I wonder when it will be that people will become nostalgic for RF (and composite)

[eightbit]

1 hour ago, RockLobster said:

What are some good affordable amplified RF switches you recommend?

 

I've been using a splitter and while the interference is low, I find that some consoles like my Odyssey2 will add interference (unless unplugged) even when turned off.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DIGAIRS

 

 

The Radio Shack (and Archer) amplified switches are great. You can still find them new on occasion. This is the exact one I use:

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/403235689423

 

[+sramirez2008]

1 hour ago, RockLobster said:

What are some good affordable amplified RF switches you recommend?

 

I've been using a splitter and while the interference is low, I find that some consoles like my Odyssey2 will add interference (unless unplugged) even when turned off.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DIGAIRS

Nice! I've been using this non-ampliflied version for years without issue. 

[RockLobster]

45 minutes ago, eightbit said:

The Radio Shack (and Archer) amplified switches are great. You can still find them new on occasion. This is the exact one I use:

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/403235689423

Thank you.  I just bought this model from another eBay seller for $13 + shipping.   Looking forward to seeing if the base images will look better and if the switching nature of this box will kill the interference from the other consoles.

 

14 minutes ago, sramirez2008 said:

Nice! I've been using this non-ampliflied version for years without issue. 

That's a great looking box!  I wish other analog switchers for Composite, Component, S-Video and RGB had those dials.

 

Also that tower of Gen2 consoles is C L E A N !!!   Compared to my RF stack of consoles!

 

 

[+sramirez2008]

Nice! I like that you have two Commodore monitors. I only have one 1702.

 

Btw, this older thread lists the various Archer switch boxes.

 

 

[eightbit]

59 minutes ago, sramirez2008 said:

Nice! I like that you have two Commodore monitors. I only have one 1702.

 

Btw, this older thread lists the various Archer switch boxes.

 

 

 

 

Yup, mine is the 15-2100 on that list. They are all really good. The non-amplified 15-1261 (yours) is probably just as good as my 15-2100 amplified model. Yours has the woodgrain, but mine has a red light! Lol..

 

I really do miss Radio Shack. 

[+sramirez2008]

22 minutes ago, eightbit said:

They are all really good.

These devices work well and seem to last forever! I like them all. 

 

22 minutes ago, eightbit said:

I really do miss Radio Shack. 

You are not alone.

[H454]

If anybody here is playing with RF switch boxes, I have noticed marked picture improvement after opening the unit up to clean it.

Spraying contact cleaner in the switches and vigorously working the switch can really help with the picture / signal.

 

 

[RockLobster]

On 9/25/2023 at 11:56 AM, eightbit said:

The Radio Shack (and Archer) amplified switches are great. You can still find them new on occasion. This is the exact one I use:

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/403235689423

Ok just got it in and am super happy with the quality.

No more noise when other consoles are powered up and the ones connected via a long coax extension are clean too!

 

I have one of the 3 outputs go to a VCR which from there has composite out to the 1702 below.  love it!

[eightbit]

Great little box...I know it firsthand

 

Looks great!

[+GoldLeader]

 

My opinion:

 

I like modded consoles and HD LCDs (Mine are between 19-40 inch,  can't speak to the Bigger screens).  They look Crisp and Beautiful,  with Vibrant Colors!  (Yay!  It's Finally The Future!!!!)

 

When I was younger,  all I saw was ghosting and double images, and I still remember being in college,  in the dorms with a tiny 13 inch Color TV that somehow looked Better when our NES was ran through the VCR.  This may have been the first inkling that greater things were on the horizon.

 

Nowadays,  I like my Retro-Tink 2X Pro and much prefer the LCDs which have replaced both a quality flat screen (not flat panel) Tube CRT, and a Very high quality HD flat screen CRT.  My first thought is that you do have to boost the Brightness and Contrast,  and then go from there.  I used to wonder if people simply plugged in old consoles without adjusting things,  then said "Nope!" and went back to RF haha...Don't worry I don't believe for a second that any of us on here would do that, as I think you guys are probably more like me.  For some reason I could mess with the settings endlessly as I dial it in to my preferences...It's kind of the same as when I mess around with a guitar.  I may suck at actually playing it,...But I set up the guitar to within an inch of its life, drop tune it to my preference, then EQ it constantly and sit strumming my Low B making minor adjustments on my FX, guitar, amp and pedals, etc. until the Distortion and Crunch tear my head off properly.

