PC Engine AV mod

[esteban]

The PlayChoice 10 uses the same games that are on the NES!  I think the romfiles might be a bit different due to the fact that some of the color locations are swapped, but in the end you are playing the same exact game... in RGB.  Perhaps it is you who doesn't understand what I am saying.  There was even an arcade machine that ran Genesis games.  Maybe the PC Engine wasn't awesome enough to get an arcade machine? 

There was a Jamma -based TG-16 arcade machine that used modified TG-16 hardware. I lost my bid to the one and only time I saw it on ebay, but D-Lite was kind enough to scan the instructions that came with it. I don't know if he ever got around to getting the kit working, but I'm hoping one day to see this documented . I'll reply to your other points tomorrow morning .

You folks have completely and utterly confused every point I made in my initial post.

[termis]

Maybe the PC Engine wasn't awesome enough to get an arcade machine? 

I'm not sure if it was a pirated board or not, but I first played Kato Chan & Ken Chan in an arcade machine in Korea 20 some odd years ago.  Like some playchoice-10 machines, a single credit bought some play time, as opposed to playing until you ran out of men.

And to keep it on topic, I have no idea whether that was in RGB or not 

(Dang, you beat me to the "post" button stevek666)

[Keranu]

The PlayChoice 10 uses the same games that are on the NES!  I think the romfiles might be a bit different due to the fact that some of the color locations are swapped, but in the end you are playing the same exact game... in RGB.  Perhaps it is you who doesn't understand what I am saying.  There was even an arcade machine that ran Genesis games.  Maybe the PC Engine wasn't awesome enough to get an arcade machine? 

Actually you're right, I'm not understanding what you are saying! At least when it comes to the PlayChoice cabinets, because I don't get the point you're trying to make with it. I know what Playchoices are and understand that arcade monitors use RGB, but I don't get how this is helping your arguement any. Are you saying I should compare the picture quality of a Playchoice cabinet with a NES running in composite?

[Joe Redifer]

You said arcades are different but home consoles are designed around composite.  If Nintendo designed their machine to have the best display in composite, why wouldn't the PlayChoice 10 use composite as well?  Why would they hook it up via RGB and risk losing all of the magical properties that the dithering has?  My whole point is this:  If you think arcades look nice, then you'd think home consoles in RGB would look nice... as in better than composite.  I can understand not wanting to spend the money on it, though.

[Spector]

Composite/rf is, in my opinion, better for composite.rf-era machines, and that means pre-Playstation. When I play Megadrive games near perfectly emulated on Xbox, the one thing I don't like is the blockiness. I can see the individual pixels, and I always hated that.

It's the same with music. Records made before the 1980s are best heard on vinyl, not CD.

[Joe Redifer]

Keep in mind that emulators on the Xbox upscale.  They do not show the games in their native resolution and that is the reason for their blockiness.  You can see the individual pixels via composite and RF on the real systems, lest ye forget.  Of course one can ask why did all the other machines besides the NES and the PC Engine provide a direct means to get RGB out of the system, especially if composite looked so much better?

[FM-77]

I remember a couple of years ago (2000?) when I had a TV that didn't support RGB. I used composite for everything I had (even PS2, etc) and I thought it looked good. When I got a new TV that HAD RGB support, I used it on the systems that supported it, liked it, had to mod my other systems so that they would support it as well, and now I can't even look at composite anymore. I think RGB would have that effect on everybody.

[Michael Helgeson]

You said arcades are different but home consoles are designed around composite.  If Nintendo designed their machine to have the best display in composite, why wouldn't the PlayChoice 10 use composite as well? 

Well,since the TV home consumer market in the USA in the 80ies mainly supported RF you were actually lucky the first Nes even offered composite out at all. As for the Play Choice 10,its arcade hardware,and on arcade hardware they use RGB,its standard. Wether it looked good picture quality wise or not I don't think really mattered,it was just cheaper to do RGB back then. A RGB monitor and arcade board in a arcade cab doesn't use what was considered back then expensive parts for RF or composite function. If composite or RF woulda been cheaper then they most likely woulda used it in the Playchoice 10 instead of RGB. I think your forgetting how expensive good quality color tvs were in the 80ies. We paid over $350 for a 19 in. Emerson that only supported RF back in 1988. My aunt and uncle in the 80ies worked for Godwins arcade distribution,and I remember how my uncle used to bitch about how the RGB tubes were really cheap compared to tvs.

He was also one of those goofs that had the magnification lens attached to his 20 inch tv to get a larger picture for years because he was too cheap to buy a newer larger tv set.

