ZTylerDurden wrote:
In terms of retro home consoles in the US, why didn't we care about tapping into RGB back then and now we do?
nmalinoski wrote:
Probably a combination of things, like Internet culture still being in its infancy, and RGB and/or SCART not being made available. The way I understand it, no one here really knew about RGB in a consumer/gaming context, so I imagine there wasn't much demand for it.
theclaw wrote:
It took a very, very long time in gaming terms for the bare minimum to catch up. Master System was among the first RGB ready consoles in the US, a full twenty years later PS3 still gave only composite in the box.
1. Consumer TV sets did not have an RGB input. Svideo wasn't even a common thing until the mid 90's.
2. VHS players generally did not have enough picture fidelity to take advantage of the higher bandwidth of svideo, so why create an input on a TV set that provides little to no improvement over composite? (SVHS did have higher picture fidelity, but it was not common and pre-recorded movies generally didn't exist on it) It wasn't until DVD that svideo turned from a nice-to-have to a must-have
3. It's also true that the MPAA conspired with manufacturers in the US to keep high fidelity analog devices out of the commercial market to curb piracy. The industry had already seen it with music, so they knew that high quality pirate copies of movies was a real potential issue for them.
4. Given all these factors (and those mentioned by the previous posters) you have to realize that most gamers in the 80's and 90's were just kids. We didn't exactly have much of a voice to ask for RGB hookups, and were basically pleased with our NES and SNES with composite at the time. I never complained about the composite image when I got to have friends over to play Contra all night and drink root beer.
5. After the 90's happened, and LCD tech was in full swing, we all became increasingly aware of image quality variance. The transitional period of EDTV resolutions and all of the aspect ratio shifts and debacles drew attention to the essential practice of optimizing images, and CRTs became a target for those that longed for the nostalgia of the original equipment.