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[Mupepe]

I'm buying an HDTV soon (like 3 days). And I'm wondering what games should I get to just see the "awe-ness" factor on my TV? Also, side question that's kind of OT, is there really a difference in quality say if instead of getting 60 dollar cables, I get 20 dollars cables? This is referring to cables in general for my TV, not specifically my consoles. And are there any cheaper third party cables for my consoles? I have all 3. Thanks ahead.

 

[Yusaku]

Soul Calibur II for Xbox (720p).

Mark-up on cables is criminal.

 

[vatstep]

SCII looks good, but it's in a 4:3 window and doesn't run so smooth. Try Ninja Gaiden, Panzer Dragoon Orta and God of War (yes, it's faked widescreen - the top and bottom of the screen are trimmed - but it looks incredible in progressive scan).

 

[Sanjuro]

Just buy the regular cables. People seem to think once you hit progressive scan it makes a huge deal but for the most part they are just A/V cables. You could actually take regular red/white/yellow cables and use them for the green/blue/red component and shouldnt make a lick of difference if you have sound cables as well.

 

[metroid23]

You could actually take regular red/white/yellow cables and use them for the green/blue/red component and shouldnt make a lick of difference

err. Red/White are sound channels and Yellow is video. GBR are all color components- it makes quite a difference. Maybe I've misunderstood you?

At any rate, Super Monkey Ball 2 GCN looks fabulous, I second GoW PS2 as well.

 

[Rhindle]

None of the games listed in this thread so far is HD. I guess SCII is, in a truncated kind of way.

 

[metroid23]

Sorry, I take SMB2 to mean "HD" as it comes is beautiful 16:9 and 480p. Honestly, it may not be "true" HD if you're looking for 1080i or whatever, but it looks fabulous and if you have a widescreen display it's really something to see.

Mupepe: you may want to check out hdtvarcade.com as well. Then, maybe you can dodge some of the trolls

 

[vatstep]

I was assuming he just meant which games look "good" on an HDTV. As for true HD games..there really aren't any good ones. Maybe Amped 2. GT4 looks alright in 1080i.

 

[Dez]

fifa street looks really nice in hd.. that's about the only game that i thought really benefited. Too bad it's fifa street.

 

[Mupepe]

Sorry, I take SMB2 to mean "HD" as it comes is beautiful 16:9 and 480p. Honestly, it may not be "true" HD if you're looking for 1080i or whatever, but it looks fabulous and if you have a widescreen display it's really something to see.

Mupepe: you may want to check out hdtvarcade.com as well. Then, maybe you can dodge some of the trolls

hehe, thanks for the link. I'm looking for anything better than 480i i guess. or anything that even looks good on HD.

 

[Sanjuro]

err. Red/White are sound channels and Yellow is video. GBR are all color components- it makes quite a difference. Maybe I've misunderstood you?

The cables arent any different from one another. The hole you plug it into is the source of the individual color.

 

[Barnimal]

bah. SC2 is booty. Dragons Lair.

 

[Speevy]

I bet Phantom Dust looks nice. Of course the obvious ones like Halo 2, Ninja Gaiden, Rallisport Challenge 2, Amped 2, Panzer Dragoon Orta, etc.

 

[Sanjuro]

I reccomend a Gamecube component cable highly. The buy F-Zero GX and enjoy.

 

[Synbios459]

I don't mean to derail this thread but I was hoping someone could answer a question I have. I recently got a HD set myself and have the Xbox, GameCube, and PlayStation 2 hooked up via Component, and while the Xbox and GameCube games look great the PS2 games look...Well, HIDEOUS! I used to play them on a 27" 4:3 non-HDTV that I had and it didn't look anywhere NEAR this bad.

I've even messed with the TV picture options, and it really hasn't helped. I will tell you that God of War with Progressive Scan DOES look good, but all my other PS2 games don't. So my question is: Is it just something that I'm going to have to live with or should I mess around with the picture settings more?

 

[ArcadeStickMonk]

Soul Calibur II for Xbox (720p)

Bah.

The screen will shrink significantly and there is slowdown, worse than PS2 480i.

 

[Blimblim]

I don't mean to derail this thread but I was hoping someone could answer a question I have. I recently got a HD set myself and have the Xbox, GameCube, and PlayStation 2 hooked up via Component, and while the Xbox and GameCube games look great the PS2 games look...Well, HIDEOUS! I used to play them on a 27" 4:3 non-HDTV that I had and it didn't look anywhere NEAR this bad.

I've even messed with the TV picture options, and it really hasn't helped. I will tell you that God of War with Progressive Scan DOES look good, but all my other PS2 games don't. So my question is: Is it just something that I'm going to have to live with or should I mess around with the picture settings more?

