New sonkun crt guest advanced hd presets thread

[thingsiplay]

@Fab

What you most probably did was play with a composite cable connected to a SCART adapter, and then plugged in the SCART connection of the TV. So it was no RGB.

No. The SNES had the multi-port connection with a SCART cable that came bundled with the system. Researching to show a picture is hard, because I only find modding stuff in the web. Edit: This is how I remember it

[hunterk]

@Fab

First official Nintendo RGB cable was GameCube’s

EDIT: ninja’ed. They had an earlier one for SNES, too, though it was JP21 and not SCART. The shvc-010:

A French fellow at the shmups forum indeed says his SNES came with SCART in the box/

[thingsiplay]

Here in Germany did it too. In fact, I never met anyone in my life using the SNES with a different cable than SCART.

[hunterk]

Interesting! I’ve long wondered how common actual RGB over SCART was, since, as Fab mentioned, it was quite possible (and potentially common) for people to have composite over SCART instead.

svideo was a similar situation here in the US, whereby it was on a lot of TVs, but I didn’t know anyone who actually used it properly. I knew a lot of people who would plug svideo into their VCR and then run composite from that into the TV -_-

[Fab]

Witchcraft! So there was a difference in the distribution. It seems really strange, Nintendo milked us for the RGB cable in the GameCube era, for the RGB and component in the Wii era, but it gave a free precious RGB cable in the SNES era in some countries.

[thingsiplay]

Where I am always cautions is, SCART supports multiple signals and it itself is just the connection. So you can have S-Video and Composite signal through it too; it does not equal to RGB automatically if the source did not support it. That is why I always wondered if SNES actually outputs true and clean RGB or was it internally actually S-Video? But if there was a RGB cable in Japan, then most likely it was true.

[Fab]

Ok, only in Italy I’ve found three different bundles (but I’m pretty certain there was another one).

First edition (the one I have): RF cable.

Second: RF cable.

Third (and presumably most recent, as it comes with Super Game Boy): composite (never knew)! But no RGB. A composite cable over a SCART connector could seem a RGB cable, but it wasn’t.

So. SNES could output RGB, that’s for sure. But I still doubt that here in Europe anyone had RGB.

[Jamirus]

RGB over SCART was very likely a niche thing for consoles. Once the SNES and Game Boy were released in Europe, dedicated Videogame magazines took really off, that’s the kind of audience which I would think invests in higher quality cables. On the other hand, I sometimes bought 5 or 6 of magazines a month during the 90s and I don’t remember ever looking specifically for RGB cables. But I was big on importing. So you can probably guess how small the RGB userbase must have been.

Anyway, it doesn’t help that SCART cables don’t necessarily have all the pins, so you won’t get RGB, only composite. For TVs itself it was the standard to support RGB by the time the SNES was released already since a few years, at least on sets of moderate size (like 20" and above). Those sets could also have S-Video capability, small sets don’t have that usually. I’ve only ever seen the separate (non-standard) luma/chroma connectors on small monitors, like for C64.

[sonkun]

I ended up doing a new shader pack tweak after all, it’s so minor though, I simply turned the blending level down from 80 to 70 in the sgenpt-mix shader in my svideo presets. That helped to eliminate this weird ghosting effect I was seeing on smaller sprite based games (nes etc) I mentioned earlier as well as sharpen the dithering effect up by a tiny bit. Grab the new pack in the same post.

[ynnad4]

Would it be possible for you within future updates to post the exact parameters changed through the presets, bud ?

[sonkun]

Ok no problem, will do. I was thinking of posting a before and after screen shot but just didn’t have the time had to head out

[nfp0]

@thingsiplay

Here in Germany did it too. In fact, I never met anyone in my life using the SNES with a different cable than SCART.

@hunterk

Interesting! I’ve long wondered how common actual RGB over SCART was, since, as Fab mentioned, it was quite possible (and potentially common) for people to have composite over SCART instead.

I’m from Portugal and I’ve never seen anyone with a real SCART RGB cable until the GameCube era.
What almost everyone was using was the composite over a SCART adapter that came bundled with every console.

Ah, now I’m remembering the moment when I first plugged my GameCube with the RGB cable. I was blown away by how much sharper it looked.

@ynnad4

Would it be possible for you within future updates to post the exact parameters changed through the presets, bud ?

@sonkun

Ok no problem, will do. I was thinking of posting a before and after screen shot but just didn’t have the time had to head out

Why not a git repo? It’s the easiest way to manage the code and everyone can see what changed. Plus, it’s easier for users to pull updates.

[nfp0]

@sonkun

Hmm interesting footage. That genesis is modded though, and if we compare that to guest’s advanced ntsc shader in svideo mode and crt royale’s ntsc svideo shader which both are pretty much blended and more blurry by default, what does that say about those shaders? That they have the wrong look?

@Fab

On your question about shaders. I think they “understimate” S-Video. Ideally, s-video has no artifacts, no fringing (composite has both) and chroma resolution is higher. So, way less blending. I know it’s a different function, but by raising NTSC resolution on guest’s shaders you should remove both artifacts and fringing.

I’ve always wondered that myself. I thought the NTSC shader S-Video mode was accurate, but what seems to me is that the level of chroma resolution was calibrated to the composite levels and the other modes just enable/disable the artifacts and fringing without changing chroma resolution values.

[sonkun]

@nfp0 I may eventually go the git hub route, just like it took forever for me to finally make a dedicated thread for my presets and then I finally did it.

Speaking on the topic of svideo, the more I look at those videos that Fab posted the more I want to go retweak my svideo presets to make the waterfall blend the same way as the videos, plus I’ll get an even sharper looking svideo preset in the process. I’m thinking of turning the sgenpt-mix blend mode down to either 50 or maybe even 0 or somewhere in between but then I’ll still leave first setting on “1.VL”. Decisions decisions

[thingsiplay]

+1 Git is perfect for this and I can even automate the updating of files with simple script or command. And it keeps track of the changes and entire history. Git keeps track of all versions and changes you made. One can download any older version if they want.

[sonkun]

Looks like I got two votes for git. Ok I’ll eventually get on it, never used that before so if I have questions on how to navigate it hopefully you guys will help me get it set up.

In the meantime what you think of this for my next svideo preset update.

Here’s my current settings but with sgenpt-mix Blend level turned down to 50:

Sgenpt-mix blend level turned down to 0:

Which one looks better? I’m going to shoot for the look of that svideo footage that @Fab posted for my next shader update

[thingsiplay]

I can’t say which one is more accurate, but my personal preference is a slight blurryness looks better. Also it probably depends on the tv and the cables how blurry it got? So there is probably a little playroom and not all svideo output looked the same in sharpness I guess.

[sonkun]

I guess the first pic then since it’s middle ground. Yeah I’m not sure how that tv is configured in that video but it’s definitely a sharp picture, the waterfall there pretty much looks like it’s running on rgb

[nfp0]

@hunterk mentioned S-Video and RGB should look very similar.

[sonkun]

In that case I would go with the look on the second image. Decisions lol

I think I got an idea, I can go with the look of the second pic and then raise deconvergence up a little to give it a little boost in blur