Grandia 2: It looks fugly and it doesn't work!

[|darc|]

VGA cable is back home in PK.

...and my problem was with the graphics in general rather than just the resolution. I suppose the VGA could help though.

The problem is that you're using a compressed (composite) 480i signal on an HD screen.

Since the image was compressed down to use one single composite (yellow) video cable so you're going to see artifacts, color bleeding, dot crawl, etc. Not only that, but the television has to both 1) deinterlace the signal from 480i and 2) upscale the picture to 720 or 1080 lines.

Devices to do this properly are expensive (this is the one I use--$400). Your television will obviously do it on its own, but LCD manufacturers do not include high quality upscalers, and most of them introduce lag from the time you press a button on the control to when you see the action occur on the screen because of the slow image processing. These upscalers are OK at upscaling live action, but they are not intended to upscale video game graphics. Quite simply, on the majority of HDTVs, if you hook up a standard definition game console, it will look like complete shit.

If you switch to a VGA cable, you will be using uncompressed 31.5KHz RGB 480p, which means all the composite compression artifacts will be gone and the blurriness/artifacts caused by deinterlacing will be gone.

It will make a huge difference.

[DaMadFiddler]

Basically, what |darc| said.

One caveat: It has been my experience that CRT-based HDTVs (borh direct-view and rear-projection sets) tend to handle composite signals surprisingly well. Flickering effects will show interlace artifacts depending on the set, but if you have a good CRT HDTV, or a rear-projection HDTV from the early 2000s that uses CRTs rather than LCD or micromirrors, the composite feed from your standard-def console will look decent. The VGA connector will *always* look better, for all the reasons |darc| said, but I have owned a circa-2004 Toshiba projection set that looked decent, and my current set--a Sony HD CRT of the same vintage--blows me away with how good it manages to make the Dreamcast and GameCube look with an S-Video or even a composite feed. On the other hand, this set only upscales interlaced feeds (many earlier HDTVs that don't support 1080p will only upscale interlaced feeds), so 480p sources will look noticeably jaggier than 480i.

On a side note, consoles that run at less than standard-def resolution (basically, anything older than the Dreamcast) will look like garbage on any sort of HDTV. Systems running at less than 640x480 tended to rely on the scanlines of a CRT to hide the low resolution; they tend to look harsh and jaggy on a flat panel, and oversoftened and out-of-focus on a CRT-based HDTV.

[Christuserloeser]

With 480i you'll get half the scanlines each frame, i.e. 240 lines per frame. That's 480i = SDTV. With 480p you get twice the vertical resolution and twice the frame rate. Let alone the fact that VGA is a true RGB signal with separate carriers for each color channel - like your PC and modern HDTVs use.

[cube_b3]

I bought a pretty neat CRT from a garage sale for 20$.

Seller even delivered it to my place and carried it up the stairs .

I play Sturmwind on it, all the time.

P.S. I don't know if I mentioned it, but my copy of Grandia is not really working too well, gets stuck after battles.
Sad.

[|darc|]

On the other hand, this set only upscales interlaced feeds (many earlier HDTVs that don't support 1080p will only upscale interlaced feeds), so 480p sources will look noticeably jaggier than 480i.

I'm confused by what you mean by that. Your HDTV displays 480p signals in the middle of the screen in a little window with large borders on all sides?

[DaMadFiddler]

On the other hand, this set only upscales interlaced feeds (many earlier HDTVs that don't support 1080p will only upscale interlaced feeds), so 480p sources will look noticeably jaggier than 480i.

I'm confused by what you mean by that. Your HDTV displays 480p signals in the middle of the screen in a little window with large borders on all sides?

No, it's a CRT. It displays 480p signals in 480p, full screen. (It might be using simple line doubling, but it's certainly not applying any of the filters it uses for interlaced sources.) The scanlines are larger and more spaced out. It's a little hard to describe without actually showing.

[cube_b3]

I won't be spending 90$

I am interested in the component converter though.

[Christuserloeser]

Why do you want to spend $90 ? Does your TV or PC monitor lack a VGA (aka "PC") port ?

(actually, the term "VGA" which I love to use so much is technically incorrect as well as its tied to certain video mode/resolution (640x400, 256colors), it should be a RGBHV port or db-15 pin port or something like that.)


EDIT: comment from a YT user: "monoprice,com now has a 40$ vga->hdmi adaptor now."

[cube_b3]

Yes, my Tv doesn't have a VGA port.

[Matisfaction]

Then get an RGB or S-Video cable, anything over composite. Composite isn't great to begin with but it looks even worse on a HD set.

My AV Famicom looks like crap on my Sony Bravia, but my N64 and Sega Genesis look great via RGB. It's also a good idea to keep your aspect ratio to 4:3 if the game doesn't support 16:9, some seem to like the stretched look but it looks terrible imo.