Does Jurassic Park use pseudo high-res mode?

Discussion of hardware and software development for Super NES and Super Famicom. See the SNESdev wiki for more information.

Moderator: Moderators

Forum rules
  • For making cartridges of your Super NES games, see Reproduction.
User avatar
rainwarrior
Posts: 8734
Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2012 12:03 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Does Jurassic Park use pseudo high-res mode?

Post by rainwarrior »

Pokun wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 3:03 pmBTW do you have teletext in America? I heard it was originally made as part of the longer vblank time of the PAL broadcast signal, but there is a Japanese variant of it as well, although I'm not sure if there are many Japanese teletext lovers like in Europe.
In Canada I remember some channels in the 80s that had continuous display of information that I'm sure was done via teletext systems, but I don't think it was something that could normally be decoded directly by consumer televisions? I think some stations just used teletext systems for their information network and display, and then just broadcast it locally as a regular TV picture. I thought they were neat to stare at as a kid, often these channels had nice music.

Closed captioning is a standard part of the TV signal here, though, and TVs definitely are required to be able to decode it. I guess that's about as far as we got with the concept on the consumer end.
Pokun
Posts: 2681
Joined: Tue May 28, 2013 5:49 am
Location: Hokkaido, Japan

Re: Does Jurassic Park use pseudo high-res mode?

Post by Pokun »

Canadian teletext pages had music? That's pretty cool. I read that the Japanese teletext standard JTES supported Yamaha OPLL which is also cool. Swedish teletext has always been silent as far as I know, the sound from the current TV channel is still heard when browsing teletext pages.


It sounds like teletext is almost gone in the UK:
Wikipedia wrote: the founder of the world's first teletext service, the BBC, closed its Ceefax service in 2012 when Britain adopted a fully digital television broadcast system. The BBC maintains a Red Button service on digital TV which includes access to the latest text news; that text news service is accessible on the BBC News Channel and during BBC One newscasts. Plans to shut it down in 2020 were changed and a reduced service is planned into 2021.[27] Many channels on Sky still[when?] broadcast teletext subtitles and may still have a small number of active pages.[28] Analog teletext ended in each region after analog broadcasts finished
If they would remove teletext in Sweden I think there would be an outcry. I know many people that uses TextTV all the time, my papa among them.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Does Jurassic Park use pseudo high-res mode?

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

Pokun wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 4:36 pm Canadian teletext pages had music? That's pretty cool. I read that the Japanese teletext standard JTES supported Yamaha OPLL which is also cool. Swedish teletext has always been silent as far as I know, the sound from the current TV channel is still heard when browsing teletext pages.


It sounds like teletext is almost gone in the UK:
Wikipedia wrote: the founder of the world's first teletext service, the BBC, closed its Ceefax service in 2012 when Britain adopted a fully digital television broadcast system. The BBC maintains a Red Button service on digital TV which includes access to the latest text news; that text news service is accessible on the BBC News Channel and during BBC One newscasts. Plans to shut it down in 2020 were changed and a reduced service is planned into 2021.[27] Many channels on Sky still[when?] broadcast teletext subtitles and may still have a small number of active pages.[28] Analog teletext ended in each region after analog broadcasts finished
If they would remove teletext in Sweden I think there would be an outcry. I know many people that uses TextTV all the time, my papa among them.
It was sad to see it go here in the UK, end of an era, but the Internet basically made it obsolete. The one thing it still has over the Internet is genuine simplicity. I miss properly simple things--guess that's why my love for SNES is as strong as ever, maybe even more so now.
User avatar
rainwarrior
Posts: 8734
Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2012 12:03 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Does Jurassic Park use pseudo high-res mode?

Post by rainwarrior »

Pokun wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 4:36 pmCanadian teletext pages had music?
Well, not as teletext. It was just a regular video channel displaying the output of a teletext machine, so I'm not sure that it really counts. Just they usually had pleasant "elevator music" kinda stuff to go along with it, from what I remember.

