I recently discovered that my Toshiba 40TL900 LCD TV silently disables "game mode" when fed an interlaced image. And, predictably, it interprets 240p as 480i. The deinterlacer is also garbage, but at 200-300 ms of lag not being able to see where you're going is already a moot point.
In other words, anything older than the Wii is unplayable, including Virtual Console. I know I'm not the only one up this particular creek, so I'll make this a general question: how can you play old games on new TVs?
If you know a particular model of TV/monitor that's well behaved, a scaler that doesn't suck, or a mod to get HD output from a particular system, do tell. Hell, at this point I'd settle for a means to extract the ROMs from my VC library so I can play them in a better emulator.
Been there, man. Everywhere I look, people end up recommending an upscaler called "Framemeister" or something, that costs around US$600, as the definitive solution for playing retro consoles on modern TVs. Everything else will only work in certain cases or have a number of drawbacks.
I really don't have that much money lying around to drop on a device like this, and after trying a bunch of cheaper alternatives (cheaper upscaler, SCART cables, etc.) that ALL failed miserably (the result was always worse than what the TV alone would do), I simply moved my old CRT into the bedroom, instead of getting rid of it. I even accepted a smaller 14" CRT that was donated to me, that I keep on a shelf in the living room. I'll probably only think about this problem again once both CRTs kick the bucket.
The Framemeister XRGB Mini is quite good, though very expensive. (I think it was ~$400 CAD at the time I got one.) It does everything you'd want it to, and is super configurable. I regret spending that much money on it, though, because I don't use it very often. My TV interlaces 240p, but it doesn't have horrible lag or anything; tolerable most of the time. I only get the XRGB out on special occasions.
240p to HDMI is one of those things where I'm surprised there isn't some cheap but effective product available.
Some modern TV's don't even have composite video anymore. My friend's TV only has Component so we ended up playing 4-player Mario Kart 64 in blocky black and white. Still fun though
Light-Dark wrote:
Some modern TV's don't even have composite video anymore. My friend's TV only has Component
What make and model, so that we can document this failure for the record?
Did you try RF as well? Because if it doesn't support RF then it's legally not a TV but instead a monitor.
I don't recall the model or model number (I was drinking at the time). Whenever I'm over there next I'll figure out the fine details. It definitely had RF though. I don't have an RF adapter for my N64 (would've been nice at the time!).
I just tested my old Samsung UA32EH5006. It doesn't support 240p, but there's no lag in game mode and the deinterlacer is almost perfect, so it's perfectly playable. Of course, it's also on loan to someone else right now so that doesn't actually help me any.
I don't think I can justify the expense of something like the Framemeister when I'm only likely to use it every now and then. I also note from what little documentation I could find that it seems to add a frame of lag, which I find disappointing given the price, but it's still an order of magnitude less than my TV.
tepples wrote:
Did you try RF as well? Because if it doesn't support RF then it's legally not a TV but instead a monitor.
You're now my favorite poster here. I hate "TV"s that have no support for NTSC.
Rahsennor wrote:
I recently discovered that my Toshiba 40TL900 LCD TV silently disables "game mode" when fed an interlaced image. And, predictably, it interprets 240p as 480i. The deinterlacer is also garbage, but at 200-300 ms of lag not being able to see where you're going is already a moot point.
So glad I have a good working CRT…technology really seems to be going backwards in terms of what one can choose to do.