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Thread: Screw-in RF connectors, the bane of my retro gaming existence

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    Strawberry (Level 2) Xian042's Avatar
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    Default Screw-in RF connectors, the bane of my retro gaming existence

    Who thought these were a good idea? Never had one screw in and out easily, had to take three breaks unscrewing a TurboGrafx RF from around the TV. Such a hassle for something that really didn't need to be.

    end of rant.

    yay retrogaming!
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    Quote Originally Posted by Xian042 View Post
    Who thought these were a good idea? Never had one screw in and out easily, had to take three breaks unscrewing a TurboGrafx RF from around the TV. Such a hassle for something that really didn't need to be.

    end of rant.

    yay retrogaming!
    i wonder what the production costs were in putting these connectors in vs 3 or in the NES's case a 2 prong connector.

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    Pac-Man (Level 10) treismac's Avatar
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    I love my TG-16 as well and hate the RF adapter as well. I need to pony up for either a Turbo Booster Plus or a Turbo Duo and join the A/V revolution that I keep hearing so much about. Seriously, why did the TG-16 and Genesis not come with A/V outs like the NES did? Do you happen to remember the TV adapter you needed to play the Atari 2600? Horrible. Absolutely horrible.

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    Yeah, they're a pain, but I fortunately don't have many systems where I'm forced to use RF.

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    They have those adapters that screw in once and then you can just plug the cable directly in. Makes me wonder why no one thought of them when the systems were new, but I bet most people didn't have several systems to connect at once.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Xian042 View Post
    Who thought these were a good idea? Never had one screw in and out easily, had to take three breaks unscrewing a TurboGrafx RF from around the TV. Such a hassle for something that really didn't need to be.
    Back then, they wanted to make sure you were SERIOUS about playing some damn games. If you're not willing to spend three hours just setting up the damn thing, then why even bother? Shyeah!

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    Key (Level 9) wiggyx's Avatar
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    I actually preferred the threaded connectors. They never fell out or loosened over time. I never disconnected the my systems from the TV anyway when I was a kid and I never really needed to "quickly" remove an RF switch. I also don't recall having any difficulty installing or removing them either.

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    Alex (Level 15) InsaneDavid's Avatar
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    Considering that automatic RF switches are all the same (NES, Genesis, SMS, TG-16, etc.) you really only need to leave one connected for any family of systems that uses them. These days I only have my NES through RF (I don't care about the superiority of the composite on the side or this mod or that extra circuit, RF is how I played it forever and that's what I want to see when I play NES games) but if I need to use another auto RF based system, I just move the plug from the NES to the other.

    Manual RF switch based systems (Atari 2600, 7800, Pong consoles, etc.) I use the tried and true method of an A/B box on my coaxial cable line and a phono to type-F converter. I leave the converter screwed into the A/B box and if I need to run a manual RF era system I just plug it in and flip the A/B box from the cable line to the system line. The Atari 2600 is usually plugged in to that one.

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    Quote Originally Posted by treismac View Post
    I love my TG-16 as well and hate the RF adapter as well. I need to pony up for either a Turbo Booster Plus or a Turbo Duo and join the A/V revolution that I keep hearing so much about. Seriously, why did the TG-16 and Genesis not come with A/V outs like the NES did? Do you happen to remember the TV adapter you needed to play the Atari 2600? Horrible. Absolutely horrible.
    The Genesis has an A/V wire for itself, it's not stereo on the model 1.



    I have one of those RF adapters to coax. I was using an old RF cable from a Colecovision/7800, for the TG-16, to plug directly into that adapter. I recently got a Turbo Booster. To be honest, if your TG-16 RF connection is okay (some go bad), you won't notice much of a difference in video on a HDTV. Where the difference is major is in the sound. RF sound compared even to mono sound on any AV cable is so lousy.
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    Quote Originally Posted by treismac View Post
    I love my TG-16 as well and hate the RF adapter as well. I need to pony up for either a Turbo Booster Plus or a Turbo Duo and join the A/V revolution that I keep hearing so much about. Seriously, why did the TG-16 and Genesis not come with A/V outs like the NES did? Do you happen to remember the TV adapter you needed to play the Atari 2600? Horrible. Absolutely horrible.
    In a manner of speaking it's almost criminal to think about how bad corporate suits or uninformed users damage the artistic integrity of games.