Here, I found a some recordings: environment canada weather 1988, winnipeg weather 1985

Basically, just a non-interactive information channel that the broadcaster was using a teletext device to create. No ability for the home viewer to change pages or anything like that, you just had to wait for the info you wanted. Some stations just did this late at night when they had nothing else to fill he air with.


Edit: hunh, apparently the canadian government was actually testing a system in the early 80s but eventually cancelled it, never bringing it to the general public. Documentary on the "Telidon" system: The Lost Art of Canada's Doomed Pre-Internet Web. I never knew this had existed.
Drag
Posts: 1615
Joined: Mon Sep 27, 2004 2:57 pm
Contact:

Re: Does Jurassic Park use pseudo high-res mode?

Post by Drag »

rainwarrior wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 5:47 pm Well, not as teletext. It was just a regular video channel displaying the output of a teletext machine, so I'm not sure that it really counts. Just they usually had pleasant "elevator music" kinda stuff to go along with it, from what I remember.
Sorry for continuing the tangent, but this is one of those really random/useless things I was interested in when I was younger. :P

Those are usually called "character generators", and the ones on my local cable network in the 90s were by Texscan MSI. It was the most interesting because they didn't have any concept of offline editing; when it was time to update the pages, you would watch an operator type them out in real-time on the channel.

They were most common on local public broadcast channels during times when there's otherwise no programming. At least the ones I've seen were like bulletin boards with ads and programming information related to the channel, or things like community events, but they always looked like a lo-fi text-mode screen that, at most, had PETSCII or ATASCII-styled graphics made out of graphical building blocks like squares, triangles, shapes, etc. A lot of times, they'd also be able to receive standard weather data from the national weather service, and I think they'd also be used to provide the Emergency Broadcast System or Emergency Alert System screen which would interrupt the upstream broadcast, when those systems needed to be used.

If you've ever seen the Prevue channel, you've seen another kind of these character generator-style channels, but these were powered by actual Amigas (and sometimes Atari STs) rather than specialized hardware. If you've ever watched the Weather channel, you've seen some iteration of the Weatherstar.

But yeah, the most important thing to note is, this was the literal A/V broadcast from the station itself, with the visual component being the output of the character generator, and the audio component usually being some fm radio station (usually classical or office-friendly soft rock).

That was the closest thing we had in the US too. I don't think Teletext was common here, although all TVs seemed to support it. If you wanted interactive news, you needed a computer with a modem and a service to dial into, like AOL or Prodigy. A significantly larger barrier than just simply owning a TV set. :P
creaothceann
Posts: 611
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2006 7:47 am
Location: Germany
Contact:

Re: Does Jurassic Park use pseudo high-res mode?

Post by creaothceann »

Drag wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 9:12 pm If you've ever seen the Prevue channel, you've seen another kind of these character generator-style channels, but these were powered by actual Amigas (and sometimes Atari STs) rather than specialized hardware. If you've ever watched the Weather channel, you've seen some iteration of the Weatherstar.
Speaking of Amiga-generated TV content:
I remember watching a lot of Supergrips, the German version of Blockbusters. If you look closely you can even see the operator's 1-pixel mouse cursor.
My current setup:
Super Famicom ("2/1/3" SNS-CPU-GPM-02) → SCART → OSSC → StarTech USB3HDCAP → AmaRecTV 3.10
none
Posts: 117
Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2020 1:09 am

Re: Does Jurassic Park use pseudo high-res mode?

Post by none »

rainwarrior wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 5:47 pm Here, I found a some recordings: environment canada weather 1988, winnipeg weather 1985
These are somehow really uncanny to me.
Pokun
Posts: 2681
Joined: Tue May 28, 2013 5:49 am
Location: Hokkaido, Japan

Re: Does Jurassic Park use pseudo high-res mode?

