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The Castlevania Dungeon Forums => General Castlevania Discussion => Topic started by: Super Waffle on September 20, 2013, 02:49:02 PM

Title: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Super Waffle on September 20, 2013, 02:49:02 PM
Castlevania Double Pack cartridge + Original model Gamecube with progressive scan + Game Boy Player attachment + Full Frame resolution

Shit's kinda blurry, yo.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Dark Nemesis on September 20, 2013, 02:56:46 PM
Post a picture or video.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Lelygax on September 20, 2013, 03:04:43 PM
Try it on Wii :P
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Super Waffle on September 20, 2013, 03:16:56 PM
Post a picture or video.

(http://i.imgur.com/aMTOjRL.jpg)

Is that morphenomenal enough for you?
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Lashen on September 20, 2013, 03:41:41 PM
Even if it weren't on a high-def television, the GBA Player always did kind of have a problem being blurry. I see the resolution is set to wide, too; could try changing that with the Z Button.

Edit: Whoops, thought you were looking for a solution of sorts. Yes, that's a disaster.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Lelygax on September 20, 2013, 03:51:20 PM
Well, they need to scale it in a way that doesnt pixelate it, maybe thats the only way at the time...?
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Ahasverus on September 20, 2013, 06:22:32 PM
PC/Laptop and Emulator connected to TV via HDMI with xbox 360 pad. There's simply no other way.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: DarkPrinceAlucard on September 20, 2013, 06:51:59 PM
PC/Laptop and Emulator connected to TV via HDMI with xbox 360 pad. There's simply no other way.

This is what I do ^^^

I have it on the gameboy advance, but there is simply no comparison playing it with on the right emulater with the right screen filters and resolution set on a 46 inch flat screen at 1080p.

The game looks amazing.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: TheouAegis on September 20, 2013, 06:57:14 PM
Like running my NeoGeo emulator on my TV. Man, that was gorgeous. ... Was 32" CRT, but still gorgeous! So much bigger than on my 17" monitor at the time. And when I can get my NES to run... oh man. Then again, I grew up with a 32" for my NES as a kid, so it's just nostalgic, not impressive. Also played on a monitor. I had the "real" NES palette back then. I wish I still had that monitor. Fuck man, unless you ever played an NES on an old CRT monitor -- the kind that came with Commodore 64 -- you ain't seen NES color. My god, that monitor made EVERYTHING gorgeous! I rigged up two VCRs, two TVs, that monitor, my NES, and my Genesis all in one system. I was recording gameplay footage back in the 90s... WHILE WATCHING TV... ON A COMPUTER MONITOR! Then they switched over to those weird hookups. I miss those audio/video cable monitors.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: uzo on September 20, 2013, 07:32:49 PM
Shit's kinda blurry, yo.

Well the first problem is you're not using an HD console. Of course it'll look blurry on an HD display.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Jorge D. Fuentes on September 21, 2013, 06:22:14 AM
Yeah, any console that does not use HDMI will have a slight noise in the signal because it's analog video.
But Component Video is still better than Composite or RF, haha.

Aria plays well on a Gameboy Advance emulator on Wii.  If you have it on Wii-U you get almost no blurriness.

Otherwise, yeah you just play on the PC with HDMI-Output to TV.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: X on September 21, 2013, 10:45:20 AM
Quote
PC/Laptop and Emulator connected to TV via HDMI with xbox 360 pad. There's simply no other way.

I do this too except I don't use the 360 pad as it has THE worst D-pad ever made.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Jorge D. Fuentes on September 21, 2013, 12:00:07 PM
Yeah I use a Dualshock3 with DS3Tool.
Or use a Wii Classic Controller with GlovePIE.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Abnormal Freak on September 21, 2013, 06:38:47 PM
IIRC, GBPlayer looks best when set to sharp(est) visuals and the smallest screen size with a black border/BG. I got it to look pretty pimpin' on a big tube TV with S-Video (still blurry, but the signal difference made it much sharper than composite), but I've no GCN component cable to see how it looks on my HDTV.

