NES shimmering over composite, can I fix in service menu?

[Brad251]

I have a Sony kv-24fv300 and I have my NES hooked up to it over composite. I know that you will always get some shimmering in the picture over composite but on my fv300, the shimmering makes me a little nauseous. It is particularly bad in games like Castlevania and Ikari Warriors. I'm guessing there isn't anything wrong with my fv300 nor my NES; I just think that the shimmering might be more prominent on my set because it is higher end and has such a sharp picture compared to a typical consumer set.

[Dochartaigh]

I have a Sony kv-24fv300 and I have my NES hooked up to it over composite. I know that you will always get some shimmering in the picture over composite but on my fv300, the shimmering makes me a little nauseous. It is particularly bad in games like Castlevania and Ikari Warriors. I'm guessing there isn't anything wrong with my fv300 nor my NES; I just think that the shimmering might be more prominent on my set because it is higher end and has such a sharp picture compared to a typical consumer set.

What do you mean by shimmering? Artifacts/dirtyness due to it being hooked up via composite (like some halo-ish dirt on the edge of where two colors meet and such)? Or shimmering as in the image wobbling (usually up and down quickly)? The latter is usually bad caps, and/or a bad power supply on the NES.

[NUeda]

I have a different model of sony wega TV and it has "3D comb" settings in service menu. I would try looking for something similar in your TV and tinker with that. But your mileage will vary because the TV is re-constructing color from video signal that has low color resolution. On my TV, the shimmering can be reduced but the pixels don't look 100% clean. I hope your TV performs better.

edit:
I just remembered something called "velocity modulation" in sony CRT TV's.
Perhaps try disabling "VM" in picture settings (not service menu), that should prevent thick outlines getting added to every shape on screen. It's supposed to make blurry shapes in the source image look like they have outlines, but when the video source is 240p retro game, things can look very wrong.

[FinalBaton]

Yeah those sets really give you a good look at the NES' dot crawl. It's shimmer galore when backgrounds scroll.

On my KV-36FV300, I haven't found a way to make it less apparent. I haven't played much with the comb filter setting of the service menu though, maybe that could help, as NUeda suggested.

The comb filter on the set is very aggressive in it's sharpening, for lack of technical terms, and that's what amplifies the shimmering, is my guess. But that got it's advantages : the picture is very well defined/detailed and clear on the NES' picture.

In comparison, my other Sony consumer set (KV-25XBR) has a less detailed composite picture, but the shimmering in scrolling backgrounds is less apparent. and the color and contrast are better.



Hopefully you can find a/some setting(s) that alleviate this. Keep tweaking!