Post by Pokun »

Maybe we should split the thread to a teletext topic.

rainwarrior wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 5:47 pm Basically, just a non-interactive information channel that the broadcaster was using a teletext device to create. No ability for the home viewer to change pages or anything like that, you just had to wait for the info you wanted. Some stations just did this late at night when they had nothing else to fill he air with.


Edit: hunh, apparently the canadian government was actually testing a system in the early 80s but eventually cancelled it, never bringing it to the general public. Documentary on the "Telidon" system: The Lost Art of Canada's Doomed Pre-Internet Web. I never knew this had existed.
Oh I see, very interesting. I think we had something similar too early on in the '80s. Here is an example when the teletext service basically replaces normal broadcast at night on channel TV2. It looks like you didn't have to enable teletext mode to get this to appear, and maybe you didn't even need a teletext decoder for this as it's possibly really just normal video showing a sample of the normal teletext service, but I'm just guessing, I have no memories of teletext in the '80s.

Drag wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 9:12 pm Those are usually called "character generators", and the ones on my local cable network in the 90s were by Texscan MSI. It was the most interesting because they didn't have any concept of offline editing; when it was time to update the pages, you would watch an operator type them out in real-time on the channel.

They were most common on local public broadcast channels during times when there's otherwise no programming. At least the ones I've seen were like bulletin boards with ads and programming information related to the channel, or things like community events, but they always looked like a lo-fi text-mode screen that, at most, had PETSCII or ATASCII-styled graphics made out of graphical building blocks like squares, triangles, shapes, etc. A lot of times, they'd also be able to receive standard weather data from the national weather service, and I think they'd also be used to provide the Emergency Broadcast System or Emergency Alert System screen which would interrupt the upstream broadcast, when those systems needed to be used.

If you've ever seen the Prevue channel, you've seen another kind of these character generator-style channels, but these were powered by actual Amigas (and sometimes Atari STs) rather than specialized hardware. If you've ever watched the Weather channel, you've seen some iteration of the Weatherstar.

But yeah, the most important thing to note is, this was the literal A/V broadcast from the station itself, with the visual component being the output of the character generator, and the audio component usually being some fm radio station (usually classical or office-friendly soft rock).

That was the closest thing we had in the US too. I don't think Teletext was common here, although all TVs seemed to support it. If you wanted interactive news, you needed a computer with a modem and a service to dial into, like AOL or Prodigy. A significantly larger barrier than just simply owning a TV set. :P
Well that sounds exactly like teletext to me, and in fact that's how Swedish teletext still looks like, text and blocky graphics. The teletext is part of the broadcast signal so the content can change in real time and is tied to the current TV channel (each TV channel would have their own teletext services). The teletext information is (or at least was during the analogue era) placed in the vblank part of the broadcast video signal.

Offline editing is probably still used for subtitles of live TV programs. They used special keyboards with keys for syllables instead of letters and the ability to type full words at a time in combination with a very quick typer.


I did some quick Wikipedia-research: Swedish teletext was introduced in 1979 and Sweden was apparently the second country in the world after UK to do so. Early on you had to get a separate decoder box, but it soon became a standard part of the TV and in the early '90s over 50% had access to it.
Since BBC canceled their Ceefax service, SVT Text is now the world's oldest teletext service that is still active.

So Sweden were both early and got it well established, no wonder it's so popular. Besides it being useful for hearing-impaired subtitle services.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Does Jurassic Park use pseudo high-res mode?

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

Pokun wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 11:54 am Maybe we should split the thread to a teletext topic.

rainwarrior wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 5:47 pm Basically, just a non-interactive information channel that the broadcaster was using a teletext device to create. No ability for the home viewer to change pages or anything like that, you just had to wait for the info you wanted. Some stations just did this late at night when they had nothing else to fill he air with.