My GBA SP+ would be perfection for GBA games if it had a friggin' headphone jack. I bought the official Nintendo adapter that plugs into the charge slot, but there's a LOT of hiss.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: uzo on September 22, 2013, 11:33:16 AM
Yeah I use a Dualshock3 with DS3Tool.

For all my PC gaming needs.

At least, when I'm not using my arcade controller.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Pfil on September 23, 2013, 11:09:41 AM
I do this too except I don't use the 360 pad as it has THE worst D-pad ever made.
I completely agree with this!
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Harrycombs on September 24, 2013, 03:11:20 PM
If you have an Ouya, the Game Boy Advance emulator seems to work well enough. I started a game of Aria a while back, and it looked pretty good.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Pfil on September 24, 2013, 03:20:35 PM
So far, the platform where Aria looks best is the PSP.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Harrycombs on September 24, 2013, 03:23:27 PM
I definitely agree with that. The PSP is the best for a lot of emulation, but there is definitely a really annoying ghosting effect on my psp 2000. Its not as distracting in Aria as it is in some other games though.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Pfil on September 24, 2013, 03:29:53 PM
I have a PSP Slim, IDK how it looks in a PSP 2000. In the Slim model it looks perfect, at least the way I see it.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Harrycombs on September 24, 2013, 03:38:14 PM
The 2000 is the slim. Rondo of Blood classic looks terrible on it for instance. You can hardly see the bats the ghosting is so bad.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Lelygax on September 24, 2013, 06:00:18 PM
I prefer to play Aria on my Wii, in fact I've beaten Circle of the Moon on a Wii.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Pfil on September 24, 2013, 06:01:02 PM
They look great in a Wii too.

I didn't try emulating Rondo in a PSP, but IIRC it looked fine in DXC.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Lelygax on September 24, 2013, 06:02:06 PM
Someone tried to play Chronicles on PSP? It should be cool.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Harrycombs on September 24, 2013, 06:05:31 PM
They look great in a Wii too.

I didn't try emulating Rondo in a PSP, but IIRC it looked fine in DXC.

It was in DXC that I had the problem. Maybe its my specific model. I remember a lot of critics were complaining about it.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Ratty on September 26, 2013, 06:01:31 AM
I've played all of the GBA games this way, the blurryness doesn't bother me. You get used to it when you use old consoles on an HDTV. Well, for most games. I still long for something that will smooth out the jaggies on FF9 so it doesn't look like total shite on an HDTV, because it's really such a beautiful game if you've played it on a CRT.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: DoctaMario on September 26, 2013, 08:46:04 AM
It was in DXC that I had the problem. Maybe its my specific model. I remember a lot of critics were complaining about it.

I emulated Rondo on PSP as well as playing DXC and I found that turning up the screen brightness helped a lot.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Abnormal Freak on September 26, 2013, 04:14:34 PM
It was in DXC that I had the problem. Maybe its my specific model. I remember a lot of critics were complaining about it.

I have this issue. PSP-2000, Rondo ghosts TERRIBLY in DXC. The 3000 model is supposed to get rid of the ghosting but at the sacrifice of something else, I can't remember. I've never been able to hold one to see the differences with my own eyes.

Pretty sure I have the brightness all the way up.



GBA games on the Wii look pretty dang good. A little too sharp, perhaps. You're able to blow the screen size pretty big while still keeping a crisp image. Definitely the way to go for playing GBA (and GB/C) games on an HDTV over the GB Player, assuming you have component cables.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Lelygax on September 26, 2013, 04:37:35 PM
I have this issue. PSP-2000, Rondo ghosts TERRIBLY in DXC. The 3000 model is supposed to get rid of the ghosting but at the sacrifice of something else, I can't remember. I've never been able to hold one to see the differences with my own eyes.

Pretty sure I have the brightness all the way up.



GBA games on the Wii look pretty dang good. A little too sharp, perhaps. You're able to blow the screen size pretty big while still keeping a crisp image. Definitely the way to go for playing GBA (and GB/C) games on an HDTV over the GB Player, assuming you have component cables.

