SNES/N62/GC In S Video on HDTV?

[Slate]

How would the SNES, N64 and Gamecube look on a HDTV in S Video? (The HDTV Is a 32" LCD)

[Ed Oscuro]

Probably just great. My TV isn't HD, but it's 33" and you can definitely see the improvement when moving from three-jack RCA composite to S-Vid.

[mario2butts]

Well, it'll look sharper and more colorful than composite, anyway. But any time you feed an HDTV a 480i or lower resolution source, the TV has to not only deinterlace the video but also scale it up to its native resolution, which is probably 720p or thereabouts. This introduces blurring and lag. I used to own a smallish (17") LCD HDTV and it sucked for low res gaming; when playing Super Mario World on my SNES via S-Video the sprites left headache-inducing ghost trails when moving. Also, since all SNES, as well as most N64 and GC games, are in 4:3 and dont support widescreen, you'll either have black bars on the sides of your picture (which I find acceptable) or a strectched image (which sucks, especially when the TV does this automatically and gives you no other choice, like my old HDTV did) The cheapest, best way to play games of a resolution lower than 480p is to just use a picture tube SDTV; if you're buying a new one look for a flat tube with composite, RF, S-Video, and component inputs. I use a Toshiba 14AF45 as a secondary display and its awesome (it's a 14" but they make larger ones).

I use a Micomsoft XRGB-3 upscan converter, which takes a composite, S-Video, component, or RGB input and scales it up, sharp and lag-free, to 480p via a VGA output. I use it with a widescreen 480p DLP projector (Infocus SP4805) and the results are off the hook. However, the XRGB-3 is $300, and works best with RGB, which has a whole slew of caveats.

[agbulls]

My N64 and SNES are hooked up via S-Video to my 50" Sony KDF-E50A10. Colors pop, pixels are bright and chunky and 8/16-bit games never looked so good. I highly recommend playing your stuff this way...as it seems to be the best picture you can get without modding your consoles to RGB.

[Slate]

My HDTV does not put 4:3 inages in widescreen automatically, And I thought the SNES looked quite good on it in composite, How would the N64 and gamecube look in S Video?

[Trebuken]

Results vary. Should have no trouble with the Gamecube, it should look good, esoeacially if you can get component cables. The SNES usually does not look too badl but the N64 usually looks horrible. Not sure why but the N64 seems to be the worst.

[OdSquad64]

yeah, i've seen N64 on an HDTV and it looks awful, it seriously hurt to look at it, not in a mental way, but a physical way (kinda like wearing someone's glasses with a really strong prescription hurts). just dont do it

[Soviet Conscript]

slightly off topic but i have a CRT HDTV. never tried a snes on it but gamecube looks great though s-video as well as the 3do. i can put it in 4:3 mode and the black bars on the side blend in very well with the rest of tv makeing it not noticable at all. anyways my question is. do CRT HDTV's have a native resolution or is this something you only need to worry about with a LCD TV? cause i have had no lag issues with older systems on it.