So.... Some SNESes output YPbPr.....

[SNES_is_the_Best]

Wow.......your using a HDTV which makes it MUCH more noticeable.

You see, I use only CRT displays (standard definition)

I've actually split my gaming into two setups. I have an HDTV (1080p) for all my more current stuff. BD and DVD movies, TV, my Wii (and eventually U) and PS3. These are all things that are just gonna be better with an HDTV. My basement "man cave" has the CRT with all my consoles up to DC and PS2. The exception is that I keep my PS2 fat (with HDD) on my HDTV since my PS3 isn't backward compatible. And, since the SNES and N64 are two of my favorite consoles, I have a second set of them on my HDTV too.

I'm not the type of person who cranks up the sharpness and/or contrast on my CRT until the picture is screaming. I calibrate the sharpness at proper levels (before edge enhancement, if at all possible) and contrast/white-level at the proper setting (not so bright that it hides scanlines). And even on these low settings, the original SHVC-CPU-01 looks much better and much more natural than cheapo 1CHIP/Mini.

I have my HDTV calibrated with Disney's WOW BD. Some one was kind enough to give me an old DVD copy of DVE, and I'm planning on using that to calibrate my CRT. I need to figure out how to get into the secret service menu though to fix some cropping/overscan, but I guess I've been too lazy to do it yet.



What's really annoying is I was thinking the 1chip SNES I have was gonna be perfect, so I modified it to output RGB via RCA jacks as well as output digital audio. Now that I've decided to go with an older SNES, I have to do those mods over again.


I do have a question for you, though. My HDTV nor my AV receiver have any S-Video inputs, so I scored an old professional grade transcoder off eBay. It works very well. I can use it to input one S-Video source and one RGB source and output either as YPbPr. So my choice is to use either RGB or S-Video for the SNES, and the remaining choice for the N64. I added RGB output to my N64. On my HDTV, there's virtually no difference between S-Video and RGB>YPbPr, so I don't care which I use for it. For the SNES though, I can use S-Video stock, but if I wanna use RGB I'll have to modify it to output the signal via RCA jacks. So my question is, for an S-ENC SNES, would I be better off turning RGB into YPbPr or just using the stock S-Video? Of course RGB>YPbPr sounds better on paper, but I haven't really noticed a huge difference between S-Video and YPbPr for retro game consoles (my N64 for example) plus the fact that we're talking about it being displayed on an HDTV. I guess I'm just trying to get out of doing the work to add RGB output to my SNES, but, can you blame me? The work was already wasted on my 1chip SNES, and if I went with RGB on my other SNES than the work was wasted adding RGB to my N64.

That's weird, never heard of anyone hooking up RCA jacks to the RGB output on a SNES.

So you transcoded S-Video to YPbPr? I've never seen a device that can do that, but then again, I haven't done any real hunting. If the transcoder is high quality, then your right that the difference between S-Video-to-YPbPr and RGB-to-YPbPr is not big, but there actually IS a difference if you compare pure S-Video to RGB-to-YPbPr.

Anyway, I think you'll be better off using the YPbPr output on the S-ENC rather than using the stock S-Video or the RGB-to-YPbPr solution. I don't think you will be disappointed. Just keep in mind though that not all S-ENC chips perform the same. You might need to amp some colors. I personally have never done the mod. But the pictures I've seen online indicate that its well worth it.

I'm not sure about this next statement, but I'm willing to bet that pulling Component from the S-ENC will look better than using a transcoder. That's just my conjecture though.

I did notice the 1CHIP being a bit too abrasive for my taste with certain scenes in games with the sharpness/colors, now I know why. I chalked it up to being more "accurate" though. The funny thing is when I compared the same Yoshi's Island opening compared with this website, http://sd2snes.de/blog/archives/75, I noticed the colors weren't really that much "better" at all... in fact they both seemed the same. I only noticed that the sharpness increased.

Yea those pics seem odd. Maybe something is wrong with his older SNES's cause the difference in color isnt that big on my end.

[Ziggy]

@Ziggy for some reason when hooking up S-video to my RGB N64 it looks like composite. Weird... RGB looks amazing though, even though the N64 uses that blurring filter for everything.

Could be your S-Video cables. The sad truth is that a LOT of AV cables for game consoles, especially ones made for retro gaming consoles in recent years (Retro-Bit), are crap-tastic.