 

To each his/her own, of course,  and once you're into a game,  you will likely be into the gameplay and not notice the display as much...

 

I do think it's kind of like watching a movie;  At first you will notice if you are watching it on a, say, a VCR compared to streaming in HD, or a Blu Ray player,  but once the story gets rolling,  you'll be paying attention to the characters and acting, the plot, and Special Effects etc...

 

 

[eightbit]

While I do sometimes like to play old games on crisp modern displays (I don't hate it at all) I generally only do that with more modern hardware such as FPGA solutions. 

 

When it comes to connecting and playing on an actual vintage game console I more like to try to completely re-create the experience, whether that is good or bad by today's standards. Playing on the vintage console, holding the vintage controller and seeing it displayed on a TV from around the time period outputting the video and audio the way it did when I was a kid is what I look for sometimes. All of it combined creates the experience for me that really brings the nostalgia home. 

 

I get there will be people that say that they hated it when they were kids and I can imagine if you had a terrible TV to begin with back in the days all the more so. There will also be people who never had that experience at all so they'll look at someone like me and think WTF is wrong with me. And, I can't blame those people. I am sure there are folks that are nostalgic for b/w bubble TV's from the 50's with horrible reception, but its a thing they lived through and it's a thing that brings them back personally.

 

For me, even when playing modern solutions on modern TV's I still find myself tweaking those to add those additional memories baked into my mind. I add various levels (percentages) of scanlines for example to nearly everything I play on the MiST just because (to me) it just doesn't look "right" without them. My wife absolutely HATES it, but she didn't grow up with video games

[RockLobster]

3 hours ago, GoldLeader said:

When I was younger,  all I saw was ghosting and double images, and I still remember being in college,  in the dorms with a tiny 13 inch Color TV that somehow looked Better when our NES was ran through the VCR.  This may have been the first inkling that greater things were on the horizon.

First off, I totally agree with you that there shouldn't be any gatekeeping in terms of what we each like and how we enjoy retro gaming/computing.  That said/written, even if you're enjoying this art form via software emulation, that's fine too.  After all, even some of my music collection was ripped to 128kbps bitrate even though much better quality versions exist.

 

When you mentioned the NES being a taste of better video quality to come, I had a similar moment during that era.   While I'm at least some years before you, I remember first connecting my C64 with Composite cables to my 1702, I was just happy everything was better than the 2600.   But then I read that using the chroma/luma (s-video now) cables that came with the monitor things would look better, I was blown away.   I remember staring at the now sharper text and just appreciating that even if the display stayed the same, that video source and the signal type makes a huge difference.   This video quality affinity stayed with me for quite some time.

 

Now that I'm back into "retro" gaming, I discovered what many arcade cab hobbysts/techs and gaming counterparts outside of the US knew all along... that analog RGB is beautiful and crisp.  Though I certainly didn't know what analog RGB was even when I bought my Wells Gardner D9400 new in 2007, I certainly appreciate it now.

 

To me, the arcade cabs were the base top-of-the-line in everything.   I mean, weren't we all taught that "arcade quality" or "as seen in the arcades" from all the 80's and 90's ads were the best?  

 

Now Gen 1-2 can stay RF but Gen 3-5 just has to be RGB or Component.  Gen 7 and up HD of course.   Gen 6 seems to be good in either RGB, Component, VGA or HD.

[RockLobster]

1 hour ago, eightbit said:

I add various levels (percentages) of scanlines for example to nearly everything I play on the MiST just because (to me) it just doesn't look "right" without them.

 

Does the MiST have similar analog video out support like the MiSTer?

 

1 hour ago, eightbit said:

My wife absolutely HATES it, but she didn't grow up with video games

 

The situation with my wife is even worse!  She and her brother grew up with many consoles and computers but they were just tossed aside like toys as they grew out of them.  She doesn't even remember many of the games they had on it.   hahaha

[eightbit]

2 hours ago, RockLobster said:

 

Does the MiST have similar analog video out support like the MiSTer?

