Is it a good idea to play SNES on a HDTV?

M

MikeXXIeaf

Banned
I've heard horror stories about playing retro consoles on HDTVs, is it that bad? A local thrift store has SNES games and I've been looking to buy. I'm wondering how it'll look it on my HDTV.
 
Watch youtubes of SNES games. If you're like "this is cool" then it won't matter to you.
 
"Pixels the size of your fist"

iOawbvsdkaa07.jpg
 
It's going to look like steamed ass, and the analog connection to your HDTV will introduce a good bit of lag (on top of what it already has). If I had to use an HDTV, it wouldn't be without a dedicated upscaler like the XRGB-mini.
 
It will certainly look at lot worse than on a CRT, but if that's your only option it's no reason to pass on the SNES. It's not so bad that it makes games unplayable, it'll just be a bit blurry since HDTVs tend to be crap at up scaling.
 
Are you the type to be bothered by how a game looks while playing it? 'cause a SNES on a HDTV by itself will always look shit.
Best bet is emulation with post processing filters, an XRGB-mini, or a CRT.
 
When I play old games like NES, SNES, Genesis, or Virtual Console releases, I just switch my HDTV Picture properties to 4:3 ratio. Reminds me of back in the old days of using my old television sets.
 
I play snes on a tiny crt. Like, a 12in or something. I never try on the hdtv, but I enjoy it on the tiny one so it must be good regardless of the system.
 
ramoisdead said:
When I play old games like NES, SNES, Genesis, or Virtual Console releases, I just switch my HDTV Picture properties to 4:3 ratio. Reminds me of back in the old days of using my old television sets.
Click to expand...

Yeah, stretching 4:3 to widescreen can be weird. I played Sonic on the Genesis like that once, depending on how you look at it, it effectively makes him run faster.
 
Honestly, the N64 is the one system that looks awful no matter what. Emulator makes it look pretty alright but... ugh.

But, I must say that the games look better on CRT.
 
lot of purists say crt or die... but honestly, i quite enjoy playing emulated games @ 4xHQ on my HD LCD... and after playing on 4x ... turning on the SNES... even on a CRT is just too blurry...

Typically the original size of a snes game (240 by uh something i think)

i4nooWdKcZlw.png


looks like this on an HDTV

icoVFiPsjLTbk.png



but personally i like to use hq4x upscaling with emulation to give it a crisp HD sprite look... without messing with any smoothing stuff..

and that looks like this...

iDZ1zn9PforXY.png



so in the end... i dump all my games over to the PC and play on an emulator... only when i want super retro feel or have friends over and just wanna mess around do i bust out the snes.... but its always on an HD LCD TV... (no way in hell i was keeping my 40" CRT... it weighed a million pounds...)
 
Playing older games on a flat panel isn't as catastrophically bad as people sometimes make it out to be, but you can find an appropriate SD CRT for almost nothing. Unless you're extremely space-limited, I'd recommend using an old tube.
 
It's been shown how CRTs are better for classic games. Games were made to take advantage of the properties of CRTs, and it was more involved than just the art.

With that said, most people aren't going to go out and buy a CRT just to play old games. I like the idea of it, but I don't have a game room, or the extra space to make one. Even if I did, I can't see myself going out and furnishing a room just to use as a CRT gaming room. Some people are into that, and if you are, you should consider it. But if you aren't one of those people, just play those classic games on an HDTV. It's better than not playing them at all.

If you really care about how they look, and don't want to get a CRT, either play them on a handheld (PSP, Shield) or play them on a PC. Either way, by using emulation you can add back scanlines and effects which give the games back some of their classic look. You're also playing at native resolution (on handheld, anyways), so you don't have to worry about having huge pixels on an HDTV.
 
I highly suggest you find a crt with a S-video input or invest in a seperate scaler for HDTVs such as the XRGB someone already mentioned. Both will not only make the image look leaps and bounds better than using a composite input on your HDTV but they will also properly detect, and in the case of the XRGB scale the image, and display the image with no input lag for the CRT and minimal to none for the XRGB.

Fact is HDTVs will not detect the 240p output of fifth generation and older consoles so it just treats it as a 480i signal then has to deinterlace then upscale to 720p or 1080p, whichever is your HDTVs native resolution. All this plus using a composite signal which is pretty poor to begin with will give not only a terrible image from color fidelity to overall image clarity but it will also introduce terrible input lag on your HDTV.

TL:DR Simplest and fastest solution is to locate a CRT SDTV with S-Video input, pretty common at just about any good will or thrift store, and buy some s-video cables for your snes or better yet GameStop still sells a mutli console S-video cable that works for all sixth gen and earlier PS/Nintendo/Xbox consoles.
 