Do you know what type of deinterlacer/scaler your TV uses? If it's a cheap one then you are doomed with all interlaced sources, especially with 60 fps games. The only internal TV scaler that is decent with interlaced that I know of if the Faroudja one with DCDi. And it's far from perfect. It's really hard for me to play on Xbox Live with my PAL Xbox now :/
As far true HDTV games, the only one I can think of that is good (IMHO) is Amped 2. I know it wows everyone when I show it running in widescreen 720p

 

[BigBoss]

I've even messed with the TV picture options, and it really hasn't helped. I will tell you that God of War with Progressive Scan DOES look good, but all my other PS2 games don't. So my question is: Is it just something that I'm going to have to live with or should I mess around with the picture settings more?

You have to live with it, thats one of the reasons why I have two TV's connected in my room. One is a non-HDTV to watch TV programs and my my PS2 and the other is my HDTV for the few HD programs and for Xbox, Cube and next-gen games. Don't even try playing Ico on an HDTV, ugh.

 

[TheJollyCorner]

ICO looks fine on my HDTV....
what should it look like? I mean, I don't have any fancy PS2 component cables or anything...

 

[Mupepe]

Are 480i games really that bad?? That was one of the reasons I was getting an HDTV was to make my games purtier. But from the sounds of it, very few actually look great and some look awful. Or is this just for PS2??

 

[BigBoss]

Ico looks blurry and washed out on my HDTV, it looks horrible. It looks just fine on my non HDTV though.

 

[Blimblim]

Are 480i games really that bad?? That was one of the reasons I was getting an HDTV was to make my games purtier. But from the sounds of it, very few actually look great and some look awful. Or is this just for PS2??

All Xbox games (except a few, and usually not the best ones) support progressive scan so they will all look great on a HDTV. Gamecube games mostly support progressive scan too (afaik) so no problem here too. PS2 it's a bit more difficult, as none of the 1st/2nd gen titles support progressive, and not all recent title support it either. The big titles from the last year mostly support it I think.

 

[TheJollyCorner]

one of the only PS2 games I've seen that openly promotes Progressive Scan is Suikoden IV... but I played it before I got my progressive scan HDTV, so I have no idea how much better it might have looked.

 

[Martini]

disabling 720p in the dash will put SCII in 480p mode fy. also lets it stretch to full screen when in 480p.

 

[Yusaku]

God of War is not fake widescreen. Don't make me go into this again.

 

[dark10x]

Are 480i games really that bad?? That was one of the reasons I was getting an HDTV was to make my games purtier. But from the sounds of it, very few actually look great and some look awful. Or is this just for PS2??

It depends entirely upon your TV...

I'm still a huge CRT fan and the current Sony that I use does an incredible job with scaling images. 480i games are extremely crisp and clean now and, oftentimes, look as good as 480p titles. My previous Panasonic set did a terrible job with 480i, though, and I hated when a game lacked progressive support.

Non-CRT sets do even worse with 480i. I've used a number of different LCD, Plasma, and DLP sets of varying sizes and none of them were able to deliver a good picture for all possible resolutions. In fact, unless a game supported 720p or something, the image quality would be pretty poor. 480p games were extremely chunky looking...even on the smaller sets.

On my set, 90% of my PS2 games look extremely nice and received a rather substantial image quality boost. Ridge Racer V is actually very very clean (similar to those images captured by maskrider through Dscaler.

I see ICO being mentioned, though...

ICO runs in a much lower resolution than your standard PS2 title and does not work well on HDTVs. The Sony I use does a pretty good job, though. It is very sharp, but a bit pixelated (kinda like using an emulator on the PC with no screen filters). More commonly, though, an HDTV will lead to a very pixelated and blurry image.

What are you using Synbios459?

 

[Bebpo]

It depends entirely upon your TV...

I'm still a huge CRT fan and the current Sony that I use does an incredible job with scaling images. 480i games are extremely crisp and clean now and, oftentimes, look as good as 480p titles. My previous Panasonic set did a terrible job with 480i, though, and I hated when a game lacked progressive support.

Non-CRT sets do even worse with 480i. I've used a number of different LCD, Plasma, and DLP sets of varying sizes and none of them were able to deliver a good picture for all possible resolutions. In fact, unless a game supported 720p or something, the image quality would be pretty poor. 480p games were extremely chunky looking...even on the smaller sets.

On my set, 90% of my PS2 games look extremely nice and received a rather substantial image quality boost. Ridge Racer V is actually very very clean (similar to those images captured by maskrider through Dscaler.

I see ICO being mentioned, though...

ICO runs in a much lower resolution than your standard PS2 title and does not work well on HDTVs. The Sony I use does a pretty good job, though. It is very sharp, but a bit pixelated (kinda like using an emulator on the PC with no screen filters). More commonly, though, an HDTV will lead to a very pixelated and blurry image.

What are you using Synbios459?

