Component vs Composite

[Pulsar_t]

Some people do prefer the blurry look of composite for Wii games, I heard this from a few "casual players", but I imagine most people would prefer sharper images.

[ice445]

Short story, American TVs are inferior to European TVs.

Long story, composite video is akin to lossy compression (think JPEG or MP3). By design its use degrades the source image. How much loss occurs is affected by encoding and decoding quality.

I'm pretty sure it's the other way around? We get 60Hz, Europe only gets 50. Other than that, we have component, they have RGB. There's no actual differences other than that, I'm pretty sure. And component is functionally identical to RGB, with two additional channels for something that I can't remember.

[elmagicochrisg]

Other than that, we have component, they have RGB.

Europe had both...

[Reprise]

Yes, we have both. Also, PAL is superior to NTSC(*), it's just games were originally made with NTSC 60hz in mind and developers didn't bother making games run properly here until later.

* For reasons I can't remember or probably understand. I've heard many people who know what they're talking about say the same thing though and acknowledge that people often, incorrectly, assume NTSC is better purely because of old games not being optimized for PAL.

[Pulsar_t]

PAL has 576 vertical lines. Back before HDMI became standard if a game had a version with PAL60 I'd go with it.

[theclaw]

I only have a NTSC copy of Sonic 1 so I cant test it out but I found this 50/60 hz Sonic 1 comparison video. All the hz comparison videos in youtube seem to be about Son

Sonic 1 is not optimized, Sonic 2 I have no idea, Sonic 3 is optimized...

Sega didn't print PAL specific rom chips for Sonic 1 or Sonic 2. Any optimizations would be found in other versions also.

Likely Sonic 3 is just region lock. You could use Game Genie to make US or JP Sonic 3 use 50hz at bootup, that'll tell if NTSC copies also contain the PAL game data.

[DinnerX]

And component is functionally identical to RGB, with two additional channels for something that I can't remember.

Actually it isn't quite. Component sends red, blue, and luma instead of red, green, and blue. In component the green is determined using the luma and the other two signals. In practice the end result looks about the same as rgb though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YPbPr

[BoneSnapDeez]

I'm colorblind and rarely notice the differences in quality between different hook-ups. I generally just go with whatever came with the console. My SNES is rockin' the RF cable right now.

That said, I did get some Wii component cables and the picture looks a bit nicer now.

I use my CRT for everything except for PS3/Xbox 360 - those get hooked to the HDTV.

[ice445]

Yes, we have both. Also, PAL is superior to NTSC(*), it's just games were originally made with NTSC 60hz in mind and developers didn't bother making games run properly here until later.

* For reasons I can't remember or probably understand. I've heard many people who know what they're talking about say the same thing though and acknowledge that people often, incorrectly, assume NTSC is better purely because of old games not being optimized for PAL.

Superior how though? And that's cool you have both, even though they're basically the same.

[theclaw]

PAL can fit more objects on screen with its higher vertical resolution, has a newer color system (unless using RGB where that doesn't apply), and the lower refresh rate grants additional time to draw each frame.