Saturn Battle Garegga & 60hz versus 50hz

brianon

So I've been playing my newly acquired Battle Garegga on my PAL Saturn with the 50/60hz mod.

In 50hz I can see the whole screen with the black borders.
In 60hz part of the top and bottom of the screen is cut off. Say, 5% at top and 5% at bottom.

To get the Jap game to play on PAL saturn I am using the 4-in-1 cart.

Anybody know why this is happening. Not a huge deal as it a small(ish) area that's missing but would be nice to know/fix.

Myrddin

You might need to, depending on the tv, go into the service menu & adjust the pincushion settings. Are you using RGB, as sometimes that can be pushed off screen

o1s1n

That's weird, usually you get that happening with a PAL optimized 50hz game running at 60hz (the optimization in PAL made it run full screen at 50hz - so when you switch it to 60hz the top and bottom are cut off)

This game is a Japanese 60hz game, therefore it should run full screen in 60hz or with boarders at 50hz.

Retr0gamer

RGB does indeed sometimes cut off some of the screen and offsets it. Might be the TV not correcting for this.

o1s1n

RGB tends to only cut off the left though and leave a sliver of black down the right hand side.

What we're seeing here though is like what happens when you run a 50hz PAL optimized full screen game at 60hz.

Maybe the TV has a zoom setting turned on to get rid of widescreen boarders but it's not switching off for 60hz?

Myrddin

o1s1n wrote: »

RGB tends to only cut off the left though and leave a sliver of black down the right hand side.

What we're seeing here though is like what happens when you run a 50hz PAL optimized full screen game at 60hz

True enough, its really always shunted to the left of the screen with RGB. Might be worth poking around the settings etc

brianon

TV is a Philips CRT. Not many settings to mess around with

EDIT
Got the cable from consolegoods.co.uk (Saturn RGB Scart cable). Might try the other input.

Might have another cable around to test.

Myrddin

brianon wrote: »

TV is a Philips CRT. Not many settings to mess around with

EDIT
Got the cable from consolegoods.co.uk (Saturn RGB Scart cable). Might try the other input.

Might have another cable around to test.

Take a pic of the image maybe & post it. It might not be a cable issue but more your tv's interpretation of 60Hz might need adjusting

Andrew76

If it's a case that swapping cables makes no difference and you have to adjust the picture using the service menu - it might not be worth the effort considering how awkward it can be on standard TVs. Fixing the picture for Garegga would also mess it up for your other games most likely.

brianon

Right. Different cable but same result.

brianon

Pics.

Screen set to correctly to 4:3. Not 4:3 expand which loses more

This is in 50hz. Correct size. Black borders.


60hz. No borders but losing top and bottom of screen.


TV has very limited menu.

Retr0gamer

Looks like a very ols Philips. Perhaps it's dealing with 60Hz by expanding it to a resolution it can actually handle?

o1s1n

Well I can't say I've ever seen that before!

I misunderstood your 50hz part, I thought there was no boarders.

So 50hz is displaying correctly with boarders and then your 60hz you're losing a few mm from the bottom and about half an inch from the top. Definitely something up with your tv.

Have you tried it through composite rather than RGB? It'll be in black and white for 60hz, but at least you can check the image positioning.

Myrddin

Is it like that for all games?

Andrew76

Probably won't make a difference but have you tried the different screen layouts in the Options menu? Does proper tate mode chop off the image too? Screen layout is the first option with the picture of a ship inside a box.

brianon

o1s1n wrote: »

Well I can't say I've ever seen that before!

I misunderstood your 50hz part, I thought there was no boarders.

So 50hz is displaying correctly with boarders and then your 60hz you're losing a few mm from the bottom and about half an inch from the top. Definitely something up with your tv.

Have you tried it through composite rather than RGB? It'll be in black and white for 60hz, but at least you can check the image positioning.

Haven't got composite cables for the saturn.

I tried the saturn with Garegga on the 32 inch lcd. It looked horrible! but the screen displayed correctly.

Sigh. It's not a huge deal I guess. Maybe a different cable (s-video) might work ?

