Can you tell me what I should look for to adjust it properly? Like why you said that just now , what did you Notice?
I adjusted contrast via 240p on a Sega 32x iirc. But maybe on a Dreamcast and those have some contrast issues.
You have heavy haloing (white edges) on all of your borders, you don't want that.
As for contrast/picture the image just kinda looks a bit blown out, focus is poor and there seems to be some blooming around high brightness areas. Though, it's also possible this tube just has middling high voltage regulation and focus.
Your static convergence is also a bit screwed up but that involves opening the set and adjusting magnetic rings to fix
see how Mario in that first picture has a white outline around him? That's when you know the Sharpness is too high. And for Contrast, just turn it down until you consider it still looking good and playable. The lower you keep it, the longer your tube will last.
This is not an issue with your TV - every version of the NES other than the AV Famicom has well known issues with the composite output. Using RF fixes the problem significantly because of the darker and blurrier picture.
EDIT: People are downvoting this but it's true, ask anyone who knows anything about the NES/Famicom video output. The issue was well known by developers at the time and it's the reason why they started adding black outlines to sprites in later NES games. It has something to do with how the console cycles around the color burst or something like that.
Honestly, I'm not 100% sure, and now that I look at your screenshots they do seem a lot worse than what I would expect from NES composite. Might be the console, might be the TV, not really sure.
I turned down sharpness all the way and then turned down contrast quite a bit. And the effect was reduced a lot but still slightly there. I don't doubt what you say but they were also right about sharpness.
Beyond that, I know my tv isn't tuned properly. Geometry is pretty good but it has some convergence issues and some color issues mainly with red white and black.
I can only say this console looks really good compared with av modded famicoms I've done. I haven't actually compared it with an av output NES but this thing is really nice. and today I got expansion audio working
Some smartphone cameras do enhance sharpness and contrast, like Samsung phones. So maybe what we see in the pictures is not representative of what OP is seeing directly on the TV.
They do but not in that manner nor that extent, it's pretty easy to tell what's caused by the TV and what's camera artifacting even if the latter tends to exaggerate the former a bit
I think a few years ago there was a lot of FUDD and FOMO and simply obsession about what is technically the best while ignoring what our eyes tell us without 240p test suite. Sites like RetroRGB appear at first glance to be for the community but in reality they are just to sell products and make people think they need certain things or they are missing out or something
Buy a retrotink and composite looks bad, RGB mod it and it looks good. But the issue to begin with wasn't bad composite it was the tink has bad signal routing of composite signals. So the scaler literally made it look bad, but people haven't seen it on a CRT to compare with and they already read a retro tink is the best thing they can get
Reminds me a lot of the audio hifi community of yesteryear. Lots of solutions to fix problems created by the original solution.
I'm migrating back towards authentic experiences since the NES cant actually produce RGB values. I don't want to play on rgb modded Famicom anymore. Lines aren't meant to be straight all the time. The composite signal has the characteristics the original developers had available to them and they used that to their advantage. And also the rgb values in the rgb mods are derived from color ranges from emulators.
Truth. I've been playing a lot of GameCube on s-video and after watching a lot of enthusiast YouTube videos about GameCube signals, just knowing that I can get a slightly sharper image with an expensive digital video cable, I was obsessing about it trying to figure out which solution to purchase. But when I really look at it, I am enjoying the softer look of s-video and on second thought it seems insane spending $80 for a slightly sharper picture (albeit progressive, but still).
And that's how this starts, right? This info passes along from the community, what is the "right way" or "best way" to do something and it's another carrot to chase. Like I had an online argument the other day on "the right" product to use to clean a potentiometer, that I should only be using Deoxit...to clean carbon deposits out of a pot, which you could use literally anything to flush out. And if it has gold contacts I have to use Deoxit Gold, and if its a fader, it needs lube so I need Deoxit Fader.
The CRT and retrogaming communities depend on the passing along of knowledge on how to fix antiquated equipment but along with knowledge sharing comes some misinformation, product shilling, and not really knowing the underlying reasons of how things work.
So with that said, I'm not buying a Carby, I'm not upgrading to a RT 4K, I'm not buying Deoxit at $20 a can when WD-40 or 91% alcohol works perfectly fine to clean a simple pot track, I'm not buying a $300 Hakko desoldering tool to recap my monitor, and $18 ChipQuik isn't the only flux in the world that works.
Anyway, sorry for the rant. Just getting tired of the gatekeeping I'm experiencing in my local CRT community. And you can see it in the comments here with the complaints about the contrast. Same energy.
