Any consoles that look good on HDTV through Composite?

[BitFaced]

Out of curiosity, are there any video game consoles that actually look good, if not the best video connection, on a HD TV?

[Valkyrie-Favor]

There are the composite-exclusive consoles like NES. You'd have to pull off a serious mod to get anything better.

Gamecube looks pretty good. It has an excellent composite chip or something. Not quite as good as S-Vid or component, but it's actually adequate on my 23" flat panel.

My friend has his Wii hooked up via composite to a 50" flat panel and it looks excellent. I have no idea how that's possible, but it looked better than my little one. It really depends on the TV.

[Hobie-wan]

Ideed, it depends quite a bit on the TV and how it upscales things. Some do a good job, some are terrible, and some introduce a lot of lag which can make games unplayable.

[ExedExes]

SNES looks good on either composite or S-Video. Same with the Gamecube.

[AppleQueso]

Ideed, it depends quite a bit on the TV and how it upscales things. Some do a good job, some are terrible, and some introduce a lot of lag which can make games unplayable.

This.

Pretty much nothing was playable on my TV via composite.

[dmike]

Ideed, it depends quite a bit on the TV and how it upscales things. Some do a good job, some are terrible, and some introduce a lot of lag which can make games unplayable.

This.

Pretty much nothing was playable on my TV via composite.

Same here. 50" Panasonic plasma and nothing looked good on composite. Even the Wii looked so horrid it was unplayable. Had to get the component Wii cables which while still putting out 480p, was acceptable.

[Ziggy]

Ideed, it depends quite a bit on the TV and how it upscales things. Some do a good job, some are terrible, and some introduce a lot of lag which can make games unplayable.

Yes, it all depends on the TV. There can be a world of difference between different TVs.

As for how the TV upscales... I said in another thread, my (two PPU) SNES actually looks better via composite than my (1chip) SNES looks with S-Video or RGB-to-component on my 1080p.

On my old 720p, the NES looked fantastic. Better than any CRT I've ever played it on (including a Wega). Though I suspect it wouldn't look as good on my 1080p, but I've never tried.

[Xeogred]

Ideed, it depends quite a bit on the TV and how it upscales things. Some do a good job, some are terrible, and some introduce a lot of lag which can make games unplayable.

This.

Pretty much nothing was playable on my TV via composite.

Yeah, Gamecube looks like diarrhea on Samsung's to me.

[bacteria]

Thing is of course, the advantage and disadvantage of composite on retro systems is down to the same factor - pixels.

On old CRT televisions, composite images look pretty good as screen resolutions were not great and some systems took advantage of the dirtiness of composite on CRT televisions to get a good picture image; show on a modern television and you'll get some jagged edges in many cases as there is no "smudging" on the image to make it look better.

Some consoles are pretty good at composite though, eg Nintendo systems all look pretty close from composite and S-video and yes improved on RGB but no way as much as from other systems.

LCD screens are far more accurate, so you will see a different image for sure, usually still looks nice though and absolutely fine in practice.

Other thing to remember is old televisions had small screens compared to new ones, that also makes a difference.

So it depends on what you want - composite on HDTV looks perfectly fine in most cases, sure it might look better on CRT, but after all, why squint at a 20" CRT television when you have a 42" LCD these days and threw out the CRT years ago anyway?

[dmike]

composite on HDTV looks perfectly fine in most cases

This has not been my experience at all.

Composite from gaming consoles looks so awful on a HDTV that I have a 36" CRT just for my retro machines.