TG16/PCE/Duo Composite, S-Video, Component Comparison shots

[electrochip]

So I modded a couple of units with S-Video using a CXA1645 to convert the RGB into S-Video and a CVS287 to convert RGB to Component. I noticed a big difference in clarity and colors. It looks like the original composite signal is washed out on the TG16/PCE/Duo and much better with the CXA1645. I'm using a 27" JVC CRT SDTV.

TG16/PCE/DUO Composite

http://i948.photobucket.com/albums/ad321/electrochip/PCE/m3_pce_composite.jpg


Composite out from CXA1645

http://i948.photobucket.com/albums/ad321/electrochip/PCE/m3_cxa_composite.jpg


S-Video out from CXA1645

http://i948.photobucket.com/albums/ad321/electrochip/PCE/m3_svid.jpg


Component out from CVS287

http://i948.photobucket.com/albums/ad321/electrochip/PCE/m3_component.jpg


Requested Component Shots

http://i948.photobucket.com/albums/ad321/electrochip/PCE/screen_test_1.jpg

http://i948.photobucket.com/albums/ad321/electrochip/PCE/screen_test_2.jpg

http://i948.photobucket.com/albums/ad321/electrochip/PCE/screen_test_3.jpg

[allyourblood]

Nicely done. Yeah, pretty significant upgrade on each of the different signals. S-video really looks great as-is, but colors look a little "truer" to my eyes on the component screenshot. However, the component looks a little bit hotter, like slightly washed-out, but maybe that's just how it looks to me. I'd be elated with either. Thanks for posting!

[electrochip]

it's mostly lack of camera technique. I point, pray and shoot and see if it comes out well. The Component is a bit sharper with better color definition, but it's not a big jump as composite to s-video. Either is vastly superior to the composite signal.

[allyourblood]

it's mostly lack of camera technique. I point, pray and shoot and see if it comes out well. The Component is a bit sharper with better color definition, but it's not a big jump as composite to s-video. Either is vastly superior to the composite signal.

Definitely. I made an RGB cable for my Genesis a while back and I must say, it's one of those things that you cannot fully appreciate until you see it in person. I mean, yes, I've used emulators, but seeing such a remarkably sharp image coming from the actual console is really something. It's sorta like a Game Genie too: it makes you want to go back and play your old games again; in this case, just to see how wonderful they can look.

S-video on my SNES looks so good, I'm not sure I can be bothered to add RGB, but if I was gonna upgrade the output on a TG-16 (don't have a Duo), or my Neo Geo, I'd certainly go for RGB or component.

Again, thanks for sharing.

[electrochip]

a couple more pics by request.


TG16/PCE/DUO Composite

http://i948.photobucket.com/albums/ad321/electrochip/PCE/d_pce_composite.jpg


Composite out from CXA1645

http://i948.photobucket.com/albums/ad321/electrochip/PCE/d_cxa_composite.jpg

S-Video out from CXA1645

http://i948.photobucket.com/albums/ad321/electrochip/PCE/d_svid.jpg


Component out from CVS287

http://i948.photobucket.com/albums/ad321/electrochip/PCE/d_component.jpg

[tomaitheous]

The Doraemon pics really show off the component video. You can see edge transitions of close colors better than in S-video (which is already pretty good in that pic). Hell, that component pic looks better than some RGB pics I've seen of systems connected to PAL RGB via scart. Nice job :D

Something I wanted to point out about the composite output of the original system. It's not done by some converter chip. It's internal to the VCE (which has the palette ram and builds the complete picture as well as the RGB out), not some third party encoder. There's also a RGB to YUV map in the chip itself (a small look up rom). The patent for the VCE shows the first three and last three entries of the YUV conversion table(green has a different ramp/adjust than B and R). So that's why there's a difference between the external composite encoder and the original composite output of the PCE/TG system. If anything, the replacement encoder is 'incorrect' as far as saturation and RGB-to-YIQ goes. But hell, it looks nice :)

Also somewhat related, but the VCE doesn't output composite per se. It actually already outputs component video (just not the same format). The three component signals are combined externally to form composite. You can make s-video from this video output if you wanted (no encoder chip needed). You could probably make a component output converter from the three lines too, but I haven't really looked into this (and what's needed). They output lines appear to be pretty high res too (I haven't traced the whole circuit, but they are probably passed through a filter before output).

[Tempest]

How hard was the mod to do? I'd settle for just plain S-Video, no need for component. :)

Tempest

[electrochip]

@tomaitheous

I didn't know all that about the VCE, would be nice to know how to pull s-video from it properly.

