I want my RGB - Screenshots

Screenshots

A little bit about NTSC colour encoding...

I said I wouldn't explain the differences between RGB and NTSC composite, but I guess I was wrong. First off, before we look at screenshots, I suppose I should give examples of systems that try to improve the composite output by averaging the dot pattern over time, and those that don't.

Here's a theoretical example:


The image above is the digital version of what we're going to compare. It's a closeup of a boss from Mega Man 2 on the NES.	When the game's display is encoded into NTSC, many attributes of the image are degraded. There's blurring, colour bleeding, and artifacting. We can see the latter at its worst in bright, saturated colours like the blues and reds in the pic. Vertically and horizontally, these colours are given a stair-step or jagged appearance. Patterns or detailed clusters of pixels (like on MetalMan's buzzsaws) take on a "rainbow" appearance. That said, when graphics of this type are scrolled around the screen, image quality is greatly increased.	The only other thing a game system can do is to vary the artifacts over time, so it doesn't look so bad. Most systems do this by offsetting the NTSC colour burst(?) each frame, so that the artifacts move around on each scanline. Over time, they blur together, making the image more solid-looking. (Note that on real TVs, the alternating happens MUCH faster than in the image above.) That said, when graphics of this type are scrolled around the screen, the ugly dot pattern suddenly reappears.
	Game systems that just leave the image looking like this are the Megadrive/Genesis, Sega Master System, and Neo-Geo. It's just awful to look at.	Game systems that alternate the artifacts in different ways are the NES/Famicom, SNES/SFC, PC-Engine/Turbografx, Saturn, Playstation, and all modern game systems.

New! Direct RGB screengrabs from a handful of systems. Go to this page where I do a direct comparison between composite and RGB!

And now for the
SCREENSHOTS
(and unfortunately, they were just taken with a digital camera pointed at my TV/monitor. This is the best I can manage without a good video capture card. If you like my homepage, why not donate some video equipment to me? :-)

Super Famicom / SNES
Emulator Snapshot	Composite	RGB




The composite video of the SNES is quite good, with solid, bold colours. The edges between black and white shapes often show some rainbow fringing, unfortunately. The downsides of composite video are still apparent here. The colourburst dithering can be seen in the reds of the plane in Pilotwings and the logo in Gradius. The awful colour bleeding can be seen on many edges between the foreground and the blue background in the Actraiser picture. Take a look especially at the area to the right of the hero's legs and the log near the right edge. RGB on the SNES/SFC is very solid, but still a small amount of blurring is evident. This is probably unavoidable, because the SFC's RGB output requires capacitors to be present inside the RGB cable, which adds horizontal blurring to any image.

Sega Saturn
Emulator Snapshot	Composite	RGB




The Saturn's composite video is good, but there's only so much that can be done with the format. There is a general blurriness in composite, and sometimes on the borders between black and white text, rainbow patterns can appear. Check out the instruments in Gale Racer, which are very distinct in RGB and in the emulator snapshot, but smear a bit in composite. Dithered patterns are extremely clear in RGB, like in Steamgear Mash and the radar of Panzer Dragoon. Note also how blocky 3-D textures really become in RGB. Maybe some people find that good. :-)

Sony PlayStation
Emulator Snapshot	Composite	RGB




The Playstation's a little bit weird. I heard that it stores graphics in 24-bit internally, but then when sending graphics to the screen, it drops that (to 16-bit? 18-bit?) and dithers them down. This can be clearly seen in many subtle shades when playing games in RGB. My camera doesn't capture that very well, but if you look in the blue and purple backgrounds of Akumajou Dracula, you can see it's dithered. Play a game like Tomb Raider, and you'll see dithering everywhere. The usual things are to be said about composite. Check out the interference/smearing between areas of bold colour, like the windshield and body of the cars in Ridge Racer, and the blurring of bright reds in the same. RGB clears that all up.

Sega Master System
Emulator Snapshot	Composite	RGB



Some points to note are: the "dithering" in the dot pattern in the bright red and green of Alex Kidd's title screen through composite; the green dots on the outside of the city in Phantasy Star that almost disappear in composite; and the general fuzziness of everything in Wonder Boy. Through composite.

Sega Megadrive/Genesis
Emulator Snapshot	Composite	RGB



Check out the vertical "dithering" bars in the top image from Vectorman. Artists used vertical dithering a lot on the Megadrive because they knew the dithering would almost always show up as an entirely different shade on NTSC TVs. On the RGB monitor, the dithering bars can still be seen. The same goes for the waterfall in Sonic. One side-effect of making these bars out of bright colours is the horrible rainbow interference pattern that can clearly be seen in the waterfall in the composite shot.

SNK Neo-Geo
Emulator Snapshot	Composite	RGB





Since most Neo-Geo games have extremely colourful and vivid graphics, saturated colours abound in almost every screenshot. As a result, however, we see lots of awful colour dithering in composite video encoding. Take a look at the reds of Magician Lord, or the text of Cyber Lip's introduction. The text actually becomes harder to read in some games. Fortunately, since the Neo-Geo is an arcade machine, something is always moving on screen, masking the colour encoding artifacts. But for still graphics and text, it is quite hard to look at for a long period of time. The RGB video is thus phenomenally sharp and clean compared to the composite video of the Neo-Geo.

Nintendo Famicom/NES
Emulator Snapshot	Composite	RGB





The Famicom has rather decent composite output, but there is still a bit of "noise" between colours of differing contrasts, as can be seen at the edges of the brown background in the Rockman 2 picture, as well as the sign in Batman. Dithered patterns, like in Solstice, appear clear in RGB, but a muddy mess of diagonal lines in composite. RGB output is always extremely crisp and clear, though the hues definitely are off in many of these pictures.

GameBoy Advance (with TV de Advance)
Emulator Snapshot	Composite	RGB





The unsightly blurring caused by the TV de Advance in composite mode can clearly be seen in several of these pics. Look at the left side of the "B" in "GAME BOY" which is slanted to the right in 5 steps in the original emulator shot as well as the RGB screenshot. The composite shot, however, slants in only 3 steps, making it appear far blockier. (Sorry for the low-quality shots of the RGB screenshots, but believe me, they are very sharp when looked at on-screen.)

PC-Engine/Turbografx-16
Emulator Snapshot	Composite	RGB




The PC-Engine's composite output is generally pretty good, but colours still blur together a bit, especially visible in the reds of Dracula X. One thing that should be noted is that the PCE has the ability (a feature?) to have its dot-pattern averaging turned on or off. Most games by Taito and NEC Avenue usually have it turned off, making the composite display much worse looking. The composite shot from OutRun above shows this -- indistinct pixels, and an unsightly dithering pattern on bright reds and greens. Needless to say, RGB video looks almost perfect.

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