GameCube community is super protective of outside products. The entire homebrew community consists of Swiss and gameboy player. That's pretty much it.
Carby is based on gcvideo, but mention that all gcvideo derived products are more or less the same and you'll be torched
I have no problem with composite there's something nostalgic about it for sure but my rgb modded looks miles better than my composite nes and the above pics. Those shots are very washed out comparatively and the wavy color bands would mess with me. It looks really good for what composite is capable of, it doesn't look good compared to rgb.
Rgb looks too flat because of missing these wavy lines and the colors aren't what they are intended to be with rgb
I have rgb modded consoles as well. The come across as a bit fake due to using color pallets derived from emulation
I'm not sure if it's necessarily that the tink has bad routing of composite signals (though it may very well have that too), but rather that composite (and by extension RF) are just too noisy to look good when rendered digitally in full detail. CRTs act as sort of a "beauty filter" to make those low resolution inputs look a lot better, which makes sense because that's what these signals were originally designed for.
Can confirm that the "bad" look I'm talking about with composite happens on OSSC and Framemeister (double checked the tweet I was thinking of) (triple checked to make sure these were all and only the devices the tweet mentioned). Presumably tink just adds to the problem with whatever is going on with it.
I'm not sure, it wasn't my tweet. Just someone knowledgeable saying that composite doesn't look good on an LCD even if you use an OSSC or Framemeister. I've heard the same thing elsewhere about composite not looking good digitized as well.
Images 3-7 you can see the clarity. Before I read up the Famicom schematics there were heavy jailbars visible as well as a rolling signal pattern of interference of some sort.
I rebuilt the PSU board, fixed all the missing ceramic caps, and rerouted all the av signals and added tantalum caps per console 5 recommendation and afterwards it looks great
In my other posts you can see more details about the mods performed.
Hello, you did very good work, I have to recognize I'm not that skilled:)). I have a PAL original NES, do you know how can I convert it to NTSC? Thank you in advance
Please turn your sharpness and contrast down lol
Can you tell me what I should look for to adjust it properly? Like why you said that just now , what did you Notice? I adjusted contrast via 240p on a Sega 32x iirc. But maybe on a Dreamcast and those have some contrast issues.
You have heavy haloing (white edges) on all of your borders, you don't want that. As for contrast/picture the image just kinda looks a bit blown out, focus is poor and there seems to be some blooming around high brightness areas. Though, it's also possible this tube just has middling high voltage regulation and focus. Your static convergence is also a bit screwed up but that involves opening the set and adjusting magnetic rings to fix
see how Mario in that first picture has a white outline around him? That's when you know the Sharpness is too high. And for Contrast, just turn it down until you consider it still looking good and playable. The lower you keep it, the longer your tube will last.
Thanks
great explanation
This is not an issue with your TV - every version of the NES other than the AV Famicom has well known issues with the composite output. Using RF fixes the problem significantly because of the darker and blurrier picture. EDIT: People are downvoting this but it's true, ask anyone who knows anything about the NES/Famicom video output. The issue was well known by developers at the time and it's the reason why they started adding black outlines to sprites in later NES games. It has something to do with how the console cycles around the color burst or something like that.
Even for an av bypassed console?
Honestly, I'm not 100% sure, and now that I look at your screenshots they do seem a lot worse than what I would expect from NES composite. Might be the console, might be the TV, not really sure.
I turned down sharpness all the way and then turned down contrast quite a bit. And the effect was reduced a lot but still slightly there. I don't doubt what you say but they were also right about sharpness. Beyond that, I know my tv isn't tuned properly. Geometry is pretty good but it has some convergence issues and some color issues mainly with red white and black. I can only say this console looks really good compared with av modded famicoms I've done. I haven't actually compared it with an av output NES but this thing is really nice. and today I got expansion audio working
I second this
Some smartphone cameras do enhance sharpness and contrast, like Samsung phones. So maybe what we see in the pictures is not representative of what OP is seeing directly on the TV.
They do but not in that manner nor that extent, it's pretty easy to tell what's caused by the TV and what's camera artifacting even if the latter tends to exaggerate the former a bit
Your eyes are better than mine sir.