@Tempest

You need to build an RGB to NTSC encoder or buy one and tap the RGB from the Hu6260. I can do the region and video mods, if anyone is interested send me a pm.

[tomaitheous]

electrochip, do you have a flash card or are able to play CD-Rs?

Can you take a pic of this on you setup? http://www.pcedev.net/pics/dither/pce/497.png

It's from Might and Magic 3 at the very-very beginning of the game (right where you spawn when you start the game, a room off to the side). Forgotten Worlds runs mid res too, so that's a good test (all your pics are of low res PCE stuff). Also what about some pics of some PCE high res modes? Like the 512 pixel mode.

[electrochip]

electrochip, do you have a flash card or are able to play CD-Rs?

Can you take a pic of this on you setup? http://www.pcedev.net/pics/dither/pce/497.png

It's from Might and Magic 3 at the very-very beginning of the game (right where you spawn when you start the game, a room off to the side). Forgotten Worlds runs mid res too, so that's a good test (all your pics are of low res PCE stuff). Also what about some pics of some PCE high res modes? Like the 512 pixel mode.

I have a flash card and right now the S-Vid and composite mod are on a Duo-R, I've compared it to a TG16 and PCE, they all output the same. My Duo-RX has the component mod. Send me a list of games and I can try them out.

[electrochip]

it's hard to get a good picture of a CRT, updated with some MM3 pics.

[tomaitheous]

it's hard to get a good picture of a CRT

They're coming out pretty good, though. Thanks for the update. They look great. It can apparently handle the higher res mode too (for composite out). I was initially surprised that the original PC-Engine composite output has a very high resolution Y channel. Higher than the composite specification (I guess it doesn't hurt). I used this:

http://www.disgruntleddesigner.com/chrisc/creations.html

To test out the 512 pixel mode. It was pixel perfect (for the Y data) for that mode (even B&W pixel was represented, not accumulation or blurring). Definitely the most incredible thing I've ever seen for a composite output chip from 1987. In the test proggy, you can press select to turn on/off h-filter (dot crawl). Though this shouldn't have any effect on the external video converter you've modded your system with.

[sheath]

My first two Jp DUO consoles had Composite out with the same color banding issues of my '89 model Genesis 1. It was a few years ago that I traded the second DUO for a DUO/R from a nice fellow who region modified the DUO/R for me. I'd swear he did something to the Composite output as well, as it looks as sharp as SNES S-Video does no joke! Let's see if I have some video captures handy.

Composite Shot
http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/default/files/PCEpics/ShinobiPCE007.JPG

Emulation Shot
http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/default/files/PCEpics/ShinobiPCE019.png

Composite Shot
http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/default/files/PCEpics/ShinobiPCE010.JPG

Emulation Shot
http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/default/files/PCEpics/ShinobiPCE039.png

Attract Mode DIVX Video (http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/default/files/PCEpics/DUO/ShinobiL1.avi)

More here (http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/content/shinobi-0).

[tomaitheous]

sheath: You still have your Duo? If so, can you burn the screen test demo from here:
http://www.disgruntleddesigner.com/chrisc/creations.html
And post a capture of the mid and high res mode? My capture card applies a low pass filter for any composite input, making it blurry than the real input is. I'm curious if any of your capture cards do this too. I haven't tested s-video (just feeding it the composite signal on Y, to test the luma channel resolution). But I have a feeling that I'll get different results.

[tomaitheous]

Also:
http://pcedev.net/pics/capture/scanline_prep/pic2_b_prep.png
http://pcedev.net/pics/capture/scanline_prep/pic2_b.png

Both are capture shots from my capture card (notice the low pass filter on the floor line bar dithering appearing as solid). The top on is a scanline simulation post process I added to the capture shot, to make it look more like the real display (SD set or RGB monitor, not HD frame buffer display).

Here's the scanline mask: http://pcedev.net/pics/capture/scanline_prep/mask_scanline.psd

In Photoshop, apply this as a layer over the original image layer. Use the magic select tool to select just the blue pixels. Disable the layer, make a copy of the original image layer, have the focus/action applied to this layer - then use the selection mask made from the blue line layer to cut out the lines in this duplicate image layer. Now apply a brightness/contrast adjust on the modified image layer (make it darker). I -70 brightness -5 contrast seems to work pretty good. On the original layer, use the brightness/contrast adjust to make the image slightly brighter (to compensate for the 'scanlines' making it darker). I used a value of +12/+12 for brightness/contrast. You can replicate this in After Effects and Avisynth too, for video.

