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Console Image Quality Guide
Jakub writes "We've posted a comprehensive guide on how to improve your console's image quality. It covers everything from the various connectors through cables to fine-tuning by modifying sharpness and brightness. Though the article uses the prolific PlayStation 2 as an example, it applies equally well to all video devices."
My console is text-only. Are these console-images a new feature in the Linux 8.0 that just came out?
Fleur de Sel
I think those would be a good start. If they don't help, try:
If after following these steps your image quality hasn't improved, consider taking the console back for a refund. Or better yet, just send it to me and I'll take care of it for you.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
This really isn't about improving your image quality. This article is one giant add for monster cable. When you buy monster cable you not only pay for cable you also pay for advertising. There are other good cables out there.
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Screws: Righty-tighty or do they work better if you use hammers?
If you want to get your TV perfectly calibrated, hire a professional. Second best thing to do is pick up Avia's Video Essentials. I would definitely take this "guide" with a grain of salt. They gloss over one of the most important issues of video calibration, which is that you have to calibrate it with the amount of ambient light that would normally be present with normal usage.
Also, they could HEAR the difference between two different TOSLINK cables? Gimme a break. Sounds like a sponsored ad for Monster cable, whom audiophiles know is a rip-off anyways.
Not sure which one to buy, but apparently (and according to everyone in the office who bought it - damn my television's 1 S-Video!) the difference between RCA and S-Video is nothing short of stunning. Not sure if the monster cable is worth however much extra they get over the Microsoft (or generic) kit, but if you have the ability, get the S-Video cable.
Now if it only helped the gameplay...
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
I like a little bit of a less than perfect image on my tv because it gives it a little bit of an antialiased look smoothing out some of the blocky edges that you get when you tweak everything. Sure a nice sharp image is great for 2D stuff but just the little bit of blur looks nice for 3D.
Damn M$, And thanks, SlashDot, for setting me straight yet again!
I can't even get to the article, but it seems pretty simple.
Don't use the composite video cables that came with your system. All kinds of TVs from 19" on up now ship with S-Video and even Component inputs (JVC ships a 20", 25", and 27" TV with component-in), so if you're anywhere near being in the market for a TV, there's no reason why you shouldn't be getting one with those inputs. $25 gets you the Sony-brand component cables, ditto for Nintendo (although you have to order them off of Nintendo's website). XBox component cables have been a little cheaper, $20 at most places, but the cables themselves look kind of cheap.
While the difference between S-Video and Component isn't quite as pronounced (I mostly only see the difference in the colors, not in the fidelity of the picture), the difference between composite and either of the upper-tier inputs is enormously pronounced. On larger televisions in particular (32" and up), you can see very pronounced scan lines and blurriness of the image when using composite cables. The Nintendo Gamecube can give you a great demonstration fo this fact. The back of the unit has the standard video-out and then the "digital-out" port where the component video hooks in. You have to have both jacks connected and active, since the video is only fed on the component port, and the analog audio is still fed along with the composite video. Hook up both signals, turn on a game, and just flip back and forth between component and composite. You'll see what I mean.
As one reader noted it would have been interesting if they actually wrote about something other than cables, eg how to set up your TV/HDTV/projector to make things look as good as possible, how VGA-boxes compare and so forth. And as far as I am concerned, Monster Cable are not by far the only manufacturer of high-end cables. Interact make some good stuff too, and about a million Hong Kong-manufacturers have different budget variants that will improve your results, if not by as much.
More specifically, a note that while MC do produce S-Video cables for all recent consoles, the PAL GameCubes do not support this kind of output, and thus a little test of RGB-Scarts wouldn't have been such a bad idea, eh? Especially considering that more people have Scart/Euro-connectors than S-video on their TVs, and that an RGB-Scart is easily on par with S-video output.
Since most people also only have one "good" Scart input on their TV set, a little write-up on different Scart-splitters and how they affect the quality would have been nice too.
Well, well, just a few thoughts. I guess we'll have to test these things ourselves, seeing as they who wrote the article are sponsored by MC and not interested in alternatives, which the consumer always is...
"If you go to the next town, going across a desert is a shorter way." - Pu-Li-Ru-La (Taito)
I had a spare 21" monitor here, so I thought it would be nice to buy a vga adaptor for my playstation 2.
It's definately not worth the money:
-some games were black/white, it had something to do with the pal/ntsc switching of the console.
-the games that were displayed in color were in some sort of scanlined resolution on the monitor with a very low refresh-rate.
-there was no way to tweak the settings.
A couple months later I bought a better scart adaptor for my television set, which made the image a lot clearer and I gave the monitor to my little brother.
And any true audiophile who has done a blind test (switching the cables on their system using EXACTLY the same speakers/reciever/amps) will tell you that cables aren't important and that the rest of the audiophiles have been fed a line.
Any such audiophile who does research on the physics of cables will come up with the knowledge that the very, very, slight benefits of higher end cables can only be achieved at lengths of greater than about HALF A MILE.
You can argue this 'till you're blue in the face, of course, but I suggest that instead you use the scientific method: hook your cheap cables and your good cables up to a switch so that all the other equipment is the same. See if it makes any difference whatsoever.
I have a friend with a LOT of monster cable who became a bit depressed after this test, because he owned a LOT of Monster cable. He could have spent the money on even more expensive speakers to actually improve his sound.
Qualifier: there is a difference between shielded and unshielded, twisted pair, and straight. However, there is very little difference between Radio Shack 16 gauge shielded, twisted pair and Monster 16 gauge shielded, twisted pair.
My qualifications: I've been a sound technician for 9 years now, and a musician for 17 years. I can play four instruments, have a vocal range of three octaves. I have worked VERY hard to have a critical ear over this time period, and I think I do.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!