As I recall S-Video actually shouldn’t blend…I’ve found a couple of links which seems to validate this:
For what it’s worth, that’s why I use composite on all my presets.
3 Likes
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?
svideo and RGB are very close in quality. On a decent-to-poor-quality TV, the only real giveaway is some chroma smearing.
1 Like
If that’s the case then I had the look right on my previous pack before I went and changed my svideo presets to look more blended. Oh well I don’t feel like updating them anymore. Interesting information here though
1 Like
yeah, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Just go with something you like. There’s enough variation among individual displays and console outputs that no single preset is going to look “right” to everyone.
3 Likes
The modding shouldn’t be a thing. Genesis natively supports S-Video, modding is just because the connector isn’t physically there. Like RGB on SNES. You’re not changing/adding anything, it’s already there, if you know what I mean.
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. And, by doing that, you achieve something which is close to the examples above.
For a reference about the different characteristics of the different cables, there’s a handy image at this link: https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/NTSC_filters
3 Likes
I see. And if I compare your pic here to my latest pic a few posts up my waterfall definitely looks more blended than your pic but like I told hunterk, I don’t feel like updating anymore lol. At least I still retain a good amount of sharpness on those svideo presets I guess.
1 Like
Did SNES do real RGB? I am from Germany/PAL where we had the SCART connection. SCART itself does support RGB. According to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCART
The signals carried by SCART include both composite and RGB (with composite synchronisation) video, stereo audio input/output and digital signalling. The standard was extended at the end of the 1980s to support the new S-Video signals.
Because that would mean I played with true RGB on the SNES all the time. I thought it would output S-Video signal only. It really becomes muddy with statements like “The intention of the pixel artist…”.
most models of SNES had native RGB over SCART/JP21, yes. It also supports svideo. The only difference is which pins the cable exposes from the multi-port.
The SNES Jr/Mini that came later does not have RGB by default and has to have it modded back in. It topped out at svideo.
1 Like
It did, but it needed a RGB cable. In Europe (I’m from Italy), SNES came with the RF cable in the box. I don’t remember if you could find the composite cable in the stores, but surely there was no RGB cable. 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.
First official Nintendo RGB cable was GameCube’s. The console came with a composite cable and a SCART adapter in the box. The RGB cable was something like 30€.
1 Like
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
1 Like
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/
3 Likes
Here in Germany did it too. In fact, I never met anyone in my life using the SNES with a different cable than SCART.
2 Likes
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 -_-
1 Like
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.
2 Likes
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.
1 Like
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.
6 Likes
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.
4 Likes
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.
4 Likes