Dont forget that you can enable some filters if you want to.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Oniros on October 13, 2013, 06:11:29 PM
I am having a similar problem, you can totally see the blurriness when running. Since the GC component cables are ridiculously expensive, I was thinking on grabbing a CRT that supports S-Video, would that do the trick? What do you think>
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Abnormal Freak on October 14, 2013, 05:06:39 AM
The GB Player looks pretty good on an SDTV with S-Video. Lot sharper and better colors than composite at any rate. I was horribly disappointed by the GB Player until I used S-Video.

But there are a lot of cables that don't actually feed through an S-Video signal. Jorge knows more about that and if there are good alternatives to the official Nintendo cables.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Jorge D. Fuentes on October 14, 2013, 11:05:01 AM
I am having a similar problem, you can totally see the blurriness when running. Since the GC component cables are ridiculously expensive, I was thinking on grabbing a CRT that supports S-Video, would that do the trick? What do you think>

I suppose I can run a test of that.
I don't trust the cables on E-bay.  Some of them (especially the ones in the slender box that say SNES S-Video Cable) are incorrectly wired on the inside and basically just split the Composite (Yellow) Cable into two and wire it into the S-Video Cable's end.
The result is: If you use the Yellow, you are using a shitty Composite, and if you use the S-Video, you're getting a shitty S-Video signal.  It's lose-lose.  You will notice the cable's nonsense when you play because you will see a distinct checkered pattern on the screen.  It'll look dithered, as if you were playing the game through a screen mesh window.

So far the only cable that I've been able to get a great S-Video signal is the "Nintendo Video/S-Video/SCART Cable".  I'm trying to find an image of it online.  I know I took a pic once, but most places online don't show you the packaging (and sometimes they'll swap packaging from what they advertise anyway).

Essentially, this cable (the Video/S-Video/SCART Adapter, though we won't need the SCART part at all) comes with a properly wired Audio/Video/S-Video cable, and a small adapter that turns Composite video into SCART video (for European TVs).  You will not need the SCART adapter for this though, as I'm assuming you're in the USA and probably don't have a TV with a SCART input anyway.

SCART is the closest you can get to RGB Video, which is what computer monitors use.  But seeing as you'd need an adapter and that adapter is taking in Composite, it won't help.  S-Video is the best type of analog video you're going to get if you're unable to afford COMPONENT video (the red/green/blue cable).

Avoid any S-Video cables whose packaging looks like this:
These could be badly wired. (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Super-Nintendo-N64-Gamecube-S-Video-Cables-/370647968461?pt=US_Video_Game_Cables_Adapters&hash=item564c572acd)

Okay, time for some pictures.
Here's the cable I described.  It's difficult to find:
(http://jorgefuentes.inverteddungeon.com/images3/scart/cable.jpg)

Notice that cyclinder under the SNES connection?  That tall blue cylinder usually means there's good wiring and shielding in the cable, which is usually a good sign.  It's less likely that a cable will have that and not have good wiring of the connectors.

I did a quick comparison of this cable (the AD S Cable Scart Adaptor) and the Gamecube Official Component Cable (which is actually the better choice, but the prices fluctuate from 'holy shit buy it now' to 'holy fuck that's a lotta money!'):

Here's Gamecube Gameboy Player Output through the S-Video Adapter, which is fed into my own RGB Box and into the TV's RGB Input.  This is the best way I can get an analog signal that old into my TV.  Unfortunately, it also results in a bit of a resolution change, but I'm willing to deal with it.

Anyway, on to the comparison shots.

Here's that cable's COMPOSITE (shitty Yellow) Output:
(http://jorgefuentes.inverteddungeon.com/images3/scart/pic-composite.jpg)

Pay very close attention (zoom in if you need to, these are really huge pix for a reason) on the Title Screen's Bubbles.
Composite Video shows some really nasty noise trails when the screen moves.  Because this is a still screen (only the bubbles move) you can see the noise under the bubbles are they move upwards.  This is the worst part about Composite Video and it'll never ever go away.  You can minimize it if the connectors are gold-plated, if you re-shield the cables and keep 'em away from other cables, and if you don't use any splitters and just feed directly into the TV... but these options are somewhat unrealistic and won't make the noise go away.

