Nintendo 64 S-Video + res strangeness

[Jeroen1000]

Hi guys,

I got word the experts on this are right here so I'm hoping to shed some light on this one.

My (apparently unmoddable - without using some custom made circuit?) N64 can be connected to my video processor in two ways:

- Composite
- S-Video

From there is a HDMI -> DVI link to the Panasonic plasma monitor.

As you may have guessed composite is a no-go because of the massive blurring it brings to the picture.
S-Video is showing a netting/masking issue. I hope you are familiar with this but if not,  I can best describe it that the picture looks as if it is behind a chicken wire fence.  I'm not sure but it may also be called 'pixelation' or 'dot crawl'. I always believed these were issues inherent to composite (shows what I know ). I don't really want RGB as this would involve more cable and I already have plently of those . I have considered the fact my S-video cable is utter crap but I do not know which one isn't. Perhaps the store.nintendo.com sells a good one but I can only guess.

So far the S-video issue...

About the resolution, my VP reports an incoming resolution of 720 x 288 (288 times  two being a standard resolution)
Anyway, wasn't the N64 limited to mainly 320x240 and maximum 640 x 480? Does someone have the equiment to check what a PAL N64 outputs?

Quite a rant for my first post but I hope someone will help out:)-

Cheers,

Jeroen

[Jeroen1000]

Okay, I have got an update to my question

Apparently 576i IS 720 x 288. I thought it was 720 x 576. I can only imagine this has something to do with 576i being 50 fields per second = 25 real frames. One would need to combine 2 fields to get 1 frame, hence 288 * 2 = 576.

So I guess, internally, the N64 performs upcaling from 320 x 240 and 640 x 480 to 720 x 288?

[RGB32E]

S-Video is showing a netting/masking issue. I hope you are familiar with this but if not,  I can best describe it that the picture looks as if it is behind a chicken wire fence.  I'm not sure but it may also be called 'pixelation' or 'dot crawl'.

That kind of issue can be caused by using a poor quality cable.  Are you using the official Nintendo cable?  Not sure if Nintendo released them in the PAL territories.  There is at least one other thread on this forum dealing with this issue (seems to be more of an issue with PAL systems).

Refer to thread: http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=3460.0

About the resolution, my VP reports an incoming resolution of 720 x 288 (288 times  two being a standard resolution)
Anyway, wasn't the N64 limited to mainly 320x240 and maximum 640 x 480? Does someone have the equiment to check what a PAL N64 outputs?

Sounds like your VP is giving you incorrect information.

[Jeroen1000]

Hi RGB32E,

The resolution numbers stated are indeed correct.  I kind of figured it out in my second post. All consoles outputting 576i are infact outputting 720 x 288. For NSTC consoles this is 720 x 240.

Doing the numbers this becomes:

RGB 576i is 50 fields per second of 720 x 288 pixels = 10.4 million pixels per second.
Component 480i is 60 fields per second of 720 x 240 pixels = 10.4 million pixels per second.

Nope, I got a cheap one off ebay. Returning it will actually cost more money than just buying an other one. Nintendo still sells an official one on store.nintendo.com. Do you think that one is any good?

Very interesting thread you have linked to! Thanks.  So Nintendo really appears to have made a big error assuming PAL owners would always use composite. I almost wrote RGB here... it's a real shame they 'killed' everything superior to composite.

[XianXi]

The cheap ebay SNES/N64 S-video cables don't use the s-video pins, they use a converted composite to s-video circuit in the cable. Just yuck.

[RGB32E]

The resolution numbers stated are indeed correct.  I kind of figured it out in my second post. All consoles outputting 576i are infact outputting 720 x 288. For NSTC consoles this is 720 x 240.

The VP is fudging the horizontal resolution...    You should try Hybrid Heaven, or the second castlevania game with an expansion pack and set the games to high-rez mode and see what that gives... assuming they are like the NTSC versions.

Nope, I got a cheap one off ebay. Returning it will actually cost more money than just buying an other one. Nintendo still sells an official one on store.nintendo.com. Do you think that one is any good?

Very interesting thread you have linked to! Thanks.  So Nintendo really appears to have made a big error assuming PAL owners would always use composite. I almost wrote RGB here... it's a real shame they 'killed' everything superior to composite.

The offical cable when used on an NTSC system looks just fine.  While not the beefiest cable by any means... it's better constructed than any other cable, save for the Monster cable versions.

[Jeroen1000]

Will go shopping for stuff soon. Unfortunately, it is give your money to the government month over here now

About the resolution, I could be wrong  but interlaced video shows only half a frame at the time, called a field. 1/50th of a second we get to see the even lines, the other 1/50th of a second we get to see the odd lines (or the other way 'round  ). Both fields belong to one and the same frame but note the fields are not of the same corresponding moment in time. Because of that, each field will be deinterlaced to one full frame.
The VP is most likely reporting what it is deinterlacing to create a full frame. After deinterlacing 1 field has become 1 frame of 720 x 576 pixels.
The net result should be 50 frames per second.

I could try other games to see what happens, but won't the N64 always deliver 720 x 288? Whatever resolution it uses internally (which can vary on the game and or the presence of an expansion pack) to scale up to 720 x 288 will have a large impact on determining the quality.

[Shadow_Zero]

The cheap ebay SNES/N64 S-video cables don't use the s-video pins, they use a converted composite to s-video circuit in the cable. Just yuck.

Is this true?
I also have a purple s-video cable with gold connectors (think it was from Joytech UK), is that a good one? I should do some testing with this, but I think I had this video problem on my CRT HD with both PAL and NTSC N64's. It looks fine on my 4:3 50hz CRT though...

[Endymion]

I would tend to be doubtful anybody made a cable like this. I mean it's more , more materials, building a circuit to convert, than just connecting to y/c. But I'll just say "I've never seen one" and leave it at that. Gold plated connectors are fine for your cables, it's actually not the best conductor but the draw of it is that your connector will not rust over time, so that is good.