 

 

You can component out with the right cable and adjustment to the mist.ini. I used to connect it to a Wega CRT this way and it looked great. However, some cores were not entirely compatible and rotating the display didn't work in some cores. There were other limitations as well and it was just not worth it.

 

Since the native output on the MiST is VGA I simply use it with a VGA monitor now. 

 

As for the MiSTer, I primarily use it connected to a 4K 55 inch TV via HDMI. It looks great and is a simple easy way of playing retro games on the modern TV in the living room. 

 

However nice both of these options are (and they are nice!) I still like to sit down with a real console (or computer...C64, etc.) in front of an old tube TV. Some things just cannot be simulated

[RockLobster]

1 hour ago, eightbit said:

I still like to sit down with a real console (or computer...C64, etc.) in front of an old tube TV. Some things just cannot be simulated

Ha same.  I've actually bought most of my retro computer and console stuff AFTER getting a glimpse of them from the MiSTer!

[randomcat2000]

The main reason I play Atari on real hardware is for the RF. No emulator shader seems to be able to recreate the look of a shitty, snowy RF connection. To me, Atari games just don't look right without it.

[Video]

There is nothing wrong with rf or component gaming, especially when its 8-16 bit systems. People always say how much better composite is, and some will often Google out the internal technical differences, that will show how much better one is than the other. That's fine, nobody is arguing that the technicalities of one may be superior to the other.

 

But.....

 

I don't personally give a crap what goes on behind the scenes so to speak. I care what it LOOKS like. Component, and later HDMI or other hookups MAY be technically superior, well, are technically superior, but it comes down to what a game is supposed to LOOK like. Almost no 8 bit was ever intended to be seen on composite, its all intended as rf or component, and often shows, even into the 16 bit era. Hookups have little to do with resolution, many of these old systems top out at 240 lines (by 160-320 pixels) and the type of cable won't change that. Also, most systems, even into the 16 bit era ran 4-256 colors. You won't change that with a hookup. What you will change, and often most people don't realise this, is how the colors interact with each other. Almost all 8 bit, and many 16 bit rely on artifacting to get the desired image. RF shows up fine, and usually component does too, but when you go to composite or higher, the artifacts break. This may be a technically superior image, but its NOT a superior image.

 

A good example, sonic the hedgehog. There are transparency effects on water. Looks great on RF, and even component, but becomes a weird jagged rainbow mess on composite.

 

People also come up with truly weird things, like composite makes square pixels. Um.. No it doesn't, pixel shape is determined by the ray gun in the tv. It doesn't, even can't, change the shape of the beam itself. Number of lines? Again determined by the TV. If you got an SD TV that runs 240 lines, it will never run more lines. If you have a rarer ED TV (almost nobody did, but those did run 480 lines) the image still depends on the systems output, not the cable, but what the system is actually processing.

 

People even try to argue with a "picture" that "shows" the difference. Usually something like sonic blown up full screen, but those are always simulated images from an emulator, shown on an uber high res panel, not real hardware on a real CRT TV. Don't believe me? Just look at the image, and if you can, go look at an actual CRT. As big as the image is always shown, you'll notice no mask, and no red/green/blue pixels, which on a real CRT is easily visible at that scale.

 

So, yeah, RF is fine. If your getting snow, it probably needs cleaned, especially with pre Nintendo slider style switch boxes.

[+GoldenWheels]

Have to point out, JMO, once stereo sound comes into the picture (16 bit gen I guess) RF is the ugly stepchild again. I will stan for it on Atari, Coleco, etc, but GTFOH if there is two channel sound available.

[eightbit]

7 minutes ago, GoldenWheels said:

Have to point out, JMO, once stereo sound comes into the picture (16 bit gen I guess) RF is the ugly stepchild again. I will stan for it on Atari, Coleco, etc, but GTFOH if there is two channel sound available.

 

I agree. If the console has the ability to output stereo sound and composite (or even just composite and mono sound as in the case of the SMS or NES for example) I do not use RF at all. I am really only referring to consoles where RF was the native and only output available on a console. I am not nostalgic for RF out on the later consoles as I had those all hooked up to at least composite and stereo sound where available at that point in the game.

