Dreamcast VGA question

[nat]

Shitty. Not what I wanted to hear, obviously. Oh, well.

[SignOfZeta]

Don't take my word for it. Try another VGA box, another VGA source, messing with settings, and seeing if you can find out how to enter your sets service mode and see that lets you do anything that helps.

[nat]

Games that are bright like Bomberman look great. You can't see the artifacting at all in those games. I just played a few rounds of Afterburner and Space Harrier on Game Works Vol. 1 and they look f*cking GREAT. Resident Evil is by far the worst of the games I've played so far.

The VGA box I got was brand new, it's one of the ones manufactured by "DC 2000" in 2006, I guess. Don't know if they are of good quality or not. What version do you have?

Maybe I'll look into picking up a different box just for shits and giggles.

[MissaFX]

I don't know if this might be affecting you or not, but you have a psychotically shielded video cable for this box?  Part of your brightness issue might be magnetic fields leaking in.

[nat]

I bought a regular VGA cable at Radio Shack.

Here is the exact cable:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102535&cp

[MissaFX]

I bought a regular VGA cable at Radio Shack.

Here is the exact cable:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102535&cp

Is it more than several feet from any speaker?  More than 5 from a woofer?  I know to put a VGA cable around speakers I have had to get a specifically shielded one to be around magnets.  Basically it is just shielded a lot.  That cable you purchased doesn't look like junk though.  Before getting another cable though maybe you could move any speakers out of the room and make sure the cable is not running near other electronics if you can help it to see if there is any difference.  You could also put a woofer magnet near the cable you currently have, and then you could see how well it protects against it.  The latter option being easier, but it might not tell you everything.

[nat]

There is a speaker on the shelf above the Dreamcast, probably about a foot away. I'll try moving it and see if that makes a difference, but these lines don't look like that kind of interference. Unfortunately, they look like a video artifact manifested by the TV itself as a result of scaling the image (like Zeta mentioned). I can affect them by changing the "Phase" setting in a special VGA menu on the TV but they don't go away no matter what.

Thanks for the idea though, I'll let you know what I find.

[MissaFX]

There is a speaker on the shelf above the Dreamcast, probably about a foot away. I'll try moving it and see if that makes a difference, but these lines don't look like that kind of interference. Unfortunately, they look like a video artifact manifested by the TV itself as a result of scaling the image (like Zeta mentioned). I can affect them by changing the "Phase" setting in a special VGA menu on the TV but they don't go away no matter what.

Thanks for the idea though, I'll let you know what I find.

I'm not talking about the lines though.  I'm talking about this brightness issue you are having.

[nat]

 :

There is no brightness issue. The only issue is the vertical lines.

I was just saying that in games that use brighter colors you can't see the vertical lines.

In games like Resident Evil, that uses very dark browns and black, the vertical lines are visible and distracting.

[MissaFX]

:

There is no brightness issue. The only issue is the vertical lines.

I was just saying that in games that use brighter colors you can't see the vertical lines.

In games like Resident Evil, that uses very dark browns and black, the vertical lines are visible and distracting.

Ah, I thought you were saying that the games were not as bright as they should be and only the brightest games were looking ok (due to the fact that they were super bright to begin with).

[nat]

Aha, no, it all is centered around those damn lines. The rest of the graphics, brightness, contrast, etc all look better than I've ever seen out of the DC.

I played Ikaruga for a while today after those earlier messages and it was so.... vibrant. To be honest I always thought of it as sort of a colorless game.

[Joe Redifer]

nat is it possible to try the Dreamcast on a computer monitor via the same VGA box?  This may have been asked already, as I was far too lazy to read all the words in this thread.

Yes, DC VGA is truly awesome.

[SignOfZeta]

If the lines are more visible in darker areas, that makes me think even more that it is a digital scaling issue (see: DVD's look their shittiest in darker areas).

[Joe Redifer]

DVDs look shitty in the dark areas due to the inefficiency of MPEG2 video compression.  Dark and murky scenes are the bane of any compression format.

[MissaFX]

DVDs look shitty in the dark areas due to the inefficiency of MPEG2 video compression.  Dark and murky scenes are the bane of any compression format.

In my experience WMV is the opposite of most codecs though.  I loves encoding black and darker shades, but it takes more bandwith to get the brighter stuff to show up right.

Most of the problems with black areas in DVDs are from the mpeg type compression.  It is great for movement, but bad for still things and dark things.