PC Engine is black & white on my TV... HELP!

[pulstar]

Can't i buy a cable or something ?

I saw a cool RGB box on e**y from some lad in france but its pretty pricey

That cable on ebay that connects to the EXT port is the only way to get RGB without some soldering. It is very pricey though, but if you don't want to solder and don't want to send it someone to mod it's your only option.

Because you had full colour on one your TVs I'd also say your PCE is working perfectly fine.

RGB is the way to go, though.

[Fidde_se]

Old PAL tvs doesn't handle the NTSC palette and there for NTSC becomes black&white, usually S-Video becomes B&W too, even S-Video in PAL, they usually go hand in hand, if it would have a proprietary S-Video connector it would become color, there were usually 2 scarts back in those days, nr1 for comp/rgb and nr2 for comp/svideo, if there was only one scart and nothing else then there was comp/rgb. A few modern tvs only have one scart and have lots of input on the same but it's all way outside the standards, even Component on scart which is lightyears away from when the scart standards were set.

I'm the maker of that cable and it can be had cheaper here on the forum, ebay takes 5£ alone for having it sold there. 

[pulstar]

Old PAL tvs doesn't handle the NTSC palette and there for NTSC becomes black&white...

I always thought it was because the colour carrier frequency was different between PAL and NTSC and when an NTSC signal was received it tried to decode the colour from the wrong frequency (and so the colour signal was incorrect) and that's why it came out in black and white...

[wildfruit]

I highly recommend fiddes cable for a hu card only set up

[Fidde_se]

Old PAL tvs doesn't handle the NTSC palette and there for NTSC becomes black&white...

I always thought it was because the colour carrier frequency was different between PAL and NTSC and when an NTSC signal was received it tried to decode the colour from the wrong frequency (and so the colour signal was incorrect) and that's why it came out in black and white...

Yeah that might be true too but there are more complex differences as NTSC uses a more luminance/chrominance encoding system and PAL uses a phase alternating lines encoding system, hence it's name so even if they were on the same frequency both the color table that does differ a little the systems color encoding schedule is actually what differs between them the most, technically way more different then the number of lines and frames per second, the luminance/chrominance thing mostly had to do that NTSC had to be more compatible with black and white TV's and therefor could not be made to best use the new color function for it's best picture, and PAL came after the ntsc color tv standards was set and could there for focus more on quality and less on compability.

[NightWolve]

I've never had an issue on any of my TVs with using Japanese consoles with AV...  Except for my megadrive, when I flip the switches I installed for a region mod.  Guess I may have assumed it was only RF

Japan had also adopted the American NTSC standard which is reflected in all products sold in the country or was before digital (e.g. TVs, DVD players, consoles, etc.). It's Europe and European-made TVs that deal in PAL which is why you'll run into signal compatibility issues then.

Yeah that might be true too but there are more complex differences as NTSC uses a more luminance/chrominance encoding system and PAL uses a phase alternating lines encoding system,

Yeah, and I'm surprised he was getting any stable picture at all.

[Punch]

Yeah, there is also PAL-M that is used only in Viêt Nam and in Brazil that is incompatible with both NTSC and PAL signals and will show NTSC in B/W. The more you know.

I wonder why some TV sets aren't built to support NTSC AND PAL. Brazilian TV sets from all makers (except REALLY OLD ones) support NTSC, PAL-N and PAL-M. My LCD TV, and all my older CRT tvs are like that, I thought this was the norm for the rest of the world?

[pulstar]

I have a few really old CRTs that don't support NTSC. But that's the only one. All my other CRTs and LCDs support PAL and NTSC. I have no idea about PAL-M though. I thought that after a certain time TVs (in the UK at least) started supporting both, but I guess that could be wrong.

[SuperPlay]

I live in the UK and in my time I have come across many PAL TVs that do not support NTSC in color via composite video, either via the yellow lead input or via a scart cable that has been wired to use the Composite video input pins. To be 100% sure check your TV manual to see if it supports NTSC if you want to use composite, sounds like it does not though.

Also if you convert to RGB:

1) make sure that if your TV has 2 sockets that you put the cable in the one marked RGB.

2) Be aware that RGB on PAL TVs can shift the picture left, sometimes there is either a menu option or service menu where you can shift this back.

[wildfruit]

I live in the UK and in my time I have come across many PAL TVs that do not support NTSC in color via composite video, either via the yellow lead input or via a scart cable that has been wired to use the Composite video input pins. To be 100% sure check your TV manual to see if it supports NTSC if you want to use composite, sounds like it does not though.

Also if you convert to RGB:

1) make sure that if your TV has 2 sockets that you put the cable in the one marked RGB.

2) Be aware that RGB on PAL TVs can shift the picture left, sometimes there is either a menu option or service menu where you can shift this back.

I got a 21" crt from asda about 10 years ago for under £100. Does NTSC PAL RGB and S video what a bargain

[megatron-uk]

If you're at all in to old consoles, then the best option is always to connect them via RGB - which virtually any TV sold in the UK within the last 20 years should be able to accept via SCART.

Most systems just have a cable to use, but alas the PC-Engine needs an internal mod, or that expansion connector box to get RGB out.

Another alternative to a TV is a dedicated CRT monitor, something like a Sony BVM or PVM broadcast monitor - they'll accept pretty much any combination of 50/60Hz signals, PAL/NTSC encoding and composite, RGB, component, svideo. Plus pretty much the best set of image adjustment options you'll get.