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S-video (TV) vs CRT VGA display: examples

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amendonz:
I believe you can access screen adjustments in the hidden test menu on most tvs. although not the best solution as you will need to access it every time you change game.

leapinlew:
I've done both, tried to adjust the size on the video card. It doesn't appear to have that functionality, and I wonder if it did, how it would respond in each game and while my TV did have a hidden service menu, I wasn't able to figure out how to adjust it.

There is probably a fair dose of user error involved, but the point was, S-video out of the box for me with this particular TV had a few issues. I wanted to try a different TV, but never got a different 32" television.

The only clipping that caused issues was Crazy Climber. It cut off the map on the side of the screen.

TOK:
S-Video looks like crap compared to component in on my TV. The blacks aren't as dark and the red is much less vivid.
It was so worth the little bit of extra tweaking required to get it working right with a component out video card.

MonMotha:
S-Video itself is a very capable format at 480i/240p (or 576i/288p in 50Hz land), but it's not compatible with anything above that due to the placement of the chroma carrier at standard NTSC/PAL frequency.  A quality television is required to demodulate the color QAM (note to people who have seen this elsewhere: this is analog QAM and not particularly related to the format used for cable modems and digital cable) well, but most TVs got really good at it by about 2000 or so other than the bottom-of-the-barrel bargain basement models.

HOWEVER...

Many cheap TV sets don't actually have an S-Video input!  Instead, they just internally re-combine the s-video into composite much like those adapter dongles do.  The result is actually WORSE than composite due to some technical subtleties.  On these televisions, there's no reason to use S-Video as it won't look any better than composite, and the connector sucks :)

Many TV sets also have grossly incorrect default settings on the composite/s-video inputs since they fool people into thinking that photo-realistic TV looks "better", but for some reason the component inputs seem to have slightly more correct default settings.  "Black looking gray" is a common result of this.  Just turn the brightness control down.  Dodgy red is more related to the quality of the chroma demod and may be impossible to correct, but some TVs have some settings that can help.

ALSO...

Most PC s-video outputs are total garbage.  They smash and crush the signal so that it "fits".  If you "disable overscan", the result is even worse since that works by simply scaling down the picture and putting black bars around it.  They're simply awful.  The component outputs on video cards so equipped are generally much cleaner.  They're also usually capable of arbitrary resolutions whereas the s-video outputs are usually limited to mashing a couple standard PC modes into whatever it deems "compatible with a TV".

I've had VERY good luck using quality RGB to S-Video converters with quality televisions (set correctly!) and various sources.  The results are often nearly indistinguishable in anything but a side-by-side comparison.

Now, component YPbPr video is functionally identical to RGB.  The conversion can actually be performed losslessly, though most digital converters will downsample the color 2:1 horizontally (4:2:2 subsampling) which is almost impossible to see on photorealistic images but fairly evident on sharp computer/game graphics.  Aside from that, any remaining appearance differences between these two connection formats are simply due to your TV being set incorrectly (or sucking).

Properly adjusting a CRT monitor is a little tricky, and most TVs are grossly mis-set since it makes normal television look "better" to most people, even though it's totally wrong and looks awful in monitor applications.  Sadly, setting many of them correctly requires messing around in a poorly documented service mode.

Also remember that the settings on a TV will drift with age.  If you're trying to compare a 10 year old second hand TV that has never been serviced to a brand new arcade monitor, of course the monitor is going to look better.  Not only is it (possibly) a better set to begin with, it's probably set (more) correctly.

FWIW, aside from the flash, the monitor shown in the pictures in the OP is grossly miscalibrated.  At minimum, turn the brightness control WAAAAY down.  Also, if that's from a real DL cabinet, it's actually just being fed composite video from the LD player.

Gray_Area:
First off, besides being RGB, the only difference between my monitor and the S-video TV is that mine is at a higher resolution. A 27" PC monitor is the same tube technology.

Second, I said I was baffled by those who thought S-video was any good, implying they didn't know any better. Now.....



--- Quote from: pinballjim on November 01, 2011, 12:57:41 pm ---Uhm, correct me if I'm wrong here, but doesn't Dragon's Lair, the actual cabinet, spit out a composite signal that's converted to RGB via separate PCB?  

Point being - your VGA signal is obviously nicer looking, but that's now how it looked in an arcade.
--- End quote ---

You know, looking more at the S-video images seemed to trigger the images in my memory of the game back then, and then my memory of the format....and you're probably right; laser disc games probably did look more like the S-video above. (Note that all four images above were displayed via Daphne.)

However, regular video games did not look like that, and there's plenty of opportunity physically and online to see that....that noobs or the uninitiated or whatever may not be aware of or able to dig up....

Which brings me to the point of the post: these images are for you. Study them. All your game belong to this.



**What I see in the S-video images above is exactly what I've seen in my own efforts. So, I call hogwash on the lighting and camera/flash comment. I'd call hogwash on it anyways, because I know what I see.

@ Malenko: my images are closely the same perspective; yours aren't.

Lastly, If standard hardware is the culprit, I'm saying S-video isn't going to be a viable alternative to anyone who knows better.

But, taking into account MonMotha's expert knowledge (and minus the brightness part; the brightness is up because otherwise the whole thing looks too dim), you have to balance how much effort it may take to fulfill those conditions, versus finding an RGB monitor.

If the monitor options I do have failed, I would be between the rock of the work a TV requires, and the hard place of an LCD. I might give up and choose neither.

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