Old gaming consoles look bad on new TV

[TheGeologist]

Hey all, I recently bought a Nintendo 64 and Gamecube to relive my childhood days. There are two hdtvs in my apartment and the Nintendo 64 is very blury, (less so on the brand new hdtv, but still blurry)

The Gamecube has some games that are pretty clear, but some are super blurry. It's like the tv is trying too hard to display the game.

Apart from buying an older TV, is there anyway to rectify this?

 

[PzR Slim]

Does your tv have an 'aspect ratio' setting such as 'orginal'. This may display the image from the console at the size it was meant to be. Other than that you could try a tv with a smaller screen size so the image is not stretched across such a big area.

 

[Sprite]

You could look into an HDMI mod for the GameCube if you’re that way inclined. Not that this will increase resolution but it might tidy it up a tad.

Remember your HDTV is 1080p or higher and the cube is putting out 480i so will look shocking.

 

[TheGeologist]

Does your tv have an 'aspect ratio' setting such as 'orginal'. This may display the image from the console at the size it was meant to be. Other than that you could try a tv with a smaller screen size so the image is not stretched across such a big area.

You could look into an HDMI mod for the GameCube if you’re that way inclined. Not that this will increase resolution but it might tidy it up a tad.

Remember your HDTV is 1080p or higher and the cube is putting out 480i so will look shocking.

Let me provide a little more information now that I'm not half asleep.

So, we have two TVs in our apartment. The one in my bedroom is a 40 inch Insignia and is ~3-4 years old. When playing the N64 (Mario Party 2, Super Mario 64), the screen is blurry. I understand the graphics are lower, but I recall far more clarity back in the day. The larger TV is a new Hisense, 50 inches. I've only played the 64 briefly on this TV, but I actually noticed far more clarity on this TV with the same games (Still kinda blurry though).

The Gamecube seems to run very well on both TVs, but only for certain games. Paper Mario TTYD and Mario Party 5 look great on both TVs, but NASCAR Thunder 2003 and Medal of Honor: Rising Sun look horrid (Just bought these games yesterday and have not tried them on the new hisense tv). The view is so grain in NASCAR Thunder that I can hardly see. I looked up youtube vids of NASCAR Thunder and it looks nothing like my game. It is just horrid...

I messed around with the wide screen settings and made it "normal" but it was still so grainy.

 

[Famine]

Back in the day, your 576i game had 405,504 pixels to display, on a 20-inch, 720x576 screen. Each pixel had 0.3 of a square millimetre to itself.

Try to force it onto a 40-inch, 1920x1080 screen, and each pixel is now smashed across 1.2 square millimetres. Imagine playing the game ten years ago but with each pixel 16 times the size. That's why it's blurry.

 

[sesselpupser]

I looked up youtube vids of NASCAR Thunder and it looks nothing like my game. It is just horrid...

I wouldn't know for sure without seeing the video, but it's probably emulated on a PC. Emulators let you render games at above native resolution in much the same way as HD remasters of PS2/3 games on PS4. I'm not sure what GTP's stance on discussing emulation is, though... I'm guessing Not OK as it's usually synonymous with piracy.

Edit:
This is NASCAR Thunder 2003 running on a GameCube:



This is the same game running on Dolphin (an emulator) at 1080p:




Edit again:

Another thing to remember is if you last played on a CRT, the images were being created by an electron gun zipping back and forth and up and down a phosphor screen, so individual pixels were softer. A lot of games designed for SD resolutions assumed you'd be playing on a CRT so they were designed a certain way to look good, that doesn't always (or even often) translate well to HD LCDs so old games do, by and large, look terrible on modern TVs.

 

[DesertPenguin]

I'd say best bet is to get an older big screen TV. The last one I had before going HD was 27" and that's reasonably big. I used that up until 2008

 

[TheGeologist]

Back in the day, your 576i game had 405,504 pixels to display, on a 20-inch, 720x576 screen. Each pixel had 0.3 of a square millimetre to itself.

Try to force it onto a 40-inch, 1920x1080 screen, and each pixel is now smashed across 1.2 square millimetres. Imagine playing the game ten years ago but with each pixel 16 times the size. That's why it's blurry.

How can I resolve the issue then? Is it simply best to buy an older TV? Is there not a way to reduce the resolution temporarily when I am playing these older games?

I wouldn't know for sure without seeing the video, but it's probably emulated on a PC. Emulators let you render games at above native resolution in much the same way as HD remasters of PS2/3 games on PS4. I'm not sure what GTP's stance on discussing emulation is, though... I'm guessing Not OK as it's usually synonymous with piracy.

Edit:
This is NASCAR Thunder 2003 running on a GameCube:



This is the same game running on Dolphin (an emulator) at 1080p:

I saw both of those videos on youtube and am well aware of the difference. Unfortunately, my quality still seems to be a bit more grainy than the actual GC.