[sheath]

Oh I see, are you just overlaying this PSD over the screenshots? I'm using CS3, which allows for all kinds of layer effects and translucency.

I was trying to avoid Avisynth, it frustrates me every time I try to use it even though it really should be easier than just using Virtualdub. I have all of my cropping and logo overlays saved for various console ouputs in Virtualdub. Eh, but I am having trouble getting my Windows 7 machine to encode to Divx, so I need to work with Avisynth anyway.

I'll burn the screentest disk and try to post screenshots soon. Going on a road trip today so it might be later this weekend. I killed the previous two DUOs I had by testing a Dracula X CDR on them, I take it this is just a small ROM that loads?

[tomaitheous]

Oh I see, are you just overlaying this PSD over the screenshots?

Only so I can use it as a mask itself. I disable/remove the layer once I get a mask selection from it. And you need two layers of the original image. One to cut with the mask. The cut one is darker (which sits on top). The normal one is made a little bit lighter. I can post a PSD of the layers if you like.




I'll burn the screentest disk and try to post screenshots soon. Going on a road trip today so it might be later this weekend. I killed the previous two DUOs I had by testing a Dracula X CDR on them, I take it this is just a small ROM that loads?

Yup. It's a tiny little rom (well, ram) that loads at boot. Shouldn't be taxing on your system at all.

Edit: Probably should create a new thread for this stuff.

[sheath]

Yeah, I wouldn't mind that PSD, I think it is important that we use the exact same settings. Avisynth has an add scan lines filter, I haven't discovered if it does 25% yet.

Having never used this screentest thingy, it might be helpful if you told me exactly what you'd like me to sample test wise. I'll probably video capture the whole thing and then use FRAPS for screenshots later. My color count tests showed zero variance between the MPEG-2 screen captures and the Avermedia's screenshots, so I think it's the same quality either way.

[ccovell]

Merry Christmas everyone!

As long as people are adding their own screenshots to this page, I'll add some of mine. I had been taking some captures for a week or two, and now the results are on my RGB page:

http://www.chrismcovell.com/gotRGB/rgb_compare.html
http://www.chrismcovell.com/gotRGB/rgb_compare2.html

[sheath]

Merry Christmas!

I am actually very keen on this kind of discussion and the comparisons on your page. If somebody with a little more cache around here wants to start a thread comparing output qualities (and hopefully establishing a standard for good captures for various outputs) I am all for it.

I noticed that particularly with your Megadrive shots that the reds turned yellow or orange in most of the shots. I have found with several capture cards that this is caused not by the composite output but the deinterlacing method used. Basically the more frames/lines are lost in the deinterlacing process, the more reds change is all I have noticed so far.

Here is a some shot of Altered Beast (http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/content/altered-beast) I took through the 32X's composite (s-video converted) today with my brand spanking new HVR 1600:
http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/default/files/GENpics/A-C/AlteredBeast_32X_CS64_012.png

The same shot from your Megadrive page:
http://www.chrismcovell.com/gotRGB/screenshots/AlBeastTitComp.jpg

[tomaitheous]

There was a Sega-16 thread that compared 32x composite output to the Genesis native composite output (same Genesis game). The 32x has its own composite encoder and does give the image more saturation to color than the original Genesis composite output (a little too much IMO, but you can just turn that down a bit in the TV settings). It's not just capture cards.

For capture cards, if I think if they get the Luma channel wrong (the scale from black to white, on the encoder itself - not software), it can drastically effect the chroma decoding. All my Genesis hook ups to my capture card have seriously hot and blown out saturation (actually, the luma scale of the bright colors). Chris Covell's captures look surprising good.


I noticed that particularly with your Megadrive shots that the reds turned yellow or orange in most of the shots. I have found with several capture cards that this is caused not by the composite output but the deinterlacing method used. Basically the more frames/lines are lost in the deinterlacing process, the more reds change is all I have noticed so far.

Technically, that shouldn't be (sounds more like post processing in the capture software). There's no alternating phase shift of the CB and chroma channel per line or per frame, on the Genesis. There's no chroma dot pattern either (alternating like the PCE or fixed like the SNES). Just a straight vertical mask exactly at 7.159mhz (it's what causes the unique edge transition artifacts on saturated colors). The line mask doesn't alternate from frame to frame either. I.e. there's nothing changing from frame to frame to give a build-up/temporal (30hz) difference.

electrochip: I have another request (if I'm not pushing my luck :D ). It's a bit of the strange request, but it involves showing how the new composite/s-video chip outputs the chroma dot pattern. Can you put the composite output of the new chip, into the Green component input of your nice TV? Then take a screen shot? Something that has both gray or desaturated pixels and also large saturated colored areas (the more saturated the better). If you can't find anything, that same place in MM3 would work. :D Don't worry that what's on screen will be black and white, that's perfectly fine. ;)

Edit:

Chris, nice shot comparison :D Hey, that dot pattern on the Neo Geo color transition edges. Is that 60hz XOR alternating on a real SDTV?

