I prefer bad picture quality for old games

[BoneSnapDeez]

The video mod stuff never appealed to me. I use whatever default connections are available. To me that's how these games are "meant" to look.

[Ziggy]

The video mod stuff never appealed to me. I use whatever default connections are available. To me that's how these games are "meant" to look.

But you could easily argue that (of most retro consoles) RGB is how they're "meant" to look. In the case of the Genesis in America, where we don't have (consumer) RGB, modifying the console for S-Video is the only way to go.

I say this in "as a matter of fact" kind of way, not a snooty kind of way.

[Tanooki]

Ever since the Wega back in the later 90s and into the earlier 00s I have not been able to tolerate blurry CRT visuals. You throw into that same period being very deep into both the enjoyment but also assisting a few people development side on emulators I'm very attuned to crisp visuals, even on the old stuff. I'm the guy who loathes emulators defaulting to scanlines on and using some of that blurry shitty eagle/sai/etc filters. I like it sharp and clean. There is one solitary exception to the rule, arcade games, for better or worse they're customized to their specialized screens and just work just as well for me that way (like my NeoGeo cabinet) or on a tablet (I have Neo.EMU installed for on the go on my shield tablet.)

I'm lucky that the TVs I've researched and bought over time since things went to 720p/1080p level they take my old consoles and make them as sharp as possible short of being HDMI like on the Retron5 so either way is fine by me.

[marurun]

But you could easily argue that (of most retro consoles) RGB is how they're "meant" to look. In the case of the Genesis in America, where we don't have (consumer) RGB, modifying the console for S-Video is the only way to go.

I would argue the way something is "meant" to look is the way most users of the thing will see it. The best companies would be designing their art assets to look good in the environments in which they will appear. Japan didn't really use RGB much for video connections, much like the US. Look at that Genesis screen door effect. The more distinct your on-screen pixels are, the worse that effect looks. On a blurrier screen it actually looks better.

[Ziggy]

Yes, and those effects look *awful* when I play on a CRT with S-Video, or on an HDTV with RGB through a Framemeister.

Unless you're obsessed with quality, it really just comes down to what you're use to. I've played the NES with RF, and later, composite video for many years and was always fine with it. After not having access to my CRT for a while, I was playing a lot of NES via emulation on my HDTV. Now when I play the NES over composite, all I can see are the imperfections of composite video.

[Anayo]

I would argue the way something is "meant" to look is the way most users of the thing will see it. The best companies would be designing their art assets to look good in the environments in which they will appear. Japan didn't really use RGB much for video connections, much like the US. Look at that Genesis screen door effect. The more distinct your on-screen pixels are, the worse that effect looks. On a blurrier screen it actually looks better.

I wondered about this when I upgraded from an original Gameboy Advance to a Nintendo DS Lite. The screen was so superior that I began to notice details in GBA games that were invisible to me before. It made me suspect they designed the sprites on an RGB monitor, then kept a GBA with a flash cart around the office to preview everything first.

Good call, Anayo. I think I'll mod a wii this week for the same reason. Did you follow a guide? I can manage the letterbomb, but I tend to get lost after that.

I just googled for a guide. I seem to remember one on reddit pointing me in the right direction.

[theclaw]

An issue is that composite is "dumb". It smears everything else that by all means should not be. Not to mention how awful the Genesis encoding is. If its quality was on par with PC Engine, and frankly Sega had no excuse with a whole year to catch up (going by Japanese dates), we wouldn't be talking about it so much.

[isiolia]

Effectively having vaseline on the screen for old games is one thing, but geometry and overscan issues tend to bug me. Some CRTs can do really well with that...but the ones I own don't seem to.

Personally, I'd rather err on the side of clarity. While it often reveals flaws, sometimes it can also mean seeing details that'd otherwise be missed.

[ElkinFencer10]

An issue is that composite is "dumb". It smears everything else that by all means should not be. Not to mention how awful the Genesis encoding is. If its quality was on par with PC Engine, and frankly Sega had no excuse with a whole year to catch up (going by Japanese dates), we wouldn't be talking about it so much.

Yeah, the Genesis and PS2 have similar issues for me - the default composite video output looks like steaming shit, but when you get that running through better cords, it actually looks pretty decent. That's why I run my PS2 through my PS3 component cords and why I'm looking into HD Retrovision's Genesis component cords.

[Sarge]

Yeah, whatever encoder they're using on Genesis looks awful, the SNES and NES both had much better composite outputs. I currently use a SCART cable with a SCART-to-Component converter for my Genesis gaming.