PAL N64 , RGB modded (french model I assume) , Scart cable caps question

[keropi]

Hiya!!!

I received a PAL n64 , that is RGB modded. It came with a scart RGB cable, but it was so thin, I had a moire pattern on the screen, very annoying. The cable did have caps inside, in the RGB lines btw, 10v 220mf caps to be precise.
So I tried a gamecube cable I had, thick, 2 "barrels" and caps inside too.
Although Mario64 looks awesome (comparing to svhs or vhs cables) I felt it was somewhat blurry. I tried several other games, like castlevanias and Donkey Kong64 and all felt blurry.
So I dig up my SNES rgb scart cable, that has no caps, but is thin and has moire pattern effect... The picture was OK (not too bright) and felt a little more sharp...
My question before I try to mod the good cable: are the caps nescessary? (I don't care about this cable being used in gamecube, I have the component one) The console does have an rgb amp inside, look at this pic:



Is n64 output blurry , and nothing can be done? I do try it in an 37" 1080p LG tv (37LH4000) where other RGB scart consoles (like saturn and megadrive) are very clear and sharp with the same settings... need some info before I butcher the cable, thanks!!!

edit: I think I begin to realize that the n64 renders blurry and with very low resolution... Title gfx that are 2D in games are very sharp and clear...

[Link83]

It really depends on how they have done the RGB mod. I'm going to guess that they have taken the RGB  signals directly from the 'VDC-NUS' chip  because if they had taken the RGB signals from the 'S-RGB A' encoder chip then the amp they have added would not have been neccesary - in fact they would have needed to use 75ohm resistors in series in order to lower the brightness! Also, if they had taken the RGB signals from the 'S-RGB A' chip then the capacitors in the cable would also have been useful to remove the DC offset.

So the answer if the cable should have capacitors or not is....it depends on the type of RGB mod

[keropi]

I can't have a look at the actual mod, the rgb-amp is hotglued to the mobo/heatsinks , and I meat LOTS  
I cannot actually see any major difference with or without caps...  Perhaps a little more bright picture with the cable that does not have them...
Still I wonder if the n64 rendering quality is blurry/low-res indeed.... In Diddy Kong Racing for example, names and 2D text is sharp and great, the actual game has a certain blur... no wonder they did not bother to add RGB capabilities ....


edit: I searched for images of other rgb modded n64s , I see they suffer from the same low rendering quality... blurriness and pixel bleedimg is from the low-res display... such a same

[Link83]

Yes, i'm afraid the N64 has a very limited texture cache and deliberately blurs all its output using bilinear filtering You can read more about it on Wikipedia here:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N64#Programming_difficulties
I would still prefer to have RGB though, even given these drawbacks.

[keropi]

Yes, RGB is still best ... I ended up opening the cable, and repaired it a little... The R cap had it's legs touching each other, and I insulated some ground pins ... I get a slightly more clear picture, and I think it is the best I can get from the N64...

Thanks a million Link83 , your advice/help are precious and greatly appreciated!