NTSC filter

Beeper · Post by **Beeper** » Tue Dec 20, 2011 12:30 am

Why is the NTSC filter in Nestopia so blurry? I remember playing my friend's famiclone (those are usually NTSC consoles forced to PAL, I;m in Slovakia, Europe) and not even that had such a blurry picture. Maybe this is the way it would look like if you put your head 5 cm from the TV, but not at normal viewing distance. Are there any filters that emulate TV picture without being exaggerated to the point of parody? The normal NTSC filter in Nestopia looks unviewable at normal computer viewing distances. I even viewed pictures and videos of actual composite output on the internet and it really isn't as blurry as that.

tokumaru · Post by **tokumaru** » Tue Dec 20, 2011 5:35 am

Low definition video looks much better when viewed in a CRT TV than it does on today's high definition displays. DVDs for example look awesome on CRT TVs, but not so much on anything else (the picture is darker and blurrier). And like you said, we didn't sit as close to the TV when playing games, so I believe that's why you though the image used to be better than what the filter is offering you.

From comparing the NTSC filter against video captures I made myself, I find it to be fairly accurate. The resolution of these old consoles is very low, and their video encoders are very cheap.

Beeper · Post by **Beeper** » Tue Dec 20, 2011 8:24 am

But it is not accurate if it does not emulate composite CRT on LCDs properly.

Beeper · Post by **Beeper** » Tue Dec 20, 2011 8:39 am

http://filthypants.blogspot.com/2010/12 ... -snes.html

This is about SNES, but the same things apply.
The "NTSC filter" only image looks horrible, the NTSC + CRT filter image looks wonderful and very TV-like. So how can you achieve a truly TV-like image? NTSC on a PC LCD looks much worse than the real thing.

EDIT - I tried it without the built in aspect correction. It suddenly looks much better. It was almost literally ripping the picture apart before, something that was definitely not a normal NES picture. Now, if the CRT was emulated as well and the scalines actually looked realistic it would be actually like it is on a real NES/Famiclone.

tokumaru · Post by **tokumaru** » Tue Dec 20, 2011 8:49 am

I quickly glanced over that page and didn't see any NTSC + CRT images... I saw some arbitrary blurring with scanlines, not accurate NTSC simulation.

Beeper · Post by **Beeper** » Tue Dec 20, 2011 8:58 am

Look at the bottom. And read. Besides, no matter how accurate the filter is; it doesn't:

1. Emulate the CRT
2. Take usage into account

This is not "accurate NES signal on a TV", but "how would it look like if you outputed a composite signal to a modern HD LCD screen and then looked at it from the distance of 10 centimetres".

No offense, just searching for something that properly replicates the player experience w/o needing to buy hardware.

Post by **tepples** » Tue Dec 20, 2011 9:36 am

Beeper wrote:This is not "accurate NES signal on a TV", but "how would it look like if you outputed a composite signal to a modern HD LCD screen and then looked at it from the distance of 10 centimetres".

I agree with you in principle. I want the picture to look the same through an NES plugged into a TV's composite input or through an emulator on a PC plugged into the same TV's VGA input. But one problem remains: Some "modern HD LCD screens" are made to handle live-action TV or sixth-generation or later consoles and handle 240p signals poorly or not at all.

Beeper · Post by **Beeper** » Tue Dec 20, 2011 10:37 am

tepples wrote:
Beeper wrote:This is not "accurate NES signal on a TV", but "how would it look like if you outputed a composite signal to a modern HD LCD screen and then looked at it from the distance of 10 centimetres".
I agree with you in principle. I want the picture to look the same through an NES plugged into a TV's composite input or through an emulator on a PC plugged into the same TV's VGA input. But one problem remains: Some "modern HD LCD screens" are made to handle live-action TV or sixth-generation or later consoles and handle 240p signals poorly or not at all.

Yes, Basically, the NTSC filter make the signal look as shitty as it would on an LCD screen viewed from 10 cm. When you are actually playing a game on the NES or a clone of it on a normal CRT TV (not 40 year old crap nor 100 Hz upscaled crap), the quality is vastly better because: 1. it is a CRT, 2. you are not viewing it from 10 centimetres. What I'd like to have is some filter that would emulate the composite and the CRT and account for the fact that on a PC emulator your screen is cca 10 cm from you.

