I just picked up a 37" visio lcd tv with a resolution of 700, and while I like the basic image quality in dvds and such, running the ps1 on it through s-video cables leaves much to be desired. I played castlevania sotn and the sprites were SUPER blocky, and ffvii characters had a weird texture on them that almost made them look as if you were viewing them through a screen door. I realize that this is probably just something inherent with viewing low-res images on a high res screen, and turning the sharpness down all the way seemed to help a bit, but I'm looking for a bit more help. I'm actually returning the tv later in the week (wifey...grrrr) but am wondering if when I can get a new tv if there might be a different brand or settings to look for on the tv that might make playing older games more tolerable. thanks for your help guys.
yeah those textures were made with a lower color pallet and that screen-door effect is pretty much there to stay, especially in FF7 where they weren't really textures so much a gorage (spelling) shading. It was a single color that had gradiating textures to add shading. Cybermorph used it a lot on Atari Jaguar. The only real textures on FF7 are the eyes and certain clothing elements. Never games like FF8 and such look better if u use the texture filters on the PS2. The same thing happened when I first played and old 2D game on component on my Sony Wega. You could see little lines above the characters in certain frames of animation because the edges weren't cut right on Photoshop. They didn't show up on composite video, but they showed up like a sour thumb on Component. FF7 might not have hope, but some of the latter games might look good with the PS3's upscaling to HD, but in most cases it just makes them look worst.
ugh, so there's not much else that can be done, huh? sounds like using composite cables helps though. anyone else have any ideas, opinions, or experience with this? I'm also curious how 16-bit games will look on this type of tv.
It sort of depends. I downloaded SOTN off of PSN for my PS3, and the sprites are ugly as sin. I can overlook it because the game is so great, but still. On the other hand, the old NES, SNES, and especially N64 stuff looks GREAT on the Wii's Virtual Console. I don't know how Nintendo does it, but they're stunning. I mean, the graphics are still blocky and/or low texture, it's not like they remade the games with modern graphics, but something about them makes it so they still look good even on an HD set.
yeah, just for kicks I put in midway's arcade classics for the ps1 and played the original spyhunter. looked fine to me--just the way it should. this is weird.
are you using component cables? a theory is that with nes games the pixels are just being upscaled, so yo unever really lose the 'quality'.
i don't think the games need to be upscaled for nes/snes games... they run the games in their actual original resolution of 256x224, so that's why they still look good. n64 games are upscaled to 480p, so that's why they look good... but if you notice any 2d sprites look kind of pixellated as a side-effect because the n64 originally ran at 320x240. games like paper mario and mario kart 64 kind of make this evident because they used a lot of sprites. as for ps12 games... no idea... i remember seeing some comparison pics of ps1/2 games running on a ps2 and a ps3 side by side and the ps3 ones seemed to look worse... sony probably just isn't as interested in their older games as nintendo is... i mean look at the 40gig ps3, that should tell the story right there.
Yeah the PS2 blurs textures to get that effect while the PS3 doesn't. But Smagger is on about why the Nes games look great. The genesis games look great on the Sega Collection as well. But check out Streets of Rage 2 on Xbox and then on virtual Console. The 360 version looks a bit nicer, plus they add a cool little blur effect to smoothen out the edges. Nintendo has to make thos VC games look good, hehe, that's 90% of their Wii games there. And just for fun and giggles. I don't consider the VC Backwards compatible in the way the the 360 and Ps3 (minus 40 gig) is. It is backwards compatible with the GC, but the point of BC (in a way) is the ability to play your old library of games that you already own, not to rebuy them. I can't fault Nintendo for this since only the GC was disc-based, and they aren't going to make cartrige slots for every game system in the past. But still, you enjoy BC because you know your existing library of games is still playable on a new system, not because you have to rebuy them again.
Hahah, that wasn't a stab at you, bro. It was just an opinion on my part. The VC games do look good, definitely better than them running on my Sega Genesis or NES, but it's partially because they are indeed running at 480p (well that's one of the reasons)
whatever the case, i bought g-police from psn, looks like ass. still pplays pretty well though. all the ps1 games i've downloaded look like ass as well.
The PS3's launch firmware was responsible for that. They fixed that problem pretty quickly. But still, PS1 games running on a PS3 without the "smoothing" option on look worse than they did even on the PS1. Games like resident evil with a 3D/2D mix are especially ugly.
hehe, i loaded up precursor legacy for a laugh yesterday. man, it looks like ass. it also grinds to a halt if you pick up any of the blue eco stuff.
oh, I was running this on my ps2. there's some kind of texture option, isn't there? I'll have to give that a shot and see what happens.