Dreamcast S-Video cable:


SNES/N64/GCN S-Video cable:


Standard S-Video cable (med-high quality):


Not to mention a lot of "S-Video" cables that are reported to actually be composite. Like the Retro-Bit DC S-Video cables on Amazon. A lot of reviews on cables report S-Video Y being connected to the composite pin on the AV multi connector, and C left unconnected.

[SNES_is_the_Best]

@Ziggy for some reason when hooking up S-video to my RGB N64 it looks like composite. Weird... RGB looks amazing though, even though the N64 uses that blurring filter for everything.

Could be your S-Video cables. The sad truth is that a LOT of AV cables for game consoles, especially ones made for retro gaming consoles in recent years (Retro-Bit), are crap-tastic.

Dreamcast S-Video cable:


SNES/N64/GCN S-Video cable:


Standard S-Video cable (med-high quality):


Not to mention a lot of "S-Video" cables that are reported to actually be composite. Like the Retro-Bit DC S-Video cables on Amazon. A lot of reviews on cables report S-Video Y being connected to the composite pin on the AV multi connector, and C left unconnected.

The best 3rd party S-Video cables I've found are made by "Innovation". These do not provide Composite. Only S-Video, and Audio. Just beware that when buying them on Amazon, some sellers will ship you the bad cables with composite attached.

[AppleQueso]

ugh Retro-Bit's everything is terrible

[Ziggy]

That's weird, never heard of anyone hooking up RCA jacks to the RGB output on a SNES.

Oh yeah, it's been done. I did it to avoid having to buy a SCART cable, which I would have had to break out to RCA anyway. My transcoder has BNC input/outputs, I have BNC-RCA adapters on them. So, my 1chip SNES has RGB output via RCA jacks, and when I added RGB to my N64, that too has RCA outputs.

So you transcoded S-Video to YPbPr? I've never seen a device that can do that, but then again, I haven't done any real hunting. If the transcoder is high quality, then your right that the difference between S-Video-to-YPbPr and RGB-to-YPbPr is not big, but there actually IS a difference if you compare pure S-Video to RGB-to-YPbPr.

Yeah, I'm using a professional grade bi-directional transcoder. It can input two types of S-Video (I didn't even know there was another kind of S-Video!), two types of RGB, and YPbPr. It can output all those signals as well as composite. I know it's professional video equipment because it's a rack-mountable unit (thick metal casing, internal PSU) and uses BNC connectors. The company seems to be defunct, as I couldn't find much info on it. I did find in one forum that the company changed names, but still nothing. The only thing I found was an old catalog that had this unit in it, with a MSRP around $1200. Long story short, I'm sure no matter what video signal you transcode to/from, it's of high quality. Surely using this transcoder to convert RGB into S-Video is at LEAST as good as the video encoder found inside a SNES or N64.

Anyway, I think you'll be better off using the YPbPr output on the S-ENC rather than using the stock S-Video or the RGB-to-YPbPr solution. I don't think you will be disappointed. Just keep in mind though that not all S-ENC chips perform the same. You might need to amp some colors. I personally have never done the mod. But the pictures I've seen online indicate that its well worth it.

Meh, I disagree. That NesDev link in my first reply to you, the one with the screenshots of the 1chip and S-ENC, that's actually the YPbPr mod I was working on. As seen in the screenshots, the colors are still off slightly (red is too strong in my opinion). I decided to abandon the mod. Aside from the headache of trying to get it PERFECT while not being anything close to a video engineer, I just don't have the time to tweak it any further. I guess I could say I was ::this close:: to perfecting it (if only in my own circumstances), but I've already poured too much time and money into it.

Leading me to what I said above... RGB out of the S-ENC SNES converted into YPbPr with my transcoder has to be at LEAST as good of quality as the YPbPr signal the S-ENC can produce. If I had to bet money though, I'd say the quality would be better. I mean, we're talking about a video encoder designed some time around 1990 for a game console, that was never intended to output YPbPr to a TV, versus a professional transcoder that was intended to be used in television studios and whatnot.

The only question is... Would RGB better be used, or would it be like my S-Video/RGB to YPbPr findings with the N64.

Of course YPbPr directly out of my SNES would be most ideal, but like I said, I couldn't seem to get the colors perfect. I want them perfect, and nothing less. For the same reasons you say about the 1chip, it wasn't what Nintendo intended originally. If Nintendo designed the circuit to output YPbPr to a TV, then I'd go with it. But other than that, I'll always feel like the colors might not be true. I don't wanna settle for close enough.