    Worse knowing the disabled true TG-16 video, is as world class as SNES Jr. Few people get to witness its peak aside from Wii VC versions on a component CRT.
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    Quote Originally Posted by theclaw View Post
    In a manner of speaking it's almost criminal to think about how bad corporate suits or uninformed users damage the artistic integrity of games.

    Worse knowing the disabled true TG-16 video, is as world class as SNES Jr. Few people get to witness its peak aside from Wii VC versions on a component CRT.
    Nobody in North America at least had anything but SD/Analog TV's, making a need for anything but composite/S-Video pointless.
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    Pac-Man (Level 10) theclaw's Avatar
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    True TV makers didn't help. I was just speaking from the view of a developer aware what would be done to their work.
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    The tiny RF to coax adapter mentioned above is the way to go. Just screw it in and switch out the systems. I imagine you could also use a system selector for this, but I don't know if it would degrade the quality or not. I did notice that the picture was much nicer than with one of the older switch boxes.

    Before I discovered the adapter, I had all of my RF boxes piggybacked, there were 3 or 4 of them in a chain. It didn't look great but I had all the systems hooked up to my TV. I have gotten rid of a lot since then so I only need the RF for one system these days.
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    Quote Originally Posted by theclaw View Post
    True TV makers didn't help. I was just speaking from the view of a developer aware what would be done to their work.
    Well, move forward to the 3D polygon era. Many of the PS1/N64 games reveal glitches and texture mistakes using an emulator not seen in the original format. However, I agree they were coding the games on computers, which the public would never quite see that way.
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    Yeah it's a mind boggle. So many ins and outs of games/systems we know today, not unveiled by the makers. But I digress. Best save anything else I'd say about it for another topic.
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    I actually prefer screw-on connectors to push-on ones, but I do wish they would have used better nuts on the cables, instead of those awful hex nuts.
    I have a handful of really easy to connect coax cables, one of which is a Sega Channel brand, and I keep them around specifically because of how easily the nuts thread onto the RF jack.

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    I didn't mind RF. The only thing I particularly disliked about it was the horrible placement of the RF inputs on TVs. On a Sony Trinitron I got in 1998, the RF input was placed at the very lower corner of the rear. There was no space to get leverage to twist the cable onto it. You either had to put up with that, or daisy chain RF inputs with successively worse noise.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Greg2600 View Post
    Nobody in North America at least had anything but SD/Analog TV's, making a need for anything but composite/S-Video pointless.
    Component video gives a definite boost in quality on an analog SD CRT. On some of my consoles I see a much greater boost going from S-Video to component than I do composite to S-Video.

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    Alex (Level 15) InsaneDavid's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by treismac View Post
    I love my TG-16 as well and hate the RF adapter as well. I need to pony up for either a Turbo Booster Plus or a Turbo Duo and join the A/V revolution that I keep hearing so much about.
    Tapping standard composite video and stereo sound from a TurboGrafx-16 or PCEngine isn't all that troublesome to be honest. I just did so on the $15 PCEngine I picked up last week.



    And yes, I do enjoy the F1 Circus games.

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    Quote Originally Posted by InsaneDavid View Post
    Tapping standard composite video and stereo sound from a TurboGrafx-16 or PCEngine isn't all that troublesome to be honest. I just did so on the $15 PCEngine I picked up last week.



    And yes, I do enjoy the F1 Circus games.
    Getting S-video out of it is almost just as easy too, and it doesn't require a special video encoder board: http://tinyurl.com/6vdys3s
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