I ... could ... just run it in 50hz :eek:

Retr0gamer

brianon wrote: »

I ... could ... just run it in 50hz :eek:

We'll have none of that crazy talk, thank you very much.

o1s1n

brianon wrote: »

Haven't got composite cables for the saturn.

I tried the saturn with Garegga on the 32 inch lcd. It looked horrible! but the screen displayed correctly.

Sigh. It's not a huge deal I guess. Maybe a different cable (s-video) might work ?

I ... could ... just run it in 50hz :eek:

RGB scart carries composite too. If you plug it into a tv scart socket that doesn't support RGB then you'll see a composite image.

Generally only one scart socket supports RGB - so try it in the other one and you should see composite.

brianon

o1s1n wrote: »

RGB scart carries composite too. If you plug it into a tv scart socket that doesn't support RGB then you'll see a composite image.

Generally only one scart socket supports RGB - so try it in the other one and you should see composite.

I tried it on both scart sockets on tv. Same result.

brianon

Retr0gamer wrote: »

We'll have none of that crazy talk, thank you very much.

Fine. What do you propose ?

o1s1n

New CRT? Sony Trinitron FTW

brianon

Sony trintron eh? I'm listening.

The non widescreen variety or does that matter ?

Adverts.ie or somewhere else ?

o1s1n

Non widescreen if you can, so 4:3. I know you can set widescreen tvs to 4:3, but it's really not as nice.

Really depends how much space you have. I've a 29 inch flat Trini CRT in my sitting room and it's a heavy monster. But the picture quality is incredible.

One of these. Best thing about them? Dirt cheap

http://www.adverts.ie/tv/sony-trinitron-crt-tv-69cm-27-inch/2622983

If you want something smaller, get one of these instead. Added bonus is they're super handy for rotating vertical (which would be amazing for Garegga)

http://www.adverts.ie/tv/sony-trinitron-21-crt-tv/2248885

brianon

Right. I got my hands (well I've not seen it yet as it was delivered to my sisters house) on a Sony Trinitron 26". Hopefully that'll do the trick

Hmmm... not sure if here is the best place to discuss this but after I hooked up my Saturn to my 32" LCD and saw the pretty bad display I came across the SG3000(?) which I know has been discussed here. That led me to the Arcadeforge SLG-IN-A-BOX which seems quite awesome (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSQ3lmE6UuY)

Seems you can get quite a good image now on an LCD with this SLG thingy. My question is ... does a good CRT still beat the SLG ?

Have to say I am quite tempted by the SLG-IN-A-BOX.

Retr0gamer

CRT will always beat a LCD. For one thing the scanlines a box generates are never going to emulate the scanlines from a CRT. It's never going to give the same antialiasing effect.

Secondly LCDs have to use a backlight so colours, expecially dark colours, will never be as vivid as a CRT. Plasmas might come closer but it's not really the same.

brianon

Retr0gamer wrote: »

CRT will always beat a LCD. For one thing the scanlines a box generates are never going to emulate the scanlines from a CRT. It's never going to give the same antialiasing effect.

Secondly LCDs have to use a backlight so colours, expecially dark colours, will never be as vivid as a CRT. Plasmas might come closer but it's not really the same.

Ok ok

Right. So time to start stockpiling old CRTs ?

Andrew76

That SLG in a box product is a rip-off imo. You can buy the scaler for 20 quid on ebay, you can buy a much cheaper mini-slg for 20 or 30 quid from a chap on AO (only difference being you can't adjust the thickness of the scanlines) so the only thing you'd need to buy from arcadeforge is the Sync Strike - to allow you to go from SCART console to VGA input to your display. I went this route to connect up my SCART supergun to a Dell CRT Monitor and have it looking decent. But I still have CRTs for consoles.

If you have a decent CRT then it will always look better.

o1s1n

brianon wrote: »

Ok ok

Right. So time to start stockpiling old CRTs ?

Slg3000s make the game look 'right'. They'll never be 100% as nice as a CRT, but theyre good enough to ease the pain of a CRTless future. I was really blown away by my one.

Do go with a CRT for now if you can though. While they are still plentiful! (and cheap)