Hey, what TV are you using? Sounds like a set I'd like to buy

 

[dark10x]

Hey, what TV are you using? Sounds like a set I'd like to buy

I'm using a 4:3 set due to space limitations, but I'd say go with the KV34HS420. It's a 34" 16:9 CRT. I wish I had looked at Sony right off the bat, actually. Based on the experience I've had with a wide variety of sets, Sony's CRT HDTVs seem to be the absolute best solution for gaming. No other display technology compares when you're talking games and most other CRTs don't compare either.

They do a fantastic job with 720p/1080i images (obviously, though, as a CRT...720p is upscaled to 1080i, but it DOES look extremely good)...but do just as good of a job with lower resolution sources.

 

[Bebpo]

I'm using a 4:3 set due to space limitations, but I'd say go with the KV34HS420. It's a 34" 16:9 CRT. I wish I had looked at Sony right off the bat, actually. Based on the experience I've had with a wide variety of sets, Sony's CRT HDTVs seem to be the absolute best solution for gaming. No other display technology compares when you're talking games and most other CRTs don't compare either.

They do a fantastic job with 720p/1080i images (obviously, though, as a CRT...720p is upscaled to 1080i, but it DOES look extremely good)...but do just as good of a job with lower resolution sources.

Yea, I'm really thinking that's what I'll buy soon. Two final questions since your an avid gamer and have the set in question: Do you experience any input lag when playing games? And how do PS1/Saturn/DC/N64 look on the set?

Thanks,

 

[borghe]

if you want gorgeous HD games, you should use a high end PC with an ATI x8XX-- card.

 

[dark10x]

Yea, I'm really thinking that's what I'll buy soon. Two final questions since your an avid gamer and have the set in question: Do you experience any input lag when playing games? And how do PS1/Saturn/DC/N64 look on the set?

Thanks,

Lag? None at all.

PS1/Saturn/N64 all look very decent.

It's really hard to show an example, but the general appearance is about like this...

Basically, it looks like a 320x240 image blown up to 640x480 on a PC monitor. Very sharp, but with noticible pixelation.

maskriders captures really DO accurately reflect the type of image quality you'll get from field rendered PS2 games (the most notorious for poor image quality). Though, he captured those with s-video, so the colors suffered a tiny bit. On my TV, the red HUD elements are much sharper and more vivid, for example.

I do know that dscaler DID have a bit of lag and it was tough to completely remove interlacing artifacts. That isn't the case here. No lag and no interlace artifacts (even in extremely high motion scenes).

Also, if you play PC games, I've found that outputting via DVI to HDMI and running everything at 720p yields amazing results.

 

[epmode]

I reccomend a Gamecube component cable highly. The buy F-Zero GX and enjoy.

Listen to this man.

Rallisport Challenge 2 is another good showcase game. As is Ninja Gaiden.

 

[Nerevar]

God of War is not fake widescreen. Don't make me go into this again.

WATCHING A FULLSCREEN VERSION OF A MOVIE IS NOT WATCHING THE REAL VERSION! ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

 

[gstaff]

If you're not even used to having progressive scan, there's tons of games that definitely look better. The one that always impresses me on an HD set is Smash Brother Melee. Yeah, it's not cropped right for 16:9, but the colors look amazing.

After that I would say Gaiden is a good choice.

 

[Beer Monkey]

also lets it stretch to full screen when in 480p.

But don't do that, because FatVision sucks.

 

[PanopticBlue]

Most of the games mentioned in this thread are only 480p. While they can look good, that's not High-Def.

Amped - 720p
MX Unleashed - 1080i
MX vs ATV - 1080i

Probably the best 3 games available that are true HD. All on Xbox. Those MX games are from Rainbow Studios and are pretty fun. There's also the adventure game Syberia for Xbox which supposedly supports 720p, but I haven't played that. I didn't mention GT4 because while it has a 1080i mode, it's just an upscale and really doesn't look any better than the 480p mode.

 

[The Faceless Master]

if you want gorgeous HD games, you should use a high end PC with an ATI x8XX-- card.

or you could just get a VGA Box instead of an expensive All In Wonder x8xx with TV in...

 

[Synbios459]

This is the HDTV I have.

 

[vatstep]

Most of the games mentioned in this thread are only 480p. While they can look good, that's not High-Def.

We talked about this already.

 

[VALIS]

MVP Baseball 2005 (720p) on Xbox looks like freakin' candy. Who cares if you don't like beaseball, buy it just to marvel at the screen. The mini-games are quite fun, too.

 

[heavy liquid]

There's also the adventure game Syberia for Xbox which supposedly supports 720p, but I haven't played that.

Syberia is actually 1080i (not sure about the sequel, though). Dragon's Lair 3D is also 1080i.

 

[Mupepe]

Thanks everybody, Gamefly is going to come in handy now. hehe. BTW, what's the average cost of the hi def cables for each system?

 

[TheDuce22]

Ninga Gaiden in widescreen somehow looks better than all the 720p games I have played.

 

[gblues]

The official Sony component cables were about $23.

Nathan