[SharkSkin-Man]

Composite/rf is, in my opinion, better for composite.rf-era machines, and that means pre-Playstation. When I play Megadrive games near perfectly emulated on Xbox, the one thing I don't like is the blockiness. I can see the individual pixels, and I always hated that.

It's the same with music. Records made before the 1980s are best heard on vinyl, not CD.

Composite era?

PC Engine, Megadrive, Super Famicom up to PlayStation2 is the RGB era. Everything after that is component/VGA/HDMI.
RGB SCART is 1970s technology.

When the PC-Engine and soon after the MegaDrive found their way to UK importers a pretty large % of kids I knew were using RGB monitors or RGB SCART TVs. They were readily available at the time (infact a good quality, proper low-res RGB screen is MUCH harder to find now than it was then).

Everytime I see screenshots of US gamers using composite on old 2D console games I thank the lord I had access to decent screens back then.

Do people really think the developers were designing and testing these games using a consumer TV with an RF or composite connection?

[FM-77]

While Mega Drive, SNES, etc offered RGB natively, the PC Engine didn't. So I wouldn't consider it an RGB era console (whatever that means). Composite is 50's standard, by the way.

[SharkSkin-Man]

RGB era to me (i.e. in the UK) = the time when the best possible picture for the available systems was RGB. Which is everything up to PS2 (excluding the handful of progressive PS2 titles).

Yeah you had to mod the PCE, but this was common place right from the early days of UK PCE imports. Quite a few places sold them with hardwired Scart cables.

[Spector]

RGB era to me (i.e. in the UK) = the time when the best possible picture for the available systems was RGB. Which is everything up to PS2 (excluding the handful of progressive PS2 titles).

Yeah you had to mod the PCE, but this was common place right from the early days of UK PCE imports. Quite a few places sold them with hardwired Scart cables.

I don't think I ever saw a single RGB display from a computer or console in the 80s or early 90s in anyones house. It was pretty rare in reality, at least in the UK.

[SharkSkin-Man]

I don't think I ever saw a single RGB display from a computer or console in the 80s or early 90s in anyones house. It was pretty rare in reality, at least in the UK.

WTF! Massive amounts of Commodore and Philips RGB screens were sold with Amigas and STs. Pretty certain some console shops even sold them (Shekhana on Tottenham Court Road??).

As for TVs, by the time I had a Super Famicom me and my brother had two cheap 14" TVs for games (one Toshiba, one Sharp) both had RGB SCART (and the Sharp is still alive and kicking to this day).

And like I said, when the PC-Engine was released RGB screens were common enough that some retailers sold the consoles RGB SCART hardwired.

[Michael Helgeson]

Composite/rf is, in my opinion, better for composite.rf-era machines, and that means pre-Playstation. When I play Megadrive games near perfectly emulated on Xbox, the one thing I don't like is the blockiness. I can see the individual pixels, and I always hated that.

It's the same with music. Records made before the 1980s are best heard on vinyl, not CD.

Composite era?

PC Engine, Megadrive, Super Famicom up to PlayStation2 is the RGB era. Everything after that is component/VGA/HDMI.
RGB SCART is 1970s technology.

When the PC-Engine and soon after the MegaDrive found their way to UK importers a pretty large % of kids I knew were using RGB monitors or RGB SCART TVs. They were readily available at the time (infact a good quality, proper low-res RGB screen is MUCH harder to find now than it was then).

Everytime I see screenshots of US gamers using composite on old 2D console games I thank the lord I had access to decent screens back then.

Do people really think the developers were designing and testing these games using a consumer TV with an RF or composite connection?

You know,I'm not quite sure what the deal is with people in the UK assuming the rest of the world had scart or RGB as  a easy option. Yea,Scart has been around since the late 70ies,in YOUR country,not OURS.

As for the Pc-Engine scene in the UK in the 80ies,yea it did have a good one. But I got a question,since everyone was using their Pc-Engine in RGB,does that mean everyone was doing RGB mods? I have never seen a actual RGB cable that will tap RGB off the expansion port. The 80ies may have been a RGB era for you,but for us it was NTSC composite and RF.

[Joe Redifer]

Actually it would be completely possible to build an RGB cable with a giganto-huge connector that fits on the back of the PC Engine and outputs RGB.  Of course that would eliminate playing CD games.  Man, NEC could have thought things through a little more when providing the outputs on their system. They were the only ones without a jack that did RGB, if you don't count the expansion bus.