Same title screen, now with the S-Video in play instead of Composite
(http://jorgefuentes.inverteddungeon.com/images3/scart/pic-svideo.jpg)
(you can see the RGB Box on the bottom right)

As you can see, the 'noise' from the Composite Signal is now all but gone.  The bubbles do not have any noisy trails under them and everything looks... pretty good.  This is the best signal you're gonna get IF you don't buy Component Cables.  I'm cheating, however, since the signal is being fed into an RGB/VGA Box.  My TV doesn't have native S-Video support.

One thing you will note in the blue background of the title screen... there are these 'waves' of blue.  They're horizontal.  These waves aren't supposed to be there so this is where S-Video shows its inferiority to Component Video... which is below.

Here's the same screen using the official Nintendo Gamecube Component Cable (again, the best choice):
(http://jorgefuentes.inverteddungeon.com/images3/scart/pic-component.jpg)
This is feeding directly to my HDTV's "Component" Connection.

Please ignore the obvious: There's a change in resolution and now things are wider.  The Gamecube's Component Cable forces a 16:9 display aspect ratio.  Not every older (CRT) Television supports this aspect ratio, so some CRTs won't display this screen, which could be a bit disappointing if you went through all the trouble (and time and money) to get all this cabling only to find out your TV doesn't even support proper Component input (most of what they called DTVs at the time, that time when TVs were transitioning from SDTVs to HDTVs, were not actually supporting all aspect ratios, so you would need to research into the monitor/TV you're gonna get to see whether it properly supports Component input - funny enough, all flatscreen HDTVs these days support Component Video as a legacy type of input).

Notice that there are no waves of blue in the background: The background is a solid blue color.  Also, there is almost no noise in the picture, and things are quite clear.  This is really the best choice.
You can clearly see that the S-video connection, while waaay better than Composite (which I cannot show you without having to do a lot of rewiring)
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: knightmere on October 14, 2013, 11:11:40 AM
Looks good on my LED TV.  I play on my Wii using VBA GX with component cables.  Still, nothing beats playing on an original GBA for visual quality.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Jorge D. Fuentes on October 14, 2013, 11:20:09 AM
Well yeah, playing it on the Wii means you're at least on Component Cabling.

However, the person was asking about Gamecube + Gameboy Player, not Wii and Wii Emulation.  This experiment was all done on a Gamecube.

I can upload a pic of what VBA-GX looks like on vWii on Wii-U (which uses HDMI), and that would be probably the best way to view things on a TV...
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Abnormal Freak on October 14, 2013, 03:02:58 PM
You will notice the cable's nonsense when you play because you will see a distinct checkered pattern on the screen.  It'll look dithered, as if you were playing the game through a screen mesh window.

FWIW, the official Nintendo cable makes N64 games look kind of dithered/checkered. It's usually something I notice in backgrounds, usually skylines where it's a fairly solid color. Don't know if that's the same effect you've experienced.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Jorge D. Fuentes on October 14, 2013, 04:02:59 PM
N64 handles graphics a little differently.
The same cable that works on SNES and Gamecube well will display the checkered pattern on N64.
I don't think that's the cable; it's the N64 itself.

But with the SNES you can definitely tell.
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: Abnormal Freak on October 14, 2013, 04:08:46 PM
OK, just checking. The SNES definitely doesn't have the issue. Was really floored when I first popped in Kirby's Dream Land 3 and watched the opening with all those cool illustrations. Super crisp, great color. Too bad the TV was my brother's and he now has it with him at his place. ;_;
Title: Re: Attempting to play Aria of Sorrow on an HD TV
Post by: kadosho on October 28, 2013, 12:17:46 PM
Neat to see more help regarding handheld classics on consoles support. When I picked up the GCPlayer, I really fell in love with the attachment. It handles colors pretty well, it may look fuzzy sometimes, but you get used to it. And yup, with component cables.
So does the Nintendo archive online via Wii+U look better than the capabilities the GCP was capable of?