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May I play devil's advocate again?

I head a lot of noise about the quality of the SNES jr. I think someone is missing the point.

Let's establish a timeline:

• November 1990 - Super Famicom launches in Japan. Infamous stories of children skipping school while their parents skip work ensue.
• August 1991 - SNES launches in USA for $200
• June 1996 - N64 launches in Japan. The SNES has been succeeded by newer hardware.
• September 1996 - N64 launches in USA for $200.
• October 1997 - SNES jr is launched in USA for $100.

Remember that the SNES jr came out a full year after the N64 had already hit the market. The SNES jr was a budget option from the beginning. It's no surprise the internal components are significantly cheaper.

Calling it a "like a clone device" might be a stretch. The SNES jr is official Nintendo hardware that plays every SNES game with reasonable-to-good accuracy. Comparing the SNES jr to the Genesis 2 or 3 is more accurate.

Remember that Nintendo didn't market the SNES jr to videophiles; they marketed it to poor consumers on a budget. Poor kids in 1997 played on a SNES jr. It wasn't the lastest 3D technology, but these kids learned to appreciate the classic games of a previous generation. Many of these kids grew up to be the retro gamers of today.

Just some food for thought.

I hadn't heard of a filter being the reason for that. If so it seems slightly overdone.

Ziggy587 wrote:Awesome post, thanks for the info!

I've known about the ultra bright levels of the 1Chip, but I never knew about all the other things like the smoothing filter. It makes perfect sense to me though, after some of my own findings.

After reading time and time again that the 1chip is superior, I decided it would be wise to switch to one on my HDTV for the clearest possible image to be upscaled to 1080p. What I found was that the 1chip looked HEAVILY pixelated on the HDTV, and no matter what input I used (composite, s-vid, RGB-YPbPr). So much so that I actually deemed it unusable and switched back to one of my older SNESes for my HDTV.

And before my "1chip HDTV" findings, I had my older SNES console hooked up to my HDTV via composite. I remember thinking something along the lines of, "This SNES is supposedly blurry and I'm using composite... so why does it look so good?!"

And DKC3 happened to be the game I chose to test everything, so everything you've said makes perfect sense to me. If you look at my screenshots posted here, you can clearly see how jagged the 1chip is compared to the other two. And to be fair, it actually looks worse in person. I took those pics for the sole purpose of color levels, and not anything else, so I didn't spend any time at all focusing or even using a stand (I don't have very steady hands). What that means is the 1chip actually looks better because the picture blurred it slightly. It looks worse in person, and MUCH worse in motion. Just horrible.

So, my point is, the "blur" from the original SNES actually helps a good deal on my HDTV. The 1chip is too jagged to be usable. Of course, the upscaler in my TV probably is far from the best, but even with a high quality upscaler, I just don't see the 1chip looking better than the original model blown up to 1080.

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

You see, I use only CRT displays (standard definition) at the moment. And 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. (OK I'm a little overexcited here. The SHVC-CPU-01 looks a little better, but not "much" better because the differences are minor)

Some games may (or may not) benefit from the increased sharpness of the 1CHIP/Mini, like Mystic Quest or Mario All Stars......but then again, those games don't have very complex, artistic styles. But if your playing Secret of Evermore, or like you, DKC3, you might very well prefer the original SHVC-CPU-01.

Basically the problem with those kinds of effects is they're not "intelligent".
A filter covers everything, including (if present) any geometric objects that are meant to look like lego blocks.

So what's the easiest way to find a SHVC-CPU-01? The pretentious elitist snob in me wants one.

theclaw wrote:Basically the problem with those kinds of effects is they're not "intelligent".
A filter covers everything, including (if present) any geometric objects that are meant to look like lego blocks.

My post has been edited. I'm no longer using any hypotheticals. Just facts.

irixith wrote:So what's the easiest way to find a SHVC-CPU-01? The pretentious elitist snob in me wants one.

Any console with 4 rubber feet on the bottom AND with a serial number beginning with "UN1xxxxxx" will be the SHVC-CPU-01. Any console with 2 rubber feet and "UN2xxxxx" or higher will not be SHVC. (while the 4 rubber feet are a dead giveaway, the serial number sticker itself is a dead giveaway too. The color of the sticker will be silver, while the newer models will have a white sticker)

If you want a component mod-able SHVC-CPU-01, you should shoot for "UN16xxxxxx" or "UN17xxxxxx" as they have the S-ENC chip. I'm not sure if the "UN15xxxxx" or "UN14xxxxxx" have the S-ENC. In fact, I don't know the which earliest serial number of the SHVC family introduced the S-ENC. The only ones I'm aware of are the one's I've seen.

Then what about reducing that smoothing so it's between the two models?

theclaw wrote:Then what about reducing that smoothing so it's between the two models?

Don't see how that's possible.

SNES_is_the_Best wrote: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.

SNES_is_the_Best wrote: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.

The "cheaper audio section" part of your post sold it for me... digging out my yellowed SNES now to replace the 1CHIP I've been using. It's the very first model as well.

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.

btw I'm using RGB with an RGB to component transcoder on my SD Sony WEGA TV (calibrated with the Avia DVD; color temp on Warm and all that)

@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.