But my headache with SNES AV covers several pages of this thread, and my AV headaches in general span multiple threads.

[SNES_is_the_Best]

I'm using a professional grade bi-directional transcoder. It can input two types of S-Video (I didn't even know there was another kind of S-Video!), two types of RGB, and YPbPr. It can output all those signals as well as composite. I know it's professional video equipment because it's a rack-mountable unit (thick metal casing, internal PSU) and uses BNC connectors. The company seems to be defunct, as I couldn't find much info on it. I did find in one forum that the company changed names, but still nothing. The only thing I found was an old catalog that had this unit in it, with a MSRP around $1200. Long story short, I'm sure no matter what video signal you transcode to/from, it's of high quality. Surely using this transcoder to convert RGB into S-Video is at LEAST as good as the video encoder found inside a SNES or N64.

I didn't think about this, but with such a high quality transcoder, I'll have to agree with you completely. In fact, I'll go a step further and says its a BETTER encoder than what is in the SNES or N64.

The only question is... Would RGB better be used, or would it be like my S-Video/RGB to YPbPr findings with the N64.

I'm 100% confident that RGB-to-YPbPr will be your best choice. Although it will be difficult to tell with such a high-grade transcoder, I'm sure you will eventually spot more colors, or, at least high quality color. As RGB-to-YPbPr is sending the full bandwidth, where's SVideo-to-YPbPr is only half the bandwidth.

Do the Super Mario World test. The opening title screen with the little bush that has 2 red dots on it. See which way looks best. Even if you cannot tell the difference on that one area, you might be able to in other areas. For true accuracy, I would go with RGB-to-YPbPr instead of SVideo-to-YPbPr. At least you can rest assured that there's less compromise.

Of course YPbPr directly out of my SNES would be most ideal, but like I said, I couldn't seem to get the colors perfect. I want them perfect, and nothing less. For the same reasons you say about the 1chip, it wasn't what Nintendo intended originally. If Nintendo designed the circuit to output YPbPr to a TV, then I'd go with it. But other than that, I'll always feel like the colors might not be true. I don't wanna settle for close enough.

This is exactly why I haven't modded my SNES and instead used an external transcoder. Nintendo never meant to use the YPbPr from the S-ENC, it was just "there". Too bad the NES needs modding. However, universalppu.com is making a "color accurate" PPU for the NES that even outputs YPbPr and S-Video. So lets hope that the colors truly ARE accurate. I don't want Mike Tyson's face to be redish-brown like the PlayChoice10 makes it. I want his face to be dark-BROWN like the official NES PPU makes it. Haha)

[elmagicochrisg]

The NES doesn't have a suitable RGB chip with "accurate" colors, so that's the only one I can accept in composite. However, universalppu.com is making a "color accurate" PPU for the NES that even outputs YPbPr and S-Video. So lets hope that the colors truly ARE accurate. I don't want Mike Tyson's face to be redish-brown like the PlayChoice10 makes it. I want his face to be dark-BROWN like the official NES PPU makes it.

That's pretty awesome! Guess buying a Playchoice 10 PPU will be a thing of the past once this becomes available... ^^

[SNES_is_the_Best]

I have my HDTV calibrated with Disney's WOW BD. Some one was kind enough to give me an old DVD copy of DVE, and I'm planning on using that to calibrate my CRT. I need to figure out how to get into the secret service menu though to fix some cropping/overscan, but I guess I've been too lazy to do it yet.

I wanted to mention that I'm come across something interesting. These calibration DVD/BD's don't see to "agree" with other sources of input. Like for example, the color calibration, or the sharpness calibration for your Blu-Ray Player might not be exactly what your PS3 or Wii-U require.

[theclaw]

I suppose that's a question of how much user laziness to account for.

The nearer serious enthusiasts can get to unfiltered video, the more freedom they'll have getting the exact smoothness they want.

[ApolloBoy]

So wait, the SHVC-CPU-01 is better in part because it has a "smoothing" filter in the PPU? Where's the proof of that? I've looked around and found absolutely nothing backing that up.

Nevertheless, if there was anyone on the fence about ditching their original model for a newer model, then maybe my post will help them to decide to mod their old SHVC-CPU-01 (or SNS-CPU-GPM-01) for component video and forget about buying the 1CHIP/Mini. They are not worth it.

Seriously? The SNES mini has fantastic RGB output, and this is using an RGB monitor and not some converter.