8 Bit Console

[MusicalMan]

Hi All
So I bought one of those old school 8 Bit consoles for my wife - She loves those old games....Mario, Battle City, Donkey Kong etc etc.
Plugged it into our HD TV with the RCA cables provided and all was well.
Problem is that the picture looks really terrible.

Are there any TV settings I could apply to make it look better?



Thank you

 

[mister]

Hi All
So I bought one of those old school 8 Bit consoles for my wife - She loves those old games....Mario, Battle City, Donkey Kong etc etc. Plugged it into our HD TV with the RCA cables provided and all was well.
Problem is that the picture looks really terrible.
Are there any TV settings I could apply to make it look better?
Thank you

No. 8 bit old school consoles look terrible by design

 

[ODTech]

Hi All
So I bought one of those old school 8 Bit consoles for my wife - She loves those old games....Mario, Battle City, Donkey Kong etc etc.
Plugged it into our HD TV with the RCA cables provided and all was well.
Problem is that the picture looks really terrible.

Are there any TV settings I could apply to make it look better?



Thank you

It should look better on a old tv or a small lcd with low resolution.

 

[MusicalMan]

No. 8 bit old school consoles look terrible by design

I agree completely but it looks worse that what it's supposed to look like....much worse than what it looked like when these consoles were the only form of console gaming.
Best way to describe it is that the graphics are lacking any form of smoothness.

I get that these games are ancient and not much can be expected in the way of anything but when I had one of these as a kid, it certainly didn't look this bad.

 

[satanboy]

It's called 8 bit for a reason.

 

[Soul Assassin]

I agree completely but it looks worse that what it's supposed to look like....much worse than what it looked like when these consoles were the only form of console gaming.
Best way to describe it is that the graphics are lacking any form of smoothness.

I get that these games are ancient and not much can be expected in the way of anything but when I had one of these as a kid, it certainly didn't look this bad.

Yes it did, nostalgia and you didn't have a 40+ inch 1080P TV.

 

[mister]

I agree completely but it looks worse that what it's supposed to look like....much worse than what it looked like when these consoles were the only form of console gaming. Best way to describe it is that the graphics are lacking any form of smoothness.

No... it really was that bad - rosy retrospection (memory bias)

 

[Willie Trombone]

I agree completely but it looks worse that what it's supposed to look like....much worse than what it looked like when these consoles were the only form of console gaming.
Best way to describe it is that the graphics are lacking any form of smoothness.

I get that these games are ancient and not much can be expected in the way of anything but when I had one of these as a kid, it certainly didn't look this bad.

It's possible there's an issue with the machine... Post a pic here?
An 8 bit console through RCA shouldn't look that bad.

 

[agentrfr]

You might be trying to run an interlaced signal though RCA cables which may or may not be NTSC instead of PAL... try a different screen - it could be the screen's upsacaler that is messing with you.

Most people have no idea how good the HDMI standard really is

 

[ponder]

Which console do you have and what output ports does it have? post pics of ports and image.

 

[ZenecadE]

8bit looks BAD on modern flat panels because of the sharp pixel edges. Get your hands on a CRT TV and try that. Mine looks completely different on the older TV. Nice and soft.

 

[animal531]

8bit looks BAD on modern flat panels because of the sharp pixel edges. Get your hands on a CRT TV and try that. Mine looks completely different on the older TV. Nice and soft.

Yeah. CRT Monitors and TV's automatically applied a lot of smoothing because of the way they worked, which made the flaws in old stuff less noticeable (with their giant pixels). They also ran at a far lower resolution, which also meant even more smoothing.

 

[Willie Trombone]

8bit looks BAD on modern flat panels because of the sharp pixel edges. Get your hands on a CRT TV and try that. Mine looks completely different on the older TV. Nice and soft.

Nope. Only if they're broken

[video=youtube;7GioVbGCJ2Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GioVbGCJ2Q[/video]

 

[xrapidx]

Check if you havent screwed it up with aspect ratio.

 

[AstroTurf]

Hi All
So I bought one of those old school 8 Bit consoles for my wife - She loves those old games....Mario, Battle City, Donkey Kong etc etc.
Plugged it into our HD TV with the RCA cables provided and all was well.
Problem is that the picture looks really terrible.

Are there any TV settings I could apply to make it look better?



Thank you

Put the tv onto 4:3 resolution. best you can do.

 

[FaSMaN]

The modern famiclones (what you call a 8 bit console) have a terrible AV out that has a ton of interference, normally this translates to a terrible picture especially on modern tvs with scalers that tend to make things worse.

As AstroTurf mentioned you can set your tv to run in 4:3 it will help a lot or if you have a old CRT TV it will look a million times better as they are more tolerant of non-standard and noisy signals, so they dont display as much ghosting, combined with the fact that the scanlines hides a lot of the ugleness.

PS If you want a good solution, I highly recommend getting a cheap Raspberry Pi, some Cheap usb controllers and install Retopie, its a million times better than there low quality clones like what a certain "empire" is trying to sell.

 

[Willie Trombone]

The modern famiclones (what you call a 8 bit console) have a terrible AV out that has a ton of interference, normally this translates to a terrible picture especially on modern tvs with scalers that tend to make things worse.

As AstroTurf mentioned you can set your tv to run in 4:3 it will help a lot or if you have a old CRT TV it will look a million times better as they are more tolerant of non-standard and noisy signals, so they dont display as much ghosting, combined with the fact that the scanlines hides a lot of the ugleness.

PS If you want a good solution, I highly recommend getting a cheap Raspberry Pi, some Cheap usb controllers and install Retopie, its a million times better than there low quality clones like what a certain "empire" is trying to sell.

Very likely poor design... agree.