Artifacts and scanlines...

[Ji-L87]

Hi, new user here (should I go somewhere else to introduce myself, perhaps?)

I recently acquired a Duo-R, and it reads CDs and HuCards just fine. Audio is no problem either.
However, I've noticed weird occurrences of what to me seems like interlaced sprite layers which becomes "solid" or non-interlaced at certain times, as well as strange....artefacts, which probably might be a problem with my LCD TV. But it's weird, none the less.

My library of games is still very small (just 3, atm) but the only game I have in which these things occur is Galaxy Fraulein Yuna 2.  :oops:

Examples of interlacing:


In the last pic, the eyes have suddenly turned solid and these things seems to happen at the end of cutscenes etc.
I tried the game with the trial for Magic Engine and none of these interlacing effects are visible. Now, how accurate this emulator is, I don't know.

Examples of artefacts:

The blue-ish one is how it looked like on my CRT tube and the green-ish one is how it looked on my LCD (no, it's not actually that green, rest assured).
I know that old games just runs better on old TVs but I like having every system connected to one TV, the old one stands in a corner because of space issues.

I have opened up the system once because of another little thing (nothing too serious, just a bit of loose plastic) and I couldn't see anything wrong with caps and the like. So, is this a "real problem" or is it normal?  Game runs fine otherwise, just beaten it, but it is distracting.

[thesteve]

id say its related to your tv's upscaling.

yes ME is quite good

[SignOfZeta]

Its the TV. A PCE couldn't produces artifacts like this if it wanted to.

Get a high-end 90s TV from the Salvation Army store for $80 and be done with it. If you *must* use a modern TV you'll need an RGB mod and a something like a XRGB or Edge (for 5x the price of a decent used CRT).

[Ji-L87]

Thanks for your answers,
I will probably look into getting a good CRT (my current one is simply too big and heavy) and find a place for it. I do think I saw the interlacing-thing on my CRT as well though, might need to try that again.

[Keith Courage]

Yeah my 42inch plasma has  wavy lines that go up the screen if I use it. Bothers the crap out of me so I always use an older sony trinitron CRT instead which looks awesome.

[thesteve]

keith, you have a different issue.

yours is most likely a ground problem between the pce and tv

[BigusSchmuck]

Thought it was strange too when I had seen scanlines on some of the scrolling stuff in Ys books 1 and 2. Guess I have to go dig out my old tele out of storage ^^.

[incrediblehark]

what it sounds like is an issue with playing older games on a newer hdtv. My guess is that in the screens where you have issues, the games are trying to produce a sort of transparent look, with a tv or monitor with scanlines, the image would appear to flicker or look transparent. Example: If you play Sonic the Hedgehog and get the shield item, it will overlap him but will appear to flicker showing you have the powerup. If displayed on an hdtv monitor (without interlacing / scanlines) You won't see the shield at all.

[SignOfZeta]

What's even more common is seening half the shield, with the other half just dropping out completely. This also happens in fighting games that have a shadow which is drawn every other  frame, alternating between the two fighters. One guy will have a totally opaque shadow, and the other guy will have none.

[thesteve]

thats a frame rate conversion.
using a faster display should eliminate the issue.
i have not had an issue using my 50" nec plasma monitor.

[SignOfZeta]

It's not the display itself that is slow, it's the hardware inside that digitizes SD signals.

SD game machines look like crap on all LCD/plasma. There is no point in wasting more money on another display. Upscaling old game machines simply isn't a priority for companies today. They are concentrating on making PS3s and Apple TVs and stuff like that look good.

The only solution is a quality up scaler, but honestly even those pale in comparison to a good late 90s Sony or JVC CRT. A good old SD TV will have zero lag, no artifacts, and it will run you less than $100. I got a pro Samsung unit from a guy on Craigslist for $20. It does everything from SD composite to 1024x768 VGA, making it basically the ultimate gaming monitor. You litterally can't buy anything this good for OG consoles anymore, and it was only $20. Cons: it weights 112 lbs!

[thesteve]

my plasma is not your average display.
its an industrial use display that supports about any format you could think of, and has an excellent upscaler in it.

it also cost me $100 not working, with a retail list price of $10,000.

[SignOfZeta]

Well, that's awesome, but you can't expect anyone else to get a deal like that so "buy another TV" isn't the best advice, IMO.

Also, no disrespect intended, but I'll believe there is a good flat panel for SD consoles when I see it. There just isn't any incentive for OEMs to build quality line doublers into their sets when nothing SD is even being made anymore, and it shows. If the Turbo looks bad on a 2 year old Samsung 40", its going to look just as bad on a brand new Samsung 40" (possibly worse, since many new ones don't have s-video).

Every time someone says that the SNES or whatever looks great on their display, I go to look at it and it looks like utter shite. Half the time they even have it in wide mode, which is unforgivable.

As long as they are happy, that's all that matters, but for anyone who is picky the solutions are:

1) get an old TV

2) buy a super rad box for your new TV that in itself costs 15x as much as a good old TV.

There is a possible third solution. When I was at Galloping Ghost arcade I noticed that they had a great number of those drop-in replacement LCD screens in their machines. Many looked like aaaasssssss, but some looked great. Whatever they have in their Ms Pac Man cocktail is f*cking amazing. Of course, they are RGB-only devices (if they have other inputs you certainly won't get these kind of results.

[thesteve]

well enough
im not saying finding a good (much less great) flat display for composite inputs is easy.
I just got lucky.
I also got to play with the original 42" philips consumer unit back in the day, and it looked like crap running composite.

[nat]

Every time someone says that the SNES or whatever looks great on their display, I go to look at it and it looks like utter shite. Half the time they even have it in wide mode, which is unforgivable.

This is the part that gets me the most. How can people do this? And when you point it out to them, they just give you this blank mouth-breathing stare like you just said something to them in another language.