Best way to play HDMI Or Composite?

Eldrethor

Both are viable options, so it's just a matter of preference.

If you go with HDMI, the upside is that you will have an insanely bright, sharp, crisp, colorful, clear image, but this comes with a slight touch of input lag. HD also exposes a lot of the pixels that would otherwise have been obscured by a CRT screen, since these games were never designed with such high definition in mind. You would also get black borders if you go with a 4:3 ratio, but an overlay can fill in that void.

A CRT would be the most authentic way to experience gaming on those systems when they were in their prime. The screen would fuzzy-blend the pixels to create smooth edges, and there is zero input lag due to the way CRT screens work. The downside is that it may take some work to configure the overscan correctly, and your image won't be as crisp and clear, but the details (such as text fonts) will look as they were originally intended to look.

RetroFreak89

Ok and what cable do i need i heard not all camcorder cables works?

Capeman

No camcorder cables work. Go on ebay and get a cable designed for a an ipod with video or a zune (if you remember what that was), those work great. Also sites like pi-supply, element 14 and pimoroni will likely have the correct compatible cables. It's not worth guessing, there are like 3 different specs for 4 pole av jacks, and only one works on the pi.

Eldrethor

@capeman I second that; I bought a generic camcorder AV cable, thinking that I'd be fine with that, but the ground was positioned in the wrong place in the plug, so I got a crappy distorted images. I eventually picked up a Zune cable, and it worked flawlessly.

Capeman

@eldrethor And not only that, the zune specific cable is dead sexy! its probably the nicest looking AV cable i've ever used and the cable is very flexible, i was very impressed.

InsecureSpike

@capeman said in Best way to play HDMI Or Composite?:

@eldrethor And not only that, the zune specific cable is dead sexy! its probably the nicest looking AV cable i've ever used and the cable is very flexible, i was very impressed.

hey, do you have any links for the zune cable?
thanks

Capeman

Everything can be had on ebay
https://www.ebay.com/i/182653454444?chn=ps&dispItem=1

InsecureSpike

@capeman said in Best way to play HDMI Or Composite?:

Everything can be had on ebay
https://www.ebay.com/i/182653454444?chn=ps&dispItem=1

that's awesome, thanks lots

drake999

@retrofreak89 If you want the authentic experience for console generations 2 through 5, you will want a CRT TV with composite video. This will reproduce the look and feel of the games pretty much as they were back in the 80's and 90's. If you favor a crisp picture over nostalgia, then HDMI is the best way to go. It really comes down to preference. I've always used HDMI, but I'm starting to see the appeal of the authentic experience.

Rion

@drake999 I would recommend

RetroTINK-S, RetroTINK-C and RetroTINK-RGB

Or

Pi2Scart

over composite any day.

drake999

@rion I wasn't aware of that things existence but yes the S-Video option would be a better choice than composite for sure. Probably a good choice to use this board if you are building an arcade cabinet to.

sirhenrythe5th

Just for interest as far as original Arcade cabinets are concerned:
Were those Crts in the cabinets also connected to the pcbs/system boards with RGB or S-Video?

Its a long time ago that i saw the original cabinets as a kid, but i have got the Impression that this picture, that i have with my Pi simply connected to the CRT with composite, seems to be close to the original.
I remember that the shadows of sprites were flickering and the picture was kind of blurry.
I liked it! 😊

So has there been a high-quality-technoligy in the cabinets, or are we going further away from the genuine experience by boosting up the picture with S- Video or RGB?

DorkVonWaterfall

@sirhenrythe5th

RGB, 15 kHz, 320x240

sirhenrythe5th

@dorkvonwaterfall thx for Info!

RetroRay

I use my retropie build on my sony BVM CRT with a vga hat connected with a vga to bnc cable. You could also use an old VGA CRT PC monitor (you could find one pretty cheap on ebay). it looks awesome! scanlines an all. I don't think I could ever play 16 bit or 8 bit emulated games on an HD tv. It just looks gross in comparison i think. I was thinking about picking one of these up. although alittle pricey it would make it super easy to get the best picture quality on any U.S. manufactured CRT TV, Since most consumer grade CRT's in the U.S. never adopted SCART. Although I haven't tested myself the pi2scart or RGB-Pi seem like nice solutions if you have a scart connection on your crt.

ohmycommodore

@dorkvonwaterfall I assume by RGB you mean what we used to call in the TV biz "component"? The three separate cables for R and B and G? If the original cabinets were indeed hooked up that way, then additional hardware that enables RGB certainly becomes more interesting.

sirhenrythe5th

And furthermore: did really ALL cabinets use RGB?
I read a documentary about Atari recently and they wrote that Nolan Bushnell hired Marihuana smoking Hippies at the start to dissamble cheap Radio-Shack Televisions which were used for their Arcade games.
Also RGB? 🤔

davej

@sirhenrythe5th Keep in mind that all colour CRT picture tubes are driven by separate RGB signals going to the electron guns. TVs decode a composite signal into separate RGB signals before amplifying them and passing them onto the electron guns. Given the technology of 1970's TVs, it would be relatively easy to modify a TV to accept your own RGB signal rather than use the one it generates from a composite one.