Playing Nestopia with an NTSC does not make the game look "authentic", it makes it just look like total crap, exactly how it would look like if you sent NES composite to a HDTV LCD and played it in a disatance of 10 cm from it.

Hell, even 2xSaI looks more like the real thing to me, and that's an ordinary filter! Nowadays I use mostly just normal with scanlines through, the hq2x filters produce unrealistically hi-res images along with each other filter, except for NTSC which produces crap and 2xSaI which is quite nice but lacks scanlines.

tokumaru · Post by **tokumaru** » Tue Dec 20, 2011 11:15 am

For some reason, CRT TVs do make the resolution seem better, but I can't really explain why.

I remember the first time I ran Sonic 1 on Genecyst back in 1997 or so and showed it to my father... The first thing he said was "the resolution is better on the console, right?". I knew it wasn't, but I understood why he'd think that. I don't know why, but CRT TVs are great at making low resolution content look good.

Beeper · Post by **Beeper** » Tue Dec 20, 2011 11:20 am

Also, I don't know if most the famiclones were NTSC forced to PAL, I just know Pegasus and Terminator were, the others might actually used ordinary PAL. What sort of picture would PAL NES/Famiclone bring?

Hell, I am not even sure what "forced to PAL" really means, they were Famicom (60-pin cartridges) compatible, but NTSC on a PAL TV produces a black and white image, so it must have been outputing actual PAL, just that console was hacked to support NTSC cartriges too, but pictures in PAL.

Beeper · Post by **Beeper** » Tue Dec 20, 2011 11:24 am

tokumaru wrote:For some reason, CRT TVs do make the resolution seem better, but I can't really explain why.

I remember the first time I ran Sonic 1 on Genecyst back in 1997 or so and showed it to my father... The first thing he said was "the resolution is better on the console, right?". I knew it wasn't, but I understood why he'd think that. I don't know why, but CRT TVs are great at making low resolution content look good.

Probably because CRT pixels are not really rigid squares, but the picture is created by the electron beam. VHS has resolution just a bit better than the NES, yet on our 1998 Sony VCR, even LP mode cassetess look broadcast quality. 240p is not "low resolution" for a CRT, because the cathode ray apparatus acts kinda like a natural antialiasing or how to describe it.

I wouldn't say the CRTs make the resolution look better, rather, the LCD makes resolutions any other than native look worse. I remember 640x480 and 320x200 to look great on an old VGA monitor, even through the VGA signal is crisp clear. I couldn't see the pixels on the old 14 inch VGA monitor in 640x480, but when I move my eyes really close to my 20inch widescreen LCD, I see the pixels - in 1600x900 resolution.

It is like a superhuman wondering why everything looks so shitty when you can see every molecule in an object - LCDs are too sharp to not be shit. Hell, on my 20inch LCD, 1024x758 looks shit. All the interpolation and filtering crap has nothing on CRT.

Basically, for a normal CRT, every resolution is native resolution. On LCDs, unless your signal is your native resolution, it will look crap.

Shiru · Post by **Shiru** » Tue Dec 20, 2011 11:41 am

Famiclones use Famicom pirated cartidges, often in Japanese. So it is NTSC forced to display in PAL.

Beeper · Post by **Beeper** » Tue Dec 20, 2011 11:48 am

Shiru wrote:Famiclones use Famicom pirated cartidges, often in Japanese. So it is NTSC forced to display in PAL.

So the actual video is not NTSC?

Shiru · Post by **Shiru** » Tue Dec 20, 2011 11:54 am

Output is PAL, there are also (rare) Famiclones with SECAM output.

Beeper · Post by **Beeper** » Tue Dec 20, 2011 2:57 pm

Judging from comparing these 2 on a picture, athough on a Sega Genesis http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/21/ ... poshit.jpg http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/21/ ... poshit.jpg it seems that PAL picture is much higher quality. Is that correct also for the NES/Famiclones?

These pictures answer a lot for me through, it explains why I never saw the sort of wobbly color bleed and hideous blur artifacts on a PAL TV while some people seem to really love it. Seems the bad reputation of the NTSC is true.