Converting an S-Video signal from my N64 to something else?

supernintendo128

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I have an Nintendo 64. I want the best picture from it but my TV doesn't support S-Video. Is there anything out there that can take an S-Video signal and convert it to something like Component or VGA or HDMI? A Google search doesn't turn up anything. I don't want to hard-mod my system.
 

Ryccardo

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S-video is just black and white composite plus color data on a separate wire, the laziest option is to just combine them back together (can be done with a single capacitor) and feeding that to a disposable-grade composite to hdmi converter

Similiarly it can be split into RGB or YPbPr by a NTSC decoding chip (that's what goes on inside any 100%-analog-video-processing display), not many affordable commercial products for this but you can find online schematics involving a dedicated chip and little more if you wanted to build one yourself

If you want a (probably) decent premade solution, there's the Retrotink... at a price!
 

AshuraZro

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Wuigi

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The problem is that the "anti-aliasing" filter of the N64 smears the image of the vide output to a blurry mess where s-video looks almost identical to composite even with good cables and converters like the retrotink.
There is an RGB mod that modifies the image to simulate the removal of one step of the blurring, with Gameshard Cheats you can undo another step that it looks a bit more acceptable with original hardware(at 4:42):

It's really expensive though with the cables, the mod and the converter.
Imo the N64 is one of the few systems where emulation is the definitive way to play it, except input lag of course.
 
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