PC Engine AV mod

[Joe Redifer]

Actually when I first saw what looked like a DIN-8 on the Duo my first thought was that it was the same jack that was on the Genesis and Neo Geo.  But then I saw a composite video and stereo audio cable plug into it and I knew that it was proprietary.  Still if they used a real DIN-8, they would have enough pins left over to offer s-video at the very least!

[Tatsujin]

 Still if they used a real DIN-8, they would have enough pins left over to offer s-video at the very least!

but what they didn't and for what i hate them the most and forever!

[FM-77]

I've modified my DUO-R that it has a DIN-8 instead and it is compatible with the standard PCE composite cords as well as my own custom RGB one. They should've designed it that way, those madmen.

[Michael Helgeson]

God did not create the TurboGrafx/PC Engine.  God was busy working for Mattel at that time.

I think your refering to Tom,and if so,yes he is GOD,and 2,he was rebuilding Matchbox at the time.

[Buster D]

I already have my Duo-R modded to output S-Video, I was thinking about getting an RGB mod for it as well but I discovered there are ways to get the 240p signal without it if you have a capture card and use the "DScaler" freeware, which has an "Old Game" deinterlacing mode to combine the proper parts of the fields to give you 240p, up to 60fps video game goodness upscaled on your PC monitor (or HDTV if your TV accepts VGA or DVI, or if you have a video card with component out, or if you have a VGA to component transcoder).  This also works with Saturn, SNES, and PS1 games (not PS2 or most DC games though).  There are also some standalone scalers that will properly deinterlace the 480i signal to a 240p one, but they're expensive and they sometimes have delay problems, as do some HDTVs.

[Joe Redifer]

Your Duo is always 240p until some device (like an HDTV or a capture card) interprets it as 480i.  Those devices don't know what 240p is, so that's why they do what they do.  I don't think it would be too great for the signal to be interlaced from 240p into 480i and then deinterlaced back to 240p.  That's just too much screwing with the signal in my opinion.

[Buster D]

From what I understand, the way a 240p signal works is that instead of displaying it as 480 lines split into 60 alternating fields every second, the 240 lines from each field are their own frame and aren't alternating like when they're displayed on a TV.  On DScaler's Old Game mode, they're rendered as 720x240 progressive frames and then upscaled to fill your monitor or HDTV.  On old RGB monitors, a 4:3 60fps progressive image is shown with scanlines inbetween the 240 lines of video data, but they don't alternate and create flicker like on a regular TV.

So I don't think a game console has to do anything special to make a 240p signal into a 480i one, the frames are just alternated between the top 240 lines and bottom 240 lines instead of being shown on the same 240 lines.  An RGB cable will give you slightly better quality than S-Video since the red/green/blue colors are all sent separately instead of just the chroma and luma, but if your display is properly deinterlacing a 240p signal sent over S-Video, you won't see a great difference compared to RGB.  Similarly, there's not much difference in quality between a 480i signal over S-Video and a 480i signal over component (composite is another matter, of course).

[Spector]

Similarly, there's not much difference in quality between a 480i signal over S-Video and a 480i signal over component (composite is another matter, of course).

True, but by how much is composite different?
Here are some shots taken from my TV of my AV modded PC Engine and an emulator running from my Xbox. Which is the AV picture and which is the SCART derived emulator screen?

The crap quality pictures (I tried my best, honest) don't help, I admit.

[FM-77]

Bottom pics are from the Xbox.

[Spector]

Incorrect!   

[FM-77]

Are you using rgb with it?

[Joe Redifer]

There is a flag in the 480i video signal that tells the CRT to advance to the next field.  A 240p signal simply removes that flag.  It is 60 progressive frames per second on a 240p signal, running at up to 720x243.  It is easy to interlace a 240p signal, yes, but it is pointless unless every 1/60th of a second is one half of a picture, therefore resulting in the resolution increase that 480i provides over 240p.  If every 1/60th of a second is the entire picture, it will just look blocky and therefore like complete ass.

The best way is just to play old game systems on SDTVs and not HDTVs.  My SDTV has a component input and it looks RGB quality, easily.  Also someone said that component isn't much better than s-video.  I beg to differ.  S-video is still limited to NTSC color, component is not.  Reds look much better over component (depending on your set, of course).  With s-video, the red hearts and stuff like that in Super Duper Castlevania IV on the SNES still have color bleed to the right on every TV I've ever tried.  Completely gone with RGB/component.  If your source is compressed all to hell like DVD, then yeah component won't look amazingly great.  But if the source is RGB, then hell yeah it will! 

[Keranu]

We're going in loops now .

[Buster D]

There is a flag in the 480i video signal that tells the CRT to advance to the next field.  A 240p signal simply removes that flag.  It is 60 progressive frames per second on a 240p signal, running at up to 720x243.  It is easy to interlace a 240p signal, yes, but it is pointless unless every 1/60th of a second is one half of a picture, therefore resulting in the resolution increase that 480i provides over 240p. 

I don't get what you're saying here... sending a 240p signal as 480i doesn't really increase the resolution, it just shows the lines at alternating intervals.

If every 1/60th of a second is the entire picture, it will just look blocky and therefore like complete ass.

Seeing the pixels doesn't bother me really, and if it did the flicker from a CRT SDTV would bother me more.  As for 60 frames per second, that's a good thing as lots of games are rendered that way, especially arcade games and arcade ports.

The best way is just to play old game systems on SDTVs and not HDTVs.  My SDTV has a component input and it looks RGB quality, easily.  Also someone said that component isn't much better than s-video.  I beg to differ.  S-video is still limited to NTSC color, component is not.  Reds look much better over component (depending on your set, of course).  With s-video, the red hearts and stuff like that in Super Duper Castlevania IV on the SNES still have color bleed to the right on every TV I've ever tried.  Completely gone with RGB/component.  If your source is compressed all to hell like DVD, then yeah component won't look amazingly great.  But if the source is RGB, then hell yeah it will! 

I think that's more a problem with the TVs than the signal.  I don't see any bleeding reds when S-Video is input to my computer monitor through my capture card (actually it's the PDI Deluxe aka Sweetspot, it's more of a card meant for watching external inputs on a PC).  All of my video game systems outputting S-Video look just as good as the Component from my PS2, which the card also accepts.

[Joe Redifer]

Well, I think you're confusing a lot of what I was saying.  I never said a line-doubled 240p signal increased resolution.  Please point out where I said that.  Instead, I said it would look twice as blocky and more craptastic.  If you like crap, then you'll love 240p shown as 480i.  With REAL interlacing, where both fields are separate halves of the picture, then yes, the perceived resolution increases.  There is no flicker in a real 240p image n a CRT TV.

Please post some pictures captured from s-video of Super Duper Castlevania IV with lots of floating hearts on the screen.  Like I said, s-video is still limited to NTSC color space, which the entire world agrees isn't exactly the best.