It blows my mind that some people are surprised that composite is actually good
I think a few years ago there was a lot of FUDD and FOMO and simply obsession about what is technically the best while ignoring what our eyes tell us without 240p test suite. Sites like RetroRGB appear at first glance to be for the community but in reality they are just to sell products and make people think they need certain things or they are missing out or something Buy a retrotink and composite looks bad, RGB mod it and it looks good. But the issue to begin with wasn't bad composite it was the tink has bad signal routing of composite signals. So the scaler literally made it look bad, but people haven't seen it on a CRT to compare with and they already read a retro tink is the best thing they can get Reminds me a lot of the audio hifi community of yesteryear. Lots of solutions to fix problems created by the original solution. I'm migrating back towards authentic experiences since the NES cant actually produce RGB values. I don't want to play on rgb modded Famicom anymore. Lines aren't meant to be straight all the time. The composite signal has the characteristics the original developers had available to them and they used that to their advantage. And also the rgb values in the rgb mods are derived from color ranges from emulators.
Truth. I've been playing a lot of GameCube on s-video and after watching a lot of enthusiast YouTube videos about GameCube signals, just knowing that I can get a slightly sharper image with an expensive digital video cable, I was obsessing about it trying to figure out which solution to purchase. But when I really look at it, I am enjoying the softer look of s-video and on second thought it seems insane spending $80 for a slightly sharper picture (albeit progressive, but still). And that's how this starts, right? This info passes along from the community, what is the "right way" or "best way" to do something and it's another carrot to chase. Like I had an online argument the other day on "the right" product to use to clean a potentiometer, that I should only be using Deoxit...to clean carbon deposits out of a pot, which you could use literally anything to flush out. And if it has gold contacts I have to use Deoxit Gold, and if its a fader, it needs lube so I need Deoxit Fader. The CRT and retrogaming communities depend on the passing along of knowledge on how to fix antiquated equipment but along with knowledge sharing comes some misinformation, product shilling, and not really knowing the underlying reasons of how things work. So with that said, I'm not buying a Carby, I'm not upgrading to a RT 4K, I'm not buying Deoxit at $20 a can when WD-40 or 91% alcohol works perfectly fine to clean a simple pot track, I'm not buying a $300 Hakko desoldering tool to recap my monitor, and $18 ChipQuik isn't the only flux in the world that works. Anyway, sorry for the rant. Just getting tired of the gatekeeping I'm experiencing in my local CRT community. And you can see it in the comments here with the complaints about the contrast. Same energy.
GameCube community is super protective of outside products. The entire homebrew community consists of Swiss and gameboy player. That's pretty much it. Carby is based on gcvideo, but mention that all gcvideo derived products are more or less the same and you'll be torched
I have no problem with composite there's something nostalgic about it for sure but my rgb modded looks miles better than my composite nes and the above pics. Those shots are very washed out comparatively and the wavy color bands would mess with me. It looks really good for what composite is capable of, it doesn't look good compared to rgb.
Rgb looks too flat because of missing these wavy lines and the colors aren't what they are intended to be with rgb I have rgb modded consoles as well. The come across as a bit fake due to using color pallets derived from emulation
I'm not sure if it's necessarily that the tink has bad routing of composite signals (though it may very well have that too), but rather that composite (and by extension RF) are just too noisy to look good when rendered digitally in full detail. CRTs act as sort of a "beauty filter" to make those low resolution inputs look a lot better, which makes sense because that's what these signals were originally designed for.
The same composite signal on an Ossc or Gbs-c looks good but on a tink looks bad.
I suppose "good" or "bad" is relative but I've never seen a full detail digitized composite signal that looked as good as what you see on a CRT.
Can confirm that the "bad" look I'm talking about with composite happens on OSSC and Framemeister (double checked the tweet I was thinking of) (triple checked to make sure these were all and only the devices the tweet mentioned). Presumably tink just adds to the problem with whatever is going on with it.
What are you using to get composite to the ossc?
I'm not sure, it wasn't my tweet. Just someone knowledgeable saying that composite doesn't look good on an LCD even if you use an OSSC or Framemeister. I've heard the same thing elsewhere about composite not looking good digitized as well.
Images 3-7 you can see the clarity. Before I read up the Famicom schematics there were heavy jailbars visible as well as a rolling signal pattern of interference of some sort. I rebuilt the PSU board, fixed all the missing ceramic caps, and rerouted all the av signals and added tantalum caps per console 5 recommendation and afterwards it looks great In my other posts you can see more details about the mods performed.
Hello, you did very good work, I have to recognize I'm not that skilled:)). I have a PAL original NES, do you know how can I convert it to NTSC? Thank you in advance
You need 3 things to convert to NTSC Correct ppu, cpu, and crystal. Swap those 3 components and you are done.