Japan21RGB->PS2 + questions

[qz33]

Okay I'm pretty new at this and I am trying to get everything
straight before I go buying a bunch of stuff.

 The Playstation 2 has a port which does not offer a pin for sync.  
The 21-pin scart-style RGB has a pin for sync (H+V combined
correct?).  So if I purchase an official RGB cable for my PS2 and
hook it up to a TV equipped with the 21-pin connector will I be
getting RGB or will it send out Composite/S-Video on some other pin
that is not listed on your diagram of the japanese connector?  I
guess either the TV or PS2 cable would must have a way to pull the
sync out of the composite line?

  Also a few questions to  help me understand somethings I just cannot
seem to get .  The NTSC consoles run at 15kHz horizontal scan with a
60Hz vertical refresh. So do they output interlace video through RGB
or not?  If so (and this is the part I have trouble with) then is
the FRAME rate of the consoles (like the SNES and Genesis) 30fps or
60 fps?  Or on the Xbox most games run in 480p which should 640X480
full screens at 60Hz for 60fps, but on a television hooked up
through Composite (NTSC) the most this same game can output is 30
frames per second.  I think the only way to send the signal is using
interlace video for a total frame rate of 30fps.  The older consoles
use a lower resolution so are they sending interlaced video through
RGB or not?  I guess What I am asking is since the consoles are at a
lower resolution can they acccomplish 60 full frames per second (not
just 60Hz)through RGB?

  Also are there any mods to directly access the frame buffer of the
consoles to bypass using the onboard D/A convertor and get the
Digital data.  Gamespot uses this method to get screenshots of games
from the Xbox using special software supplied by Microsoft.
Link: http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/...0701/p7_01.html  

Just wondering.

I hope these are not terrible questions, I just need someone to ask.

[Midori]

The TV skould be able to use the composite video lead for sync, most TVs do this.

If the NTSC consoles output interlaced or progressive picture depends on the resolution of the game. A low res game with about 240 lines only is able to output progressive picture, since most older consoles use these low resolutions they are often outputing progressive picture, if you are using RGB, composite, RF or S-video doesn't matter in this case. The part about the fps in interlaced mode is a question I too am curios about but I'm at the moment convinced that interlaced NTSC video can only output 30 fps. The older consoles should be able to output 60 fps progressive picture, through RGB or not doesn't matter.

About the third I have no answer :-)

... hope that cleared up a little bit at least, if not the major members of this forum is soon be coming to kick my ass for my faults...

[NFG]

We should really get away from using terms like 'progressive', it's a consumer-friendly (ie: for idiots) term to replace non-interlaced.  That's all it means: non-interlaced.  

Midori's right: TV's with tuners (ie, not monitors) have the ability to separate sync from composite video.  They have to do this with pretty much every signal you feed them.

As for framerates, you can have 60Hz non-interlaced video.  It seems to me F-Zero for the N64 ran in this mode.  By the same token you can have a framerate of 30 with an interlaced picture, it can either be low-res doubled like the 3DO does, or full high-res where the picture only changes 30 times per second, etc.  I question the question - why are you asking?    The last part of query 2 seems ridiculous: the video mode has nothing to do with the framerate or resolution.

As for 3, you're better off emulating.

[qz33]

"I question the question - why are you asking? The last part of query 2 seems ridiculous: the video mode has nothing to do with the framerate or resolution"

That's what I am trying to understand.  If the video mode is NTSC-Composite does it have to be interlaced or does it depend if whatever resolution a particular game can just fit into 15kHz?  If you hook up through RGB do consoles output a non interlaced signal?

I dont mean to ask stupid questions this is just something I would like to understand.

[NFG]

15kHz refers to the number of horizontal lines per second.  240 vertical lines at 60fps = 14400, rounded to 15kHz.  There's probably some variance there, I don't think NTSC works quite that accurately, but there you go.

So:  you can play a bit with the rate and make the screen display more or fewer lines, and that would affect the screen's size on the monitor.  You can interlace them, or not - the TV doesn't HAVE to shift every second frame down by a half-line.

As for signals, remember that your RF signal is made from your AV is made from Svideo is made from component is made from RGB+sync.  All the lower signals have all the same data as the higher ones (though reduced in quality), so the elements that comprise them are the same:

Sync + video.

[viletim!]

Lawrence,

I'm not meaning to be too pedantic but there are actually ~260 lines (I don't know the exact value for NTSC) lines in a field of video. ~240 of them would be for your active video and the other 20 or so are blank lines to allow time for the electron beam to move from the bottom of the screen back to the top (the vertical flyback is much slower than the horzontal). So the horizontal rate is 15.75Khz that everybody rounds down to 15khz.

[NFG]

Yeah you're totally right.  Thanks for clearing that up.  =)