Best video out?

[ASSEMbler]

What is the current agreed upon best video out for duo?

[Segata Sanshiro]

RGB

[WSenna]

I hear everybody rave about RGB, but I can be satisfied with SCART composite on my old trusty CRT.

[MottZilla]

If you get a well done RGB mod it can't be beat. Though I don't think Composite from the PCE is as bad as it was from the Genesis.

[Segata Sanshiro]

Yeah. On my old white PC-E I was surprised how good composite looked. RGB is still obviously different though.

[Calpis]

Great, more RGB dogma... I'm going to say composite or tapped S-video. Like the FC, PCE generates composite video internally, perfectly synchronized to the internal workings for a very high quality composite (and higher S-video). Sure RGB output is "purer" as the PCE is based around a RGB palette, but the PCE actually has a fine tuned digital matrix (with an even higher precision than RGB out) for the colors to be encoded and you don't get that with RGB out. Games were developed to be played via RF/composite, so while RGB will be marginally clearer, the actual colors will be inauthentic. Another issue with RGB is that it can't be tapped as-is, you need an amplifier (current amp) and the circuits online are very poor leading to bad video levels, termination/ringing issues, poor frequency response/horizontal resolution, noise, distortion etc. Best of all using composite doesn't require ugly surgery on beautiful hardware.

[ApolloBoy]

Best of all using composite doesn't require ugly surgery on beautiful hardware.

All I had to do for an RGB mod on my Duo-R was add an 8-pin DIN jack and three wires inside. It doesn't affect the look of the console at all, and you can even make a breakout box for systems like the TG-16 and PCE that lack a DIN port.

Also, I just got an RGB cable for my Duo-R and it looks fantastic, so meh. If anything, the colors are more vibrant through RGB than composite. The PCE does output pretty damn good composite video, but the colors always looked a little faded to me.

[Calpis]

All I had to do for an RGB mod on my Duo-R was add an 8-pin DIN jack and three wires inside.

3 wires? Maybe it works for you but it won't for everyone, the VDP outputs are high impedance, have a DC offset, and are not meant to directly drive the lines.

It doesn't affect the look of the console at all

True, assuming you install it in place of the original DIN, but then you have to give up stereo audio if you want to use a MD/NG cable. Or you could keep stereo audio, build a custom cable and give up composite sync, but that's a poor solution for anyone outside of SCARTland.

and you can even make a breakout box for systems like the TG-16 and PCE that lack a DIN port.

Also true, but then you can't use them with a CD-ROM and most people will sacrifice Ten no Koe or AV Boosters for the enclosure...

If anything, the colors are more vibrant through RGB than composite.

Vibrant meaning over-saturated perhaps? Many people prefer things the wrong way :P

[ApolloBoy]

3 wires? Maybe it works for you but it won't for everyone, the VDP outputs are high impedance, have a DC offset, and are not meant to directly drive the lines.

I should've mentioned this beforehand, but the RGB amp is built inside the SCART cable I'm using, so I'm not driving the RGB lines directly into my monitor.

True, assuming you install it in place of the original DIN, but then you have to give up stereo audio if you want to use a MD/NG cable. Or you could keep stereo audio, build a custom cable and give up composite sync, but that's a poor solution for anyone outside of SCARTland.

I use a Sony PVM-1390 monitor and it looks fine without the use of the composite sync line. I considered wiring up a switch that would select either composite video or composite sync, but I'm satisfied with the results so I didn't bother in the end.

Also true, but then you can't use them with a CD-ROM and most people will sacrifice Ten no Koe or AV Boosters for the enclosure...

That's true, you'd have to give that up if you wanted to use a CD-ROM2 system. Most of the RGB breakout boxes I've seen though are project boxes you can get at Radio Shack, not gutted AV Boosters or Ten no Koe Banks.

Vibrant meaning over-saturated perhaps? Many people prefer things the wrong way :P

The color saturation is on-par with all my other RGB-capable systems, I would notice over-saturation right away.

[Lum]

Maybe not 'perfect' perfect RGB. But what does that? In all seriousness Duo-R RGB image clarity for my setup still blows the **** out of the SNES and Genesis revisions I own. SNES gets diagonal lines, and Genesis jailbars.

[APE]

I'm with Calpis on this one. Most every other situation I'd agree that RGB is "the best" but it is very clear to me that PCE/TG16 games were not made with RGB in mind. Not that the Genesis, SNES, etc were either but it is pretty crystal clear that the games were designed with composite video in mind.

Same sort of argument goes with Laserdiscs since the video signal is stored in a composite format on Laserdiscs outputting the picture with S-Video requires a bit of signal manipulation that, hypothetically, degrades the signal quality slightly. RGB would do the same if it were possible on a given player.

Though I'm about authenticity whenever possible and a videophile second. I would love to play my consoles in RGB but in this case (and the case with the NES IMO) it is unlikely the games will play as designed in anything but composite. To each their own of course and feel free to use RGB if you like.

Though it is also becoming readily apparent that attempting to use your classic consoles on a top of the line HDTV is quickly becoming...difficult.

[Lum]

Well might depend on the game. I haven't yet encountered a PCE title I found reason to use composite on. Could happen, I've kept the cable handy for whatever.

Actually bad encoders/scalers are to blame for much of it. Consoles that do composite right aren't too bad on HDTV. Using an external scaler helps somewhat for TVs whose own has issues.

[ave]

Nuff said IMO

In games like Nexzr, you can hardly notice the different colors of the stars in the background and your ship is more of a greyish dot instead of a lightblue/yellow spaceship, it's horrible via composite. RGB might have been "artificially added", but that doesn't mean that it's the best way to play it.
For instance, an N64's picture looks way better if modded to RGB than via crappy mushy composite, although the games were not designed for RGB in particular. It's not the greatest RGB signal by any means, but it's an improvement.

And the PC-Engine is, along with the Mega Drive, my favourite when it comes to enhancement over composite through the addition of RGB output. It blew me away how ridiculously superior the RGB quality is when I got my modded Engine.

[Calpis]

I really don't understand people's horrible experiences with composite, especially NTSC people. From memory composite on my 13-year-old CRT looks more or less like the RGB sample above.

There's no question that composite has lower color bandwidth/resolution than RGB, and it has unavoidable encoding/decoding artifacts, but something that irks me is that it's still capable of reproducing the gamut of a 24-year-old console sufficiently. Vibrancy I take to mean a large dynamic range, and composite can easily convey the PCE's 512 colors distinctly (with varying accuracy based on the image). In extremely high contrast images the low color bandwidth is noticeable, but 1) old games have long spans of identical pixels so in general it's not an issue and 2) natural video which has few spans of identical colors is too busy to even notice the color loss.

Edit: Maybe I'll set up the PCE to compare (and maybe eat my words)

[Lum]

The problem is how much quality varies between setups. Both your console's encoder and TV's decoder must work in tandem. If either isn't up to par, you'll get bad results. Not even the highest end set can restore quality already lost beforehand. Which is the case with Genesis and other similar systems whose composite is documented as awful.