[ccovell]

All my Genesis hook ups to my capture card have seriously hot and blown out saturation (actually, the luma scale of the bright colors). Chris Covell's captures look surprising good.

Hey, that dot pattern on the Neo Geo color transition edges. Is that 60hz XOR alternating on a real SDTV?

The dot pattern doesn't move at all on the Neo-Geo, so it's as ugly as can be for static images.

Yeah, I did notice the capture card captured reds as orange. The MD's just a bit too hot, I guess. I calibrated levels with the PCE using the colour bars cheat in Thunder Blade, and on the MD using Sword of Vermillion's CRT test. The hot oranges only became normal reds after I had turned the brightness so far down on my capture box that white became a dark grey.

I guess that's what NTSC encoding does. Whites and pastels seem to have a lower maximum brightness in composite than saturated reds, greens, etc.

[tomaitheous]

Thanks for the info Chris :D

Also, this: http://www.pcedev.net/pics/capture/pce/cap_test1.png

The was some noise in the video signal (it's about a 20 foot cable with an open splice), so I had to run a noise filter on it - which is why it isn't as clear as it could be (added a tiny/slight vertical blur). But it's pretty clear as is. That's composite output of the original PCE.

I found a utility for BT 8x8 chipsets. BT tweaker which you can use with virtualdub. You can disable the notch filter, which allows you to keep the resolution of Luma in PCE mid res captures (which is normally filtered down as it's a multiple of the chroma signal frequency).

PCE has a 60hz XOR dot pattern (perfect checker board, unlike the NES/SNES) on the Luma channel only for chroma pixels, going down the screen. The dot pattern is twice the chroma signal frequency (3.579mhz), regardless of the resolution. It inverts this pattern every frame. So colored pixels get a resolution boost when viewed at 30hz. None moving pixels and pixels that move at or less than 30hz will retain this res (Blazing Lazers first level scrolling BG layer for example). My shot above just accumulates two frames since I can't show 60hz blinking stuff here. You might think it would be flickery on a real set, but remember the human eye is less responsive to both resolution and temporal changes of red and blue.

[sheath]

The dot pattern doesn't move at all on the Neo-Geo, so it's as ugly as can be for static images.

Yeah, I did notice the capture card captured reds as orange. The MD's just a bit too hot, I guess. I calibrated levels with the PCE using the colour bars cheat in Thunder Blade, and on the MD using Sword of Vermillion's CRT test. The hot oranges only became normal reds after I had turned the brightness so far down on my capture box that white became a dark grey.

I guess that's what NTSC encoding does. Whites and pastels seem to have a lower maximum brightness in composite than saturated reds, greens, etc.

I tried adjusting the color-tint-brightness setting of video captures for a long time. For my televisions I use an older A/V DVD to set the video settings perfectly for my rooms and I wanted to duplicate this for video captures. I eventually settled on leaving it at default because of the wide variety of PC monitor types that were out there at the time.

Now that virtually everybody seems to be using LCD I'm tempted to make some minor adjustments again. But then I am noticing that Laptop users all keep their monitors at different angles, which affects colors and brightness.

I'm pretty sure that Sega-16 thread about the differences between Genesis and 32X outputs was using my screenshots of SFII SCE (http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/content/street-fighter-ii-special-champion-edition), Revenge of Shinobi (http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/content/revenge-shinobi), and Shinobi III (http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/content/shinobi-iii-return-ninja-master) over my old Ati AiW 7500.

Actually, I was just telling Tom, my new HVR 6500 perfectly doubles the color saturation when the 32X is hooked up. I had to use Dscaler to get the color saturation down to 64 (from 128) to get the color back to normal. The last four galleries on GP's front page (http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/) are from the new card, the Ninja Spirit and SFII Turbo shots are at 128 default saturation.

