games do, but while the max resolution of the PSX and Saturn is 640x480 visible, most games on those are 320x240.

What it might be is a difference in how scalers/processors are handling the signal.

[Genesis Knight]

Most PS2 games do, but while the max resolution of the PSX and Saturn is 640x480 visible, most games on those are 320x240.

Well, that's sort of what I'm getting at. Saturn/PSX render internally at 240p but I thought they output the signal as 480i same as the PS2, which would make comparing PS2 video quality against Saturn/PSX fairly appropriate.

[isiolia]

Not as far as I know. I don't think they had a scaler in them, so it'd really be up to the software - some would be 480i, but plenty would still be 240p.
That's what the oft-referenced guide to scalers indicates, or other Google results on the subject.

[silverback]

being in a PAL country therefore SCART is the standard issue connection.

Moving from the RGB scart (which caused movies to play with a green tint but fine for games...) to the component leads was a massive improvement. This is unusual as full rgb scart is usually top notch.

This was backed up by cousin getting a component lead after seeing mine for his fat ps2.

We got cheap component leads from ebay for less than £3 delivered.

i also got a component lead for the Wii which was an amazing transformation. Through composite and an rgb lead the picture was dull and wouldn't adjust up. Got another ebay special £3 lead for component and its transformed it.

This is both on a panny 42 inch plasma and an LG 50 full HD plasma.

[Hobie-wan]

With the component cables, you got the PS2 set properly for YUV or RGB as needed by your TV? As I recall the default setting was incorrect for my Samsung ED plasma.