Component out to 4:3 CRT via 3.5mm jack.

ballnet

As the title suggests, I am looking for help in trying to output my Raspberry Pi 3 (running Retropie 4.0.2) to output to my CRT television via the 3.5mm A/V jack.
Please know that I am new to this and would appreciate more laymans terminologies.

Thank you in advance for any help anyone can offer me.

Dochartaigh

I'm staying tuned to this as well. I've been researching this and tons of people experience several different types of distortions? (or weird stuff I forget the technical terms of which is happening that shouldn't be at least).

I'm also having a problem sourcing a known 100% working cable. I assume Adafruit's works, but I'm not paying $9 shipping for like a $5 item...and all the ones on Amazon have mixed reviews on if it works on a Raspberry Pi 3 or not.

...I'm also failing on finding a proper S-video solution (think the Pi only outputs a composite-type signal whereas S-video is slightly different). I like S-Video because it's how my Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Playstation 1 (and even Playstation 2 and original Xbox) are all hooked up to my CRT TV and it REALLY does look better than crappy composite.

felleg

I am also having this issue and would like to see a solution. I searched high and low how to fix this, to no avail. The only glimpse of hope I could find was on this page from raspberrypi. It says that, in /boot/config.txt:

sdtv_aspect

This defines the aspect ratio for composite video output. The default value is 1.
sdtv_aspect | result
1 | 4:3
2 | 14:9
3 | 16:9

The problem is that the sdtv_aspect variable is nowhere to be found in that file (only sdtv_mode). I even tried adding "sdtv_aspect=1" by hand, but this had no effect. The screen is still outputting in 16:9 when connected in composite.
The last resort I had was to use overscan to squeeze the ES menu into the screen of my CRT, but then the games get additionally squeezed.

@Dochartaigh said in Component out to 4:3 CRT via 3.5mm jack.:

I'm also having a problem sourcing a known 100% working cable. I assume Adafruit's works, but I'm not paying $9 shipping for like a $5 item...and all the ones on Amazon have mixed reviews on if it works on a Raspberry Pi 3 or not.

Check out this cable: https://www.modmypi.com/raspberry-pi/accessories/audio-cables/av-composite-cable-3.5mm-to-3-x-rca-3m
The video is connected to the red plug instead of the usual yellow plug, but otherwise should work just fine.

Dochartaigh

@felleg
If I was only in the UK ;(

felleg

@Dochartaigh On the page, it says "worldwide shipping". I've never tried it myself (I paid $20 for a zune cable before knowing this cheaper one existed), but I don't see why they could not send it to you.

ferhound

I came here in wishing for an answer but there are only questions!

felleg

Bump, why is it so hard to solve this issue?

dankcushions

@felleg said in Component out to 4:3 CRT via 3.5mm jack.:

Bump, why is it so hard to solve this issue?

wow..

best solution for CRT: https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comments/49wkr9/240p_rgbs_guide_rgb_composite_sync/

your emulationstation aspect ratio question needs a photo to go along with it. sounds like it is working as designed to me.

felleg

@dankcushions .. I'm not talking about pixel resolution, like your link suggests. I'm talking about the aspect ratio. To help you understand what I mean (maybe I'm using wrong words), I made this picture. I'm sorry I don't have a CRT at hand now, but it should still illustrate my point:

alt text

4:3 and 16:9 were from composite. I adjusted the overscan for 16:9 and kept it when changing settings. The HDMI picture has overscan set to off. To switch from 16:9 to 4:3, I adjusted sdtv_aspect in /boot/config.txt according to the instructions given by raspberrypi.org about config.txt:

sdtv_aspect=1 #4:3
sdtv_aspect=2 #14:9
sdtv_aspect=3 #16:9

From the picture, you can see:

The aspect ratio for ES in the 4:3 picture is effectively 16:9 (i.e. fills my 16:9 screen) instead of being 4:3. It's like the sdtv_aspect=1 had no effect.
The aspect ratio in game (I loaded Action 52) is also the same in the 4:3 and 16:9 pictures. HOWEVER, this aspect ratio, whatever it is, is wrong, because the correct one is shown in the HDMI picture, and you can clearly see the black bars are larger in the HDMI picture (remember, overscan was turned off for HDMI, this can't be the reason). Therefore, the composite signal stretches games in the 4:3 setting and compresses them in the 16:9.

Therefore, you can easily imagine that if I was to plug my pi to a CRT, either the sides of the ES menu would be cutoff and the game would be ok if I kept the same overscan settings as my HD TV, or the menu would be compressed to fit in screen, but the game would also be compressed even more.

