Would the modern "gamer" take to a re-release NES?

[D]

What's this talk about EDTV? I thought scan-doubling was the devil and true low res was god here?

Ignoring conversion lag, which is one reason to want native support of a given resolution . . .

progressive lo-res > progressive hi-res > interlaced hi-res

the last, worst choice is all you get with a stock NES, correct?

? IS the Dreamcast not the first console that runs interlaced? 480i.
The Saturn (and playstation) had some interlaced games.
Saturn: Virtua Fighter, Dead or Alive
Everything before that was 240p, right?

note* The Dreamcast has 480p for almost every single game by using vga cable

[nZero]

The SFC/SNES has a rarely used pseudo hi-res mode that runs interlaced.

[trivial]

you are right, the nes is 240p, sorry

How? Without a Vs. chip or scan converter?

Saturn can be made to output 15KHz progressive RGB, sure.

[ED-057]

? IS the Dreamcast not the first console that runs interlaced? 480i.
The Saturn (and playstation) had some interlaced games.
Saturn: Virtua Fighter, Dead or Alive
Everything before that was 240p, right?

Yeah, pretty much. 240p has scanlines, that's probably the easiest way to tell it apart from 480i. (the difference in the signals is the timing of the v-sync pulse.)

The normal NES video output has a separate "flicker" issue though because they used a square wave for the color carrier instead of a sine. Since the color freq. is less (2/3) than the pixel freq. some pixels can be shown with the wrong color, but only on every other frame because the phase alternates between frames.

[orange]

the rerelease nes will go along perfect with this cool nes belt buckle and "know your roots" tshirt i have did i mention i am really indie and old school video games are my favorite

[antron]

you are right, the nes is 240p, sorry

How? Without a Vs. chip or scan converter?

Saturn can be made to output 15KHz progressive RGB, sure.

it doesn't need to be RGB to be 240p.

[bakaichi]

I've already got a NES and it works perfect so I won't need a new one.

[trivial]

it doesn't need to be RGB to be 240p.

Okay; if you're talking about some representation of 240p that is native inside the NES, how does one put it to use outside? Without introducing a frame or two of lag? By obtaining a Playchoice / Vs. video chip, rite?

A clone with a rehash of that chip featuring YUV might sell enough to pay the foundry.

[ED-057]

Okay; if you're talking about some representation of 240p that is native inside the NES, how does one put it to use outside?

by connecting it to a TV. It's low-res and it's progressive scan, therefore 240p. There's nothing else to it. An Atari 2600 is also 240p.

The benefit of the playchoice chip is RGB output instead of composite. It's still the same scan rate.

[trivial]

If flicker meant nothing, you'd almost be correct. There's a half-pixel of uncertainty as to everything's static vertical position, too. Changes to vertical position add more uncertainty on top of that.

I used to have a Trident VGA card with TV-out and a DOS utility that enabled very primitive antiflicker by halving the vertical rez displayed on the TV. But vertical scrolling in MCGA games still looked flickery! Is that because of the 200 - 240 discrepancy?

[antron]

If flicker meant nothing, you'd almost be correct. There's a half-pixel of uncertainty as to everything's static vertical position, too. Changing vertical position adds more uncertainty on top of that.

and that goes away when you use rgb? is that what you mean?

[trivial]

No. There is no RGB to use without a Playchoice chip. Read the edit to my previous post and tell me what you think. I wish I still had that card to play with.

[ED-057]

There's a half-pixel of uncertainty as to everything's static vertical position, too. Changes to vertical position add more uncertainty on top of that.

No, there is no "uncertainty." Either the lines are scanned in the same place every frame (progressive scan, like all the old consoles), or they alternate up and down (interlaced).

It's possible to use interlaced timing even when you're only displaying a low-res image, so the same lines get displayed during both fields and appear flickery. But this is limitted to a few cases not including the NES (I believe X68000 was mentioned, some ports for newer consoles, etc.) If you had an MSX2 it would be easy to see by turning on interlace mode under BASIC.

I used to have a Trident VGA card with TV-out and a DOS utility that enabled very primitive antiflicker by halving the vertical rez displayed on the TV. But vertical scrolling in MCGA games still looked flickery! Is that because of the 200 - 240 discrepancy?

First, did the picture have scanlines? If not, it wasn't really progressive scan. Usually, anti-flicker filters just soften the image in the vertical direction. Second, if the card was rescaling the 200 lines to fill more or less of the display area on a TV that would cause noticable artifacts, particularly during scrolling. Third, good old mode 13h (MCGA, standard VGA 320x200x8bit) only allows a single frame buffer so tearing is apt to occur unless the program is written carefully and the PC and video card are fast enough to stay ahead of the beam. Last but not least, mode 13h runs at 70hz! so on a 60hz TV, some frames will have to be dropped.

[trivial]

Alternating up and down IS uncertainty if what you're displaying is considered progressive, especially if anything animates up or down! It is inarguably distortion unless:
1) phosphors glow at full brightness for more than an entire 30Hz interlace frame, or
2) Vertical dot pitch is over twice what it should be.

A wretched display for twitchy games, in other words.

On my Trident card, of course 480i scanlines were visible with TV out. There's no avoiding them on an NTSC SDTV.

I promise you this card, in DOS, does not merely blur everything vertically like most cards with TV-out. It wouldn't have been worth mentioning if it did. "Tearing" as when V-sync is disabled within Windows is not an adequate description of the display artifacts I saw using this card under DOS with its odd "antiflicker" enabled, either.

I'm going to hunt one down again sometime before 32-bit, 33MHz PCI becomes a legacy feature. Its VESA VBE will resolve my remaining questions.

[ED-057]

Alternating up and down IS uncertainty if what you're displaying is considered progressive

if it's alternating up and down then it's not progressive.

On my Trident card, of course 480i scanlines were visible with TV out.

480i doesn't have scanlines, 240p does. Scanlines are the unscanned (dark) areas between the lines resulting from having a dot pitch that is small enough for 480 lines.