[Tanooki]

Semi-related, but is there an acceptable RCA/RF to HDMI device for a modern tv that doesn't have those old ports anymore if you want to use an old console without some game killing input lag?  A bunch of the newest stuff out there now lacks this, they're kind of just android tablet style TVs with a near PC level of ms refresh rate (5ms~) now, but they just have HDMI ports, no component, composite or s-video style stuff.

[eightbit]

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

Semi-related, but is there an acceptable RCA/RF to HDMI device for a modern tv that doesn't have those old ports anymore if you want to use an old console without some game killing input lag?  A bunch of the newest stuff out there now lacks this, they're kind of just android tablet style TVs with a near PC level of ms refresh rate (5ms~) now, but they just have HDMI ports, no component, composite or s-video style stuff.

 

Well, that's easy, the Retrotink can do what you need (except for RF natively):

 

https://www.retrotink.com/product-page/retrotink-2x-pro

 

 

For RF, you can always route it into an old VCR and output the VCR's composite into the Retrotink.

 

 

I am sure there are other ways of obtaining a lag free (or as close to lag free as possible) experience on modern TV's, but the above is a pretty cheap (for the quality) and simple solution. 

 

Edited October 11, 2023 by eightbit

[Tanooki]

@eightbit A bit pricy, but I take it, anything much less would get into ghetto china grade material where it would let Tyson knock you out in punchout before you saw the first blow.  My PVM is acting up, not sure why it's suddenly degrading but the sound is out most the time when turned on in the last 3 days and it's twitching a little on screen randomly too.  I have someone who can look at it and likely just at cost (vs paying 100+parts minimum at a local shop) but will not be until sometime in November.  Right now I can't use my AV famicom with audio which stings.

[Video]

I'm kind of in the boat of updating my cable had little to do with looks and most everything to do with sound. Even there I didn't start till the 90's (genesis and super nintendo) even there, it wasn't till like 98 that I got my first stereo tv. Till then it was a convoluted cluster of games hooked to a vcr and piping video (through cable) to the tv while sound went to my stereo. LOL, I would say I'm glad not to have to do that anymore, but now sound bars and surround sound are a similar idea, at least those are simpler in the tv basically controls everything.

[+GoldLeader]

I think for Audio,  ever since about 1991,  when I had my first little "Efficiency" apartment, which basically struck me as a hotel room with a kitchen;  I've had Audio Out hooked up to a Stereo or Surround Sound.  This started with NES (which I would EQ for some extra Bass and to sweep out a bit of the annoying Mids),  and continued onwards...Doesn't mean I (necessarily) cranked it up, I just tried to make it sound good.

[Tanooki]

I did a lot of digging and troubleshooting when I finally had both time and energy to do it, and shockingly the TV wasn't the culprit, even after all the refreshing of the solder etc.  It was the AV Famicom I just got a month ago, how it happened I have no idea but the solitary pin for audio data pass through (center of the pins, rear side) was compressed down enough it was under/barely at the base of the blue plastic frame it sits in so I had no idea it was happening.  I only discovered it on accident having the bare board on my stool with the TV and I bumped Parodius in frustration why it was either on(rarely) or off, and the damn audio popped right on with my nudge.  I figured out pushing back got it on, never would work with the shell on either.  I got under my loop and magnified I saw the problem, so out came my electrical/dental pic which didn't fit, so I bent a really slim safety pin and dug the damn thing out, contorted it a bit in the process, but gave it a hard as far as I could firm pull against the other side and got it up with the rest.  Working 100% again...how sucky of a weird reason for it to fail eh?  Despite that, found my sound blaster xfi mb3 setup with my on board onkyo speakers on here sound about evenly good with/without dual speakers behind the screen so I with my testing had my bose ones on the TV(thinking it was done) and now i have a nice stereo setup over there.   Given the recent n64 find, my supaboy, and the nomad with the dual set of jacks that monitor has I can get a really solid experience now on that TV.  I know it's off topic but i had brought up the issue around the RF (not liking it) discussion over RCA style or better and didn't want to leave things hanging.