This does not explain why some games are running better on the GC than others though. Paper Mario the thousand year door is way better than I thought it would be. I'm not sure if that's just a difference in the games or what... :/

 

[opelgt1969]

Pack up game cube and start visiting friends and try their TV before buying one that might be grainy as well

 

[kikie]

How can I resolve the issue then? Is it simply best to buy an older TV?

Play the games on a LED pc monitor?

 

[crooky369]

Hey all, I recently bought a Nintendo 64 and Gamecube to relive my childhood days. There are two hdtvs in my apartment and the Nintendo 64 is very blury, (less so on the brand new hdtv, but still blurry)

The Gamecube has some games that are pretty clear, but some are super blurry. It's like the tv is trying too hard to display the game.

Apart from buying an older TV, is there anyway to rectify this?

Get a component cable that'll improve the picture. Then going by this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GameCube_games_with_alternate_display_modes) you lucky American buggers get almost all games on the Gamecube in 480p so they should all look decent then.

 

[GroupB]

For games that were originally designed to work on CRT TVs, a scanline generator makes a huge difference in approximating the original look. While HDTVs give very sharp graphics, it exposes the blockiness present in old games, which were specifically designed to make the best of the fuzzy screens of the day.

 

[Famine]

How can I resolve the issue then? Is it simply best to buy an older TV?

Or just use a smaller one.

The console is outputting 704x576 (at most). That means it's trying to put 704 pixels across the width of the screen. If you have a 40-inch HD screen, it's 32-inches wide, which means that it's putting 22 pixels within each inch. On a 20-inch HD screen it'd be 44 pixels within each inch.

Is there not a way to reduce the resolution temporarily when I am playing these older games?

If you try to display a 704x576 image at native resolution on a 1920x1080 screen, you'll have a 300-pixel wide black bar at each side and a 250-pixel tall black bar top and bottom - and on a 40-inch screen the image size will be roughly 16 inches by 12 inches. However, if that's okay by you, your TV should have an aspect setting that allows you to pick "Original".

 

[INEEDNAWZZZ]

This does not explain why some games are running better on the GC than others though. Paper Mario the thousand year door is way better than I thought it would be. I'm not sure if that's just a difference in the games or what... :/

It is indeed the difference in the games. Paper Mario was designed by Nintendo themselves, who knew how to get the most out of the GC and fit it on to the tiny discs properly. Same goes for other Nintendo games; Super Mario Sunshine still looks incredible, even on a newer TV. Other companies usually had trouble, which is why a lot of the GC releases of multi platform games had blurry textures (due to downsizing the source files) and generally had less features. EA is a notorious example, with the Need for Speed games having quite muddy textures which were then poorly masked by screen filters not found in other versions of the same game.

As others have said, the best course of action is either using an older CRT, or using a smaller TV and upgrading your AV cables. A CRT is the best way, as the games and systems were designed primarily for TVs like that. That said, using an S-Video or SCART lead (the latter being uncommon in the States AFAIK) on a modern flat screen can scrub up an image quite cleanly and gets rid of the blurry look, especially on N64 games. If you have a ridiculous amount of money, you can also upgrade to component cables for the GC... but you can also buy a Wii with component cables and play your GameCube games on that for a quarter of the price of just the cables.

 

[TheGeologist]

Or just use a smaller one.

The console is outputting 704x576 (at most). That means it's trying to put 704 pixels across the width of the screen. If you have a 40-inch HD screen, it's 32-inches wide, which means that it's putting 22 pixels within each inch. On a 20-inch HD screen it'd be 44 pixels within each inch.


If you try to display a 704x576 image at native resolution on a 1920x1080 screen, you'll have a 300-pixel wide black bar at each side and a 250-pixel tall black bar top and bottom - and on a 40-inch screen the image size will be roughly 16 inches by 12 inches. However, if that's okay by you, your TV should have an aspect setting that allows you to pick "Original".

I will give this a try when I get home

It is indeed the difference in the games. Paper Mario was designed by Nintendo themselves, who knew how to get the most out of the GC and fit it on to the tiny discs properly. Same goes for other Nintendo games; Super Mario Sunshine still looks incredible, even on a newer TV. Other companies usually had trouble, which is why a lot of the GC releases of multi platform games had blurry textures (due to downsizing the source files) and generally had less features. EA is a notorious example, with the Need for Speed games having quite muddy textures which were then poorly masked by screen filters not found in other versions of the same game.

As others have said, the best course of action is either using an older CRT, or using a smaller TV and upgrading your AV cables. A CRT is the best way, as the games and systems were designed primarily for TVs like that. That said, using an S-Video or SCART lead (the latter being uncommon in the States AFAIK) on a modern flat screen can scrub up an image quite cleanly and gets rid of the blurry look, especially on N64 games. If you have a ridiculous amount of money, you can also upgrade to component cables for the GC... but you can also buy a Wii with component cables and play your GameCube games on that for a quarter of the price of just the cables.

Hell no, I'm a grad student

 

[Danoff]

You could try sitting really far back.