RGB horizontal shifts on crt's

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Taiyaki
Posts: 1050
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2014 11:31 pm

RGB horizontal shifts on crt's

Post by Taiyaki »

Does anyone else have these or is it a relic of old cables (all of mine are about 5 or more years old)?

I used to get my cables from the 2013~2014 era Retro Access cables on ebay, and they were seemingly well built and didn't give me any trouble but they did shift the picture horizontally, mostly to the left an inch or so. I used a mix of composite video, csync and sync on luma (and all consoles are American except for the SNES which is Japanese) but not sure that matters.

I remember first using them on my BVM's and being able to adjust for the difference on each console individually thanks to the different channels those monitors offer. No such luck on PVM's and consumer tv's. This was on unmodded consoles to boot. At the time I thought it was due to the very early gscartsw I used but according to Superg that's not the problem.

When I do some searching on google I see a lot of other gamers have encountered this but they don't go into their setup enough to pin down what might be causing it. Why would RGB be so fussy on the horizontal pos? No other cable ever causes these issues (Composite, S-Video, Component etc). :?
Taiyaki
Posts: 1050
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2014 11:31 pm

Re: RGB horizontal shifts on crt's

Post by Taiyaki »

Actually come to think of it I didn't ever spend much time connecting RGB Scart to consumer tubes cause the YUV encoder (CSY clone) I used gave off bad colors and S-video gives such a fantastic image on my FD Sony tubes I figured why bother (better colors than through the encoder too), so I can't say with certainty this happens on those tv's (I'll have to try it out again to see). But definitely happens on BVM/PVM's.
Classicgamer
Posts: 873
Joined: Thu Sep 11, 2014 3:37 pm

Re: RGB horizontal shifts on crt's

Post by Classicgamer »

It's nothing to do with cables. It's the different timings of each console. I remember in the 90's, my Neo Geo was always shifted to the left and my Megadrive was shifted right.

There is no way of making it perfect for every machine without adjusting the H shift for each console. That's why I use an arcade monitor.
Taiyaki
Posts: 1050
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2014 11:31 pm

Re: RGB horizontal shifts on crt's

Post by Taiyaki »

Gosh, so this was completely normal. :(
Why do these timings not affect other connections such as Component or S-video?

That's a pretty good reason to stick with those connections on consumer tv's then. That's just too troublesome when you're dealing with a dozen systems to have to adjust the h pos for each one of them every time you switch systems...
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