-edit-

I just uploaded screenshots for my Christmas gift, Splatterhouse (http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/content/splatterhouse) for TG16. Here are a few choice ones that seem to have oddities:

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/default/files/PCEpics/DUO/S/SplatterhousePCE018.png

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/default/files/PCEpics/DUO/S/SplatterhousePCE019.png

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/default/files/PCEpics/DUO/S/SplatterhousePCE020.png

[tomaitheous]

Here's something:

http://www.pcedev.net/pics/composite_rgb/pce/SO2_compare1.png
(larger view here: http://www.pcedev.net/pics/composite_rgb/pce/SO2_compare1_large.png)

RGB in emulation shots, not only makes the colors darker - but the color relative to other colors themselves, is different. Look at the above sky. In the RGB one, you can't even see the third (middle) blue color for the sky gradient.

electrochip: how does your component converter handle this fight scene back drop?

The above right pic might be a bit light (I tried to calibrate it by eye to one of my SD sets), but even if you darken it - you can still see the middle sky color. I.e. it's not a direct effect of lightness or darkness of the over all image:
http://www.pcedev.net/pics/composite_rgb/pce/SO2_compare1__darker.png

[sheath]

RGB in emulation shots, not only make the colors darker - but the color relative to other colors themselves, it different. Look at the above sky. In the RGB one, you can't even see the third (middle) blue color for the sky gradient.

I can see the middle blue gradient in both shots on my laptop LCD, but they are different shades. If I angle my monitor towards me the shot of the left (emulation?) loses the middle blue. Otherwise there are three layers of blue visible on my screen in all three shots.

[tomaitheous]

I can see the middle blue gradient in both shots on my laptop LCD, but they are different shades. If I angle my monitor towards me the shot of the left (emulation?) loses the middle blue. Otherwise there are three layers of blue visible on my screen in all three shots.

Hmm, might be the gamma correction on your LCD monitor. What about this shot? http://www.pcedev.net/pics/composite_rgb/pce/SO2_compare1_rgb_lighter.png or a bigger shot: http://www.pcedev.net/pics/composite_rgb/pce/SO2_compare1_rgb_lighter_larger.png

I mean, it's there - but it should be ever so slight of a difference in the original left shot (from the top sky blue to the middle sky blue).

Edit: I can tilt my LCD 60 degrees either way (up/down) and there really isn't any noticeable difference (there's a tiny bit when I tilt it down about 60 degrees - everything is darker and so I can see it a tiny bit more).

[sheath]

Hmm, might be the gamma correction on your LCD monitor. What about this shot? http://www.pcedev.net/pics/composite_rgb/pce/SO2_compare1_rgb_lighter.png

I mean, it's there - but it should be ever so slight of a difference in the original left shot (from the top sky blue to the middle sky blue).

That shot is very hard to see the middle blue. It is only visible when my monitor is at a very odd angle. The other ones are very distinct on this screen. It's a nice LCD though, you can see the screen clearly from 80 degrees on either side.

[tomaitheous]

Ahh, ok. (I updated my post too)

Yeah, just sounds like a gamma thing (a non linear scale of RGB values). It usually has a bend to the scale near the bottom (which that color is only 1 step in RGB pce values from the one above it on the blue channel)

[electrochip]

I sold the Duo-R I had with the S-Video mod, I'll be putting another together soon though. As for the screenshot of the RPG through component, what game is it?

[tomaitheous]

The Startling Odyssey 2 (there's an english translation patch too). The very first area has that battle background.

[killersquirel]

Is there any plans or schematics that are online to do the s-video/component mod for the turboduo?

Thanks,
Mike

[electrochip]

The best I can point you to is this link http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=2788.0

I didn't use it, I have made the circuit for other systems and applied it to the PCE's.

[tomaitheous]

electrochip: Actually, I have the perfect test tool; Chris Covell's 512 color demo. I hacked it to run off CD instead of rom (sorry Chris, it was easier than modifying the source code). The download link is here: http://www.pcedev.net/pics/composite_rgb/pce/512colors.zip . That would be a huge help. :D

[electrochip]

finally got things in order and uploaded the screen shot test, and will have updates for the colors demo in component.

[sheath]

I keep forgetting to do this, too much drama going on in the real world. Anyway, here are the shots I took from Covell's Screen Test. I wasn't really clear on what we were looking for, so I just took shots of each of the horizontal resolution modes from my DUO/R.

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/default/files/Homebrew/Testing/PCE_ScreenTest_Low.bmp

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/default/files/Homebrew/Testing/PCE_ScreenTest_Mid.bmp

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/default/files/Homebrew/Testing/PCE_ScreenTest_High.bmp

-edit-

These are taken straight from the Win TV software from my capture card. My usual method is to use FRAPS to capture from the MPEG video capture using maximum settings. Please let me know if this is what you were looking for.