Anyone here know how to get NES to use RGB SCART cables?

[Rock Man]

I'm very pleased to say I've found almost all of the perfect solutions to my game consoles. (Thanks in part to you guys! Plenty of generous people on this forum.) The only one that's giving me trouble is the NES...

The initial problem was with the HDTV upgrade, I couldn't get analog inputs to display any system in respectable quality except for Component and HDMI. AV looked whack and S-Video is trailing behind Component. So! What I did was bought a crap load of RGB SCART cables for all the high-tier machines that take it SNES, Genesis, Neo Geo, Saturn, etc. and use a converter to encode the signal to HDMI.

These systems are easily fixable, except Nintendo. The NES doesn't appear to have any kind of specific SCART cable. I was hoping you guys could either tell me how to mod my NES or if one of you lives in Philadelphia, I could bring my NES over and pay you to get my joint modded to emit pure RGB image. I'd prefer the latter because I know diddly-squat when it comes to modding game equipment, and I don't know how to solder.

So, any suggestions?

[PC Engine Fan X!]

It would entail getting a certain chip from a Nintendo PlayChoice 10 arcade PCB and modding the NES with it to output in glorious RGB. Ask fellow shmupper Arasoi as he's got an modded Famicom with RGB output. Only the hard-core NES gamers need to go this expensive RGB mod route though.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Ex-Cyber]

The RGB mod for NES involves completely replacing the PPU chip with an arcade version. Keep in mind before you commit yourself to this that the usual rule of RGB giving best color fidelity does not apply to NES. The RGB versions of these chips are essentially a hack, albeit an official one. The NES hardware was never designed for an RGB palette (it just divides and phase-shifts the master clock to generate the chroma waveform directly; selecting a color = selecting a phase), and there is no RGB mod I know of that actually gives accurate colors. Some of the chips used on the "vs." boards even have their palettes tweaked for the specific game. Some people consider the sacrifice of color accuracy to be worth it to get the most flexible signal (or simply prefer the RGB palette). I don't remember where it is, but someone (Chris Covell maybe?) had a web page comparing screenshots of composite vs. S-video vs. RGB.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

I've played Pinbot on a Playchoice 10 dedicated cab and it was finely tuned for maximum impact with an 15kHz arcade monitor setup. Of course, the sound output was in mono but it sounded much better than using a standard off-the-shelf NES console back in 1987-1988.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Ghegs]

I have an RGB modded Famicom and while I love it to bits, it was a horribly expensive piece of hardware to acquire. If you just want a scart plug, get a system that outputs composite and use an adapter.

[Rock Man]

Damn, so many tech experts here, my compliments.

Sacrificing the color, even by a slight, blows. But as long as it displays an awesome output... RGB SCART >>>>>>>>> RGB SCART Adapter, then it is what's preferred. Too bad this method seems ridiculously hard to a non-tech guy like myself.

I'm all for asking someone else to do it but only provided they live close. If there isn't anyone then I'll have to enter desperation mode and buy a cheap RGB Adapter off Ebay and settle for slightly lower than average quality as opposed to extremely crappy quality like I might get with straight up AV. Damn HDTV's and their sub-par, audio-visual exposures. HDTV's on old systems suck.

[Ex-Cyber]

I think I may have overemphasized the negatives. Just to be clear, the color inaccuracy isn't in the sense of complex signal degradation/interference issues as it is with using composite. The conversion is done entirely in the digital domain. It's just not quite the same colors that you're likely to get out of a stock NES, which makes some games look kind of weird (mostly oversaturated, IIRC). There's one other quirk I forgot to mention that makes a handful of games unplayable: the arcade PPUs have a broken implementation of the "color emphasis" bits. This affects very few games, though, and none I've heard of that are really considered classics of the platform.

[Ghegs]

I recalled there was discussion about this way back when and I had made some images (from emulator, but it's pretty accurate) to better show the "problem". Not all games have this, but some do, like this one:

Normal system:


RGB-modded:


So, when I play Kid Dracula on my FC...he's asian.

[Rock Man]

Good lookin' on the emulated comparison. Although the colors would look decent they appear to be too bright? It's troublesome but I will order the RGB Adapter and deal with the clarity problem.