Edit: hunh, apparently the canadian government was actually testing a system in the early 80s but eventually cancelled it, never bringing it to the general public. Documentary on the "Telidon" system: The Lost Art of Canada's Doomed Pre-Internet Web. I never knew this had existed.
Oh I see, very interesting. I think we had something similar too early on in the '80s. Here is an example when the teletext service basically replaces normal broadcast at night on channel TV2. It looks like you didn't have to enable teletext mode to get this to appear, and maybe you didn't even need a teletext decoder for this as it's possibly really just normal video showing a sample of the normal teletext service, but I'm just guessing, I have no memories of teletext in the '80s.

Drag wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 9:12 pm Those are usually called "character generators", and the ones on my local cable network in the 90s were by Texscan MSI. It was the most interesting because they didn't have any concept of offline editing; when it was time to update the pages, you would watch an operator type them out in real-time on the channel.

They were most common on local public broadcast channels during times when there's otherwise no programming. At least the ones I've seen were like bulletin boards with ads and programming information related to the channel, or things like community events, but they always looked like a lo-fi text-mode screen that, at most, had PETSCII or ATASCII-styled graphics made out of graphical building blocks like squares, triangles, shapes, etc. A lot of times, they'd also be able to receive standard weather data from the national weather service, and I think they'd also be used to provide the Emergency Broadcast System or Emergency Alert System screen which would interrupt the upstream broadcast, when those systems needed to be used.

If you've ever seen the Prevue channel, you've seen another kind of these character generator-style channels, but these were powered by actual Amigas (and sometimes Atari STs) rather than specialized hardware. If you've ever watched the Weather channel, you've seen some iteration of the Weatherstar.

But yeah, the most important thing to note is, this was the literal A/V broadcast from the station itself, with the visual component being the output of the character generator, and the audio component usually being some fm radio station (usually classical or office-friendly soft rock).

That was the closest thing we had in the US too. I don't think Teletext was common here, although all TVs seemed to support it. If you wanted interactive news, you needed a computer with a modem and a service to dial into, like AOL or Prodigy. A significantly larger barrier than just simply owning a TV set. :P
Well that sounds exactly like teletext to me, and in fact that's how Swedish teletext still looks like, text and blocky graphics. The teletext is part of the broadcast signal so the content can change in real time and is tied to the current TV channel (each TV channel would have their own teletext services). The teletext information is (or at least was during the analogue era) placed in the vblank part of the broadcast video signal.

Offline editing is probably still used for subtitles of live TV programs. They used special keyboards with keys for syllables instead of letters and the ability to type full words at a time in combination with a very quick typer.


I did some quick Wikipedia-research: Swedish teletext was introduced in 1979 and Sweden was apparently the second country in the world after UK to do so. Early on you had to get a separate decoder box, but it soon became a standard part of the TV and in the early '90s over 50% had access to it.
Since BBC canceled their Ceefax service, SVT Text is now the world's oldest teletext service that is still active.

So Sweden were both early and got it well established, no wonder it's so popular. Besides it being useful for hearing-impaired subtitle services.
Yeah, but no one had/has a Telext channel as cool as Digitiser was. ;-)

Seriously though, it was sooo good. Read some of it; it's f'n hilarious: https://www.superpage58.com/digitiser-v ... -01-01.htm

I used to love reading the gold that was found on Digitiser [almost] every day as a kid. :D
User avatar
rainwarrior
Posts: 8734
Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2012 12:03 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Does Jurassic Park use pseudo high-res mode?

Post by rainwarrior »

Drag wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 9:12 pm...but these were powered by actual Amigas (and sometimes Atari STs) rather than specialized hardware.
There was a canadian science show I used to love as a kid called Concepts in Science that I'm almost certain was animated on an Amiga or ST, plus some dreamy synthesizer music, and calm narration. Example episode: Electricity 1: Conductors & Insulators

I had never experienced teletext directly, but between the teletext-driven information programs I used to see, and maybe early dial-up BBS experiences, the phony Ceefax pages joke from Look Around You still hit home for me: Look Around You: Pages from Ceefax
turboxray
Posts: 348
Joined: Thu Oct 31, 2019 12:56 am

Re: Does Jurassic Park use pseudo high-res mode?

