NTSC Saturn SCART display weirdness

[ubersaurus]

I'm hoping someone can help me figure this one out, because I'm stumped.

For our anniversary, my girlfriend got me one of those SCART to Component converters on Amazon, and a friend of mine gave me a spare Euro SCART Sega Saturn cable he had, so I figured I'd give it a whirl. The colors are great, and the menus look fine, but the display in game is a bit off on my CRT Sony Wega.

I tried it in Galactic Attack first, and the right side of the in-game screen is cut off (as it should be, since it's in standard display mode) but the right side display keeps on going - as in, I could see past the left edge of the background asteroid in the first stage. Tried X-Men vs. Street Fighter next, and both sides keep going past the edge of the display - the characters can basically half-vanish into the side of the TV.

I don't know the specifics of the cable my friend got other than it came from http://www.consolegoods.co.uk/. Anyone able to help me figure this one out? I won't have a Genesis on hand to test another SCART cable out with until later this week.

[chempop]

Maybe you need to make some adjustments in the Sony TV’s service menu. It’s easy enough and sounds like it’ll do the trick. I think I own the same scart>YUV box and didn’t notice any vastly different geometry compared to the s-video cables I had used before, but I’m always messing with the HPOS/VPOS and HSIZ/VSIZ to get things just right.

[ubersaurus]

I checked the TV menus a bit last night, but didn't really see any option to adjust the vertical or horizontal. The best I can do is adjust picture tilt or set it to "enhanced 16:9 mode," which in practice just squishes the display - in X-Men vs. SF they still will go off the sides of the screen even with that active. And that doesn't really explain what's going on with Galactic Attack, either.

Could there be a pin issue on the cable itself?

[muckyfingers]

I checked the TV menus a bit last night, but didn't really see any option to adjust the vertical or horizontal. The best I can do is adjust picture tilt or set it to "enhanced 16:9 mode," which in practice just squishes the display - in X-Men vs. SF they still will go off the sides of the screen even with that active. And that doesn't really explain what's going on with Galactic Attack, either.

Could there be a pin issue on the cable itself?

You need to enter into the SERVICE menu, not the regular menu.

Try this:

Enter this key sequence into the remote while the set it powered down:

Display
5
volume+
power

when the set powers up, it should be in service mode.
use the following keys for navigation

1 = go to next setting
4 = go to previous setting

3 = change the setting up
6 = change the setting down

also, some projection TV's use these keys
2 = page up (skips a group of settings)
5 = page down (skip to previous group)
8 = activate / deactivate pattern generator & scroll through patterns

muting = save option to ROM

or these key sequences (while off) if the first didn't work

[DISP], [5], [PWR ON]

-or-

[DISP], [5], [VOL+], [PICTURE], [PWR ON]


Once in the service menu you can check out this link for details on all the options.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070525032 ... .html#warn

[Einzelherz]

Be careful messing with service menus. Make sure you write down the settings before you change them.

The cable shouldn't affect the position or size of the display, it only outputs colors and sync info. This may sound dumb, but are you in 4:3 mode on your TV, assuming it's a widescreen?

In general, each system has a different amount of overscan, but this seems quite drastic.

[ubersaurus]

The TV is a 4:3 standard def set - not a widescreen display. I don't actually own the remote to this, just a universal one... But before I go messing around in there I would rather double check some other system's scart cables, or try out my friend's Saturn one. I brought up the pin just because I read pin 8 handles aspect ratio and rgb forcing on the Saturn, neither of which seem like they'd be relevant for this setup.

[Einzelherz]

My scart to component converter from amazon, which is a CSY-2100 clone and looks like this:

http://www.amazon.com/SPECIALTY-AV-SCAR ... B004XSSDPO

doesn't use any signals except R, G, B, S and ground. Most of the extra pins are for actual devices that use scart, like TVs and VCRs.

[ubersaurus]

My scart to component converter from amazon, which is a CSY-2100 clone and looks like this:

http://www.amazon.com/SPECIALTY-AV-SCAR ... B004XSSDPO

doesn't use any signals except R, G, B, S and ground. Most of the extra pins are for actual devices that use scart, like TVs and VCRs.

That's the same one I use, yeah. I just tried the converter with a Genesis SCART and it displays fine - no funky display weirdness like the Saturn. I'm leaning toward it being an issue with that cable more and more now...

[muckyfingers]

My scart to component converter from amazon, which is a CSY-2100 clone and looks like this:

http://www.amazon.com/SPECIALTY-AV-SCAR ... B004XSSDPO

doesn't use any signals except R, G, B, S and ground. Most of the extra pins are for actual devices that use scart, like TVs and VCRs.

That's the same one I use, yeah. I just tried the converter with a Genesis SCART and it displays fine - no funky display weirdness like the Saturn. I'm leaning toward it being an issue with that cable more and more now...

You don't see the issue with the genesis because the games are programmed with overscan in mind. If you were to adjust your tv service menu so that you saw all of the picture for your Saturn games, then were to play sonic on the genesis you will see a blue border around the whole picture which overscan usually hides.

[Einzelherz]

Can you post some pictures of the issue? I'm still having trouble figuring out the problem.

[ubersaurus]

Well, I just tried to, but after readjusting the cable connection to the Saturn I couldn't get the funky display out of Galactic Attack again. Baffling, but I'm not really going to complain.