Azriell said:
Even if I did, I can't see myself going out and furnishing a room just to use as a CRT gaming room.
Click to expand...
Living in an environment so carefully and precisely laid-out that you can't fit two different functions into the same room sounds terrible. :/
 
If you have the time, space, and resources for it, sure, you can get an SDTV or a scaler. I suggest you try it out on your TV first.

I had an SDTV that was great for my retro consoles, and I loved playing my Super Famicom and Famicom on it, but I later got an HDTV and had no room in my tiny Japanese apartment for both. While I was concerned that I might give up the retro games with the new TV, that wasn't the case. The Famicom had horrible jailbars and was hideous looking on the HDTV, but I got an AV Famicom (like the US top loader but with RCA output) and both it and my Super Famicom look just fine on the TV. If it adds any lag, it's not enough to bother me.

I also used to emulate with filters in the past, but I really do prefer the look and feel of the original systems.
 
KiraXD said:
lot of purists say crt or die... but honestly, i quite enjoy playing emulated games @ 4xHQ on my HD LCD... and after playing on 4x ... turning on the SNES... even on a CRT is just too blurry...

Typically the original size of a snes game (240 by uh something i think)

i4nooWdKcZlw.png


looks like this on an HDTV

icoVFiPsjLTbk.png



but personally i like to use hq4x upscaling with emulation to give it a crisp HD sprite look... without messing with any smoothing stuff..

and that looks like this...

iDZ1zn9PforXY.png



so in the end... i dump all my games over to the PC and play on an emulator... only when i want super retro feel or have friends over and just wanna mess around do i bust out the snes.... but its always on an HD LCD TV... (no way in hell i was keeping my 40" CRT... it weighed a million pounds...)
Click to expand...

Yup, pretty much what I'm doing. Bought a Retrode for this sole purpose.

Playing with Higan too, so perfect emulation plus crisp IQ equals fun times! :D
 
I used to use emulators with zero filters and bilinear scaling only.... But then someone ended up pointing out that games were designed around the CRT, and in a lot of cases ended up using the CRT in clever ways... I didn't really think much of it, and didn't think about it. Until, that is, I just by chance ended up hooking my Wii U to a CRT at a friend's house, and played F Zero on it.
It. Looked. PHENOMENAL.
Since then, I've dug out my apparently really fucking good CRT and have hooked up my systems to it. I'm never looking back.

EDIT:
system11 said:
This, but you really need to avoid S-Video or composite and go with RGB.
Click to expand...
If my CRT had RGB, I'd look into it, but elsewise the S Video alone is a huge jump.
 
A Twisty Fluken said:
Don't let the fearmongering of videophiles on this forum get to you. A lot of it will depend on how good the scaler on your tv is.
Click to expand...

Like I said in my earlier post and others have echoed, any HDTV will make the image directly from your SNES look awful. It's not just a videophile thing, I have a Samsung PN59D8000. The top of the line plasma from Samsung from 2011, scaler still can't do squat for the 240p signal it, and again no other HDTV, can detect.

Also even if your HDTV has S-Video it will still look awful. And RGB is not possible from an SNES without modding it, the US version anyway, although once modded and used on a CRT SDTV capable of recieving such a signal it is the best you can get for the SNES.
 
system11 said:
This, but you really need to avoid S-Video or composite and go with RGB.
Click to expand...

ehhhh


http://www.tested.com/tech/gaming/456719-best-crt-retro-games/
However, the 'upgrade' from S-video to component/RGB is not significant enough for me to suggest spending any time or money if using a consumer SDTV. Unless you have a high-end monitor, such as a Sony PVM, you may not even notice the difference."

With a high-end monitor, however--or a modern display with an image processor, which we'll get to later--those last two signal types become essential.

"RGB and component are very similar," writes Fudoh. "It's hard to find somebody who can actually tell the difference. Component has the benefit of supporting ED and HD resolutions as well...S-Video is certainly closer to RGB than it is to composite and you probably don't have to bother on a 14-inch screen, but the larger the screen gets, the more important a perfect source signal gets. Composite is very complicated signal, which requires tremendous efforts (comb filter, which separates the color from the luminance signal) to look anything but utter shit. I couldn't think of any reason to stick to composite. Even 70s Atari systems can be modded for S-video and getting RGB from a NES isn't this complicated either (just more expensive)."
Click to expand...
 
I'd suggest using an emulator over directly connecting an old console to an HDTV, even for those that aren't super-serious about playing older games.
 
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