Post by turboxray »

Well.. if you play Kirby 3 or Jurassic Park on the Retrotink-5x in RGB.. you can set the pre-emp filter to -4 and get a nice blend: http://www.turboxraypce.org/pics/PIC-20 ... _00_03.png

I'd image on a low grade CRT via RGB.. something like 300+ line range (i.e. horizontal mask res), it'd probably blend to the point were it's almost non-visible.
Pokun
Posts: 2681
Joined: Tue May 28, 2013 5:49 am
Location: Hokkaido, Japan

Re: Does Jurassic Park use pseudo high-res mode?

Post by Pokun »

I guess my CRT is a little too high grade for Kirby 3. But it's the only CRT I have that supports both NTSC and PAL (and SECAM).
tepples
Posts: 22708
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:12 pm
Location: NE Indiana, USA (NTSC)
Contact:

Re: Does Jurassic Park use pseudo high-res mode?

Post by tepples »

Would pseudo-hires be useful for 75 percent and 25 percent opacity?

25% layer 1, 75% layer 2
sub=layer 2, main=layer 1, blend mode=add and halve, pseudo-hires=on

50% layer 1, layer 2
sub=layer 2, main=layer 1, blend mode=add and halve, pseudo-hires=off

75% layer 1, 25% layer 2
sub=layer 1, main=layer 2, blend mode=add and halve, pseudo-hires=on
Pokun wrote:I see very little difference from RGB, I'm surprised S-video looks this sharp since I normally play using the RGB cable.
This matches theory and my experience.

The theory: Usable bandwidth on S-Video is close to that of Rec. 601 (D-1 and DVD): 6.75 MHz luma and 3.375 MHz chroma. For comparison, the S-PPU's video bandwidth (half the dot clock rate) is 2.79 MHz outside hires and 5.37 MHz in hires.

My experience matches bocchi's: Luma over S-Video is always sharp, as I see in the menus of SNES PowerPak MUFASA firmware. Chroma is also sharp except in pathological signals such as alternating green and magenta pixels, or perhaps blue and brown.
rainwarrior wrote:I don't believe Nintendo ever sold an s-video cable for SNES either, though.
I remember seeing "SVHS CABLE" or the like for sale in the local authorized Nintendo repair shop, packaged using the branding of US SNES including Univers Narrow Italic in red on black and gray, when I was bringing in my copy of Super Mario World to investigate loss of saved games circa 1993. I wouldn't be surprised if that were the SHVC-009. So even if the S-Video cable was in specialty shops, not Kmart, it was out there.
Pokun
Posts: 2681
Joined: Tue May 28, 2013 5:49 am
Location: Hokkaido, Japan

Re: Does Jurassic Park use pseudo high-res mode?

Post by Pokun »

On the Nintendo 64 however, the same S-video cable doesn't seem to improve the picture as massively compared to composite as it does on the SNES. The picture is very similar to that of composite, and quite blurry in both cases, the Nintendo 64 has always been a very blurry machine what with hardware anti-aliasing filters and whatnot.

A bit of a bummer though, considering that the Nintendo 64 was the main reason I bought the S-video cable in the first place, since it doesn't offer RGB out of the box and S-video is the best it officially supports.

On the Gamecube the same S-video cable is noticeably much better than composite, and even more so with the component cable.
calima
Posts: 1745
Joined: Tue Oct 06, 2015 10:16 am

Re: Does Jurassic Park use pseudo high-res mode?

Post by calima »

Eh, I had a massive improvement using the S-video cable on N64 over composite. You're looking at the wrong parts, it doesn't help 3d AA blurriness, but text got way better.
Post Reply