Laseractive Video Output

[Tempest]

Last night I decided to pull out my Laseractive unit to see if it would improve the video quality of my Sega CD games. I figured at the very least it would be about the same, and maybe possibly a little better. However I was shocked to discover that it was actually worse! The text had some nasty shadows (artifact blurring or whatever you want to call it) that were not there with my regular Genesis.

My question is, is this a known problem with the Laseractive or could there be something wrong with mine? Is there a way to improve the video output? I know there's an S-Video mod, but it doesn't work on the games for some reason, just the laserdiscs.

Tempest

[Ed Oscuro]

Laserdiscs and probably the LA games encode their video as composite, so barring getting ahold of one of the last (or expensive) players you won't find an improvement with S-Video or other outputs. Partially this is due to weak early comb filters; you'd be better off running an external filter on the output straight out of the LA.

I made a topic on the question of ripping LDs recently at Shmups Forum, so you may want to read the notes from resident expert Fudoh here (http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=27439).

[Tempest]

It's not the LD video out that I care about, it's the games. I was wondering if there's a better way to get a signal from the board somehow. I know you can do RGB, but I don't want to play it on a monitor.

Tempest

[Ed Oscuro]

Okay, I got you now.

RGB actually will let you use a 32X. But, first things first...

The short form is that you will need to convert from RGB to your preferred output somehow. I assume it can be done externally without too much lag or breaking the bank.

Just as I expected, RGB output from the LD module and the game pacs is separate, so I would expect Sega CD stuff to be limited to composite unless you did the RGB mod (unless the optical drive feeds the data back to the game packs for digital filters and the digital -> analogue conversion found on a regular Sega CD). I can't find a definite answer on that question.

First off, you can mod the game packs to use RGB, see here (http://www.gamesx.com/misctech/laseractivergb.htm), and then convert from that to your desired output of choice.

Additionally, you can add S-Video to the LD output (http://www.gamesx.com/misctech/laseractive.htm), but that doesn't cover the game pack output. I'm not surprised.

[url=http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=2795.0]Here's a thread where (the infamous) Segasonicfan discusses doing these mods.

S-video will take some additional steps and parts, and is probably more labor-intensive than just getting a RGB -> whatever converter. But if you want to go ahead with that your best bet is probably to ask right there in the GameSX Forums.