So I heard than in Europe there's a type of cable called RGB that apparently looks awesome on retro consoles. But why isn't it supported in America? Is it a better or worse picture than VGA and Component? And what do the cable look like?
They have the exact same ports - it's your TV's that couldn't handle RGB since you've never adopted SCART and skipped straight to Component.So retro game consoles in the US don't have ports for RGB? And the best picture you can get in the US is S-Video? That's not fair... also it doesn't make very much sense.
RGB = Red, Green and Blue channels are separated - comes in SCART flavour (Europe)
Component = RGB signal converted into Y (Luma [brightness/luminance] and synchronisation), Pb (difference between Blue and Luma) and Py (difference between Luma and Red)
VGA = Video Graphics Array, a video standard set by IBM, supports a ton of different video modes.
Top hue. You're welcome.Wow. Perfect. Thanks! And I know it's legit cause you spelled it "flavour".
So retro game consoles in the US don't have ports for RGB? And the best picture you can get in the US is S-Video? That's not fair... also it doesn't make very much sense.
Not exactly. many consoles do, but north american televions didn't.
Well first off, this is history, not the present. Secondly, back then, we also got 60 Hz refresh rate versus 50 Hz that Europe got, so each region had the superiority to the other when it comes to picture. As for why we didn't use RGB, beats me. TVs use RGB internally, so to use composite they have to separate out the different color signals first. A technically inclined person could feed an RGB signal to their display, but you're not gonna find any standard cables for the average consumer to do it.Aaah, okay. But why not? Are Americans just happier with worse picture or what?
Aaah, okay. But why not? Are Americans just happier with worse picture or what?
Whoopsie! Correcting that now.(...) also, Foxi, you accidentally wrote Py instead of Pr.
S-video was certainly a clear difference when it came to 2D games. It got rid of the dot-crawl related to composite. Probably not as clear in early jagged 3D games.I don't know, but ps2 composite vs S-video never looked that different to me. However, after my S-video cable busted and I went back to composite, I literally couldn't play the damn thing, it hurt my eyes.
Same goes for Dreamcast.
tldr: you can carry RGB (instead of YUV/YPbPr/YCbCr) over Component leads if both ends support it (ps2 can do it if you toggle it in the options browser), SCART is just the "pipe" not the signal, and S-video is fine anyway, compared to the 60Hz to 50Hz pain in the ass conversions in Europe.
Not exactly. Sync pulses happen between the lines of the image, so they can be mixed onto any channel losslessly. Component and S-Video mix it on Y, on RGB you can mix it onto the green channel. SCART does not do so, though, it uses the dedicated composite line to carry the sync pulses, often as part of a complete composite signal.Not enough pins for a complete image. Component uses 3 pins, standard RGB needs at minimum 4 (red/green/blue/sync).
Actually, you can feed composite and RGB simultaneously, so that is not the reason. The actual reason is that RGB takes 3 more wires (6 if you want a dedicated return path for each, which is standard for SCART), so wiring just composite is cheaper. Interestingly, I had once used a sony television that had two SCART ports, labeled "AV1/RGB" and "AV2/YC2", with an additional "AV3/YC3" available at the front made up of composite, S-Video and audio. The YC2 port actually accepted S-Video signals over the RGB lines, transmitting Y over composite and C over red.Fun fact: to save money, on cheap TVs if there were, say, 3 SCART inputs, only 1 of them would have the full pinout with RGB+Composite+Audio, whereas the others would only support Composite+Audio. That's probably why Sony kept including the Composite-to-SCART cable instead of a RGB-over-SCART, to have 100% compatibility with any SCART port and tv set.
The 60 Hz was balanced by the higher resolution we could fit into a single picture, though. The broadcast systems commonly used in Europe, which by the way have little to do with the color encodings PAL/SECAM/NTSC other than geographical correlations, namely B, C, D, G, H, I, K and L, as well as the overseas K' and N, all support 625 instead of 525 lines, resulting in 576 instead of 480 visible lines while still having more time for a single line than NTSC formats, resulting in finer details to be visible with the same bandwidth. Of course, that was back in the day where slowly-refreshing screens tended to flicker a lot, so the American system M with its 60 Hz had a clear advantage there - though that was due to the higher mains frequency over there.Secondly, back then, we also got 60 Hz refresh rate versus 50 Hz that Europe got, so each region had the superiority to the other when it comes to picture.
The advantage of Y/C over RGB is that you only need two lines instead of three. And even with component, the two color signals can be of lower quality than the Y signal, because the human eye resolves brightness more finely than color. Which is why pretty much every storage and broadcast format uses YUV or a variation.As for why we didn't use RGB, beats me. TVs use RGB internally, so to use composite they have to separate out the different color signals first. A technically inclined person could feed an RGB signal to their display, but you're not gonna find any standard cables for the average consumer to do it.
60 Hz PAL is not even European. It was originally set up for Brazil, which has 60 Hz mains power and therefore used system M for black-and-white television, but unlike every other M country adopted PAL instead of NTSC. PAL60 is not exactly that though, according to Wikipedia it uses the same color carrier as PAL-BDGKI, instead of PAL-M which uses the same one as NTSC-M. It is just some weird hybrid that some manufacturers came up with to slightly widen the range of televisions that could be fed a signal of 60 Hz field rate. Most televisions that eat PAL60 should also take PAL-M and NTSC-M, though, so there is little gain there.Nowadays, though, everyone's using Component or HDMI HD signals, and Europe now has their PAL 60 to match our refresh rate, so we're pretty much on even footing.
Wow. Perfect. Thanks!
And I know it's legit cause you spelled it "flavour".