XVO

Is it also possible to output a Pal signal on retropie while using a composit cable?
I saw a kick-ass project on youtube from a guy who build his rpi in to an old crt tv.
Problem is that most of the old crt's in europe only work with a Pal signal.

dankcushions

@felleg i don't really understand your examples. i want to see it with a CRT :)

if I was to plug my pi to a CRT, either the sides of the ES menu would be cutoff and the game would be ok

this is exactly the right behaviour as far as i can tell. eg watch:

emulationstation menu does not show as much horizontal real-estate, because it has less horizontal real-estate. the aspect ratio is still 4:3.

felleg

@dankcushions Interesting video, definitely helps me understand the natural behavior of EmulationStation better... So you're basically saying that if the guy in the video had the default Carbon theme selected in ES, the beginning of the names of the games in the list would be cutoff (because they're to the far left), and that would be normal? Because that's what happened to me when I plugged my Pi to my Commodore CRT monitor (which, as I've said, sadly I don't have around at the moment to take pictures).

If the solution to this "aspect ratio" problem is simply to edit themes and make game titles appear closer to the middle, then I would both be very happy and very surprised.

At the end of the day, though, knowing all this: what's the purpose of the sdtv_aspect variable in config.txt?

felleg

Well I'm back now, and with proper pictures! I managed to get my hands on a 1702 Commodore monitor (best in the biz). This monitor is extra reliable, so if I can't make it work here, I doubt it can work elsewhere.

Here's what the ES menu looks like with all overscan values set to 0. You can see the text at the bottom is getting cut:
alt text

Here's the game list. The text is getting cut on the left side:
alt text

So the menu looks stretched, which is bad. However, good news, Super Mario Bros. looks great:
alt text

Not everything is perfect, though. When I boot up DOSBOX (The Incredible Machine in this case), it seems to be in a 16:9 ratio, so the sides are cut and the top and bottom parts are black bars. What's up with DOSBOX outputting in 16:9, anyway? This ratio didn't even exist back then, as far as I know!
alt text

================================ Now I set up overscan values for my monitor (using this home made script): =====================
alt text

The ES menu now looks OK. The text is kind of squished laterally, but nothing is cut this time. We should see the Atari logo in the middle of the screen, but my camera had issues with the contrast of brightness:
alt text

Now look what happens with Super Mario Bros. after having set up these overscan values: it is squished laterally, not filling the left and right sides of the screen! It's like if the overscan values, instead of changing the ratio of 16:9 to 4:3, just squished the screen. As a result, when i boot up a 4:3 game, it gets squished laterally even more. If only I could have the ES menu in 4:3 resolution, this would solve ALL my problems:
alt text

Here's DOSBOX with the overscan. It's very clearly in 16:9, it even added the black bars at the top and bottom. I really don't understand what's up with that, and would be delighted if anyone knew what to do to get a true 4:3 ratio:
alt text

Just a side note: during all these tests, in /boot/config.txt I had sdtv_aspect=1, which should give me NTSC 4:3 through composite (according to Raspberry Pi documentation).
alt text

I hope this post clearly highlights this issue, I would love to learn how to fix this. Thanks in advance.

dankcushions

better! :) please could you post your entire /boot/config.txt here?

felleg

@dankcushions Here it is, exactly as it was when I did the test. :) Thanks for taking the time to solve this

http://pastebin.com/tEJW4pLY

dankcushions

i assume that's your 'no overscan' config? can you show your overscan config?

felleg

@dankcushions Sorry for the late reply, I was away for the holidays. Here is the pastebin of the config when I had my overscan activated (the only change is in the overscan top, left, right and bottom values): http://pastebin.com/3gsibiJd

dankcushions

@felleg

disable_overscan=1

this shouldn't be set

felleg

@dankcushions THAT DID IT! Thanks so much for your patience.
The reason I had that set up is because I have been using RetroPie on an HD TV and did not want the black borders. I completely forgot to remove that option when I use a CRT TV.

It's kind of unclear to me what the disable_overscan option truly does, since I was able to apply overscan values even when it was enable (look at the pictures I posted above). Still, whatever it does, disabling it on a CRT is the solution. Now, my games are in the same resolution as the ES menu.

Cheers!

mmmfloorpie

I've been trying to get my Raspberry Pi3 running Retropie to output to RCA through the 3.5mm jack for some time now.

Without making any changed to the config.txt file, I would get sound no problems but no video whatsoever.

So I made the changes in the config file so the sdtv mode was 0 for NTSC (since I'm in North America) and I uncommented the line about forcing HDMI video if it just goes to composite.

That resulted in finally getting video output but it was all blurry and the picture was going crazy. There was colour however.

There was also only very faint sound and a whole lot of buzzing and hissing coming out of the speakers.

All 3 of the A/V plugs seem to be carrying some video now. The jack I'm using has been used by others for a R Pi3 via the reviews for it on Amazon. You have to use the red jack for video which I did.

What am I doing wrong? Please use simple words as I know nothing about Linux or programming or anything lol.