My Scart RGB to YUV Component Converter impressions.

[Joe Redifer]

I always use this image when trying to illustrate 240p or "scanlines"



Notice those black lines between each blue and yellow line?  That's what people mean by "scanlines".  They are ever-present.  They do not go away and do not move on a proper 240p display (such as a CRT SDTV).  These are caused by the lack of the video switching to the even set of lines during interlacing and just living on the odd set of lines.  As a result, every other line appears to be blank, but thanks to what I call "bloom" (not sure if this is the correct term), the lines that DO have visual information in them seem to overpower the "blank" lines, giving the screen image some free anti-aliasing in the process.  During a normal interlaced picture, these blank scanlines are still there, they are just wobbling back and forth.  The image overpowers them and the brain does not register them.  You can still see them on an interlaced image if you look really close or move your eyes up or down the screen (you'll see it as if the lines are scrolling up or down).

[Tom]

Ouuu.. I'm snagging that pic

[Joe Redifer]

I took that pic several years ago when I was asking over on the AVS Forums why HDTVs can't seem to display 240p as 240p.  The response I got from everyone was "there is no such thing as 240p u r a retard, u can only do 480i on sdtv".  I posted the picture.  I explained how it worked (the signal never tells the ray to skip to the next set of lines, etc).  I won the thread!  One of the posters there even offered to buy me a bottle of wine since I proved my case correctly.  He seemed upset when I declined.

[Lucifer]

mousteeth - hehe But that's only on interlaced video (and like Joe said, it's called 'combing'). PCE and other old consoles don't put out interlaced signals. And that's definitely NOT what I mean be scanlines. Scanlines for 240p on old 8/16bit consoles means every other scanline of a 480 res output is not displayed. And IMO, Saturn looks like ass too with los res blocky output - without 'scanlines'. Especially on a large set. All that old stuff gets played on a 20" SDTV because I can't as of yet figure out how to get my HD set to do said effect.

After playing the Saturn with the converter, Shooters especially look pretty awesome. And since shooters are blocky in general considering the ships all being rectangles and triangles and squares it doesnt make it worse on a lcd. 3D games benefit as well. Shining force 3 being one.

But yeah i agree when it comes to anything pixel related, its alot better to play these on sdtv's since lcds are just going to pronounce them and they will look worse.

If i still had my 27" JVC I-Art Flat Screen CRT i would be playing all these retro consoles on it, but I've moved onto LCD and i really don't have the room for a CRT. So i'm just doing what i can to get the best picture quality i can. Because i sure as hell am not going to stick with composite. S-video maybe, but not composite.

Oh and that pic you posted Joe is pretty awesome. Great demonstation of scanlines.

[Tom]

Yeah, composite looks like shit on all LCD's I've seen :/

[ooPo]

All that old stuff gets played on a 20" SDTV because I can't as of yet figure out how to get my HD set to do said effect.

If you want to play on an HDTV, an xrgb will take a 240p signal and output it as 480p with scanlines.