Emulation w/Xbox on HDTV
 

Need some help from AV Geeks, hopefully someone who may know a bit about console emulation as well.

I’m currently emulating several old game consoles from an original Xbox. Originally I had this hooked up to an old non HD TV with composite cables (came with the OG Xbox).

Now due to space constraints I have the Xbox hooked up to an older HD TV, and the Tube TV is packed away. With the bigger screen and the composite cables, the 8/16/ bit games look a bit crappy. So I have been doing some research in SCART, S video, and Component cables. I’m a little lost.

My goal is to have a bit better image quality from the Xbox to the HDTV, cleaning up the emulated games a bit. From the reading I have done, it looks like SCART would provide the best image, but it also seems a bit complicated with adapters and such needed. Component seems like it should be a step up from composite, at least in normal circumstances.

So my question is, will plug and play component cables provide a notable increase in image quality to an HD TV from the OG Xbox, even while running something like a NES emulator and an 8bit game? I don’t see why it wouldn't, but maybe I’m missing something?

Still looking into this, sounds like Component is actually better than SCART so no point in trying to make that work on a console that will work with component.

I cant see why this wouldn't clean up the emulation as its cleaning up the over all signal to the TV, but if I run into problems when I do it Ill post up again.

In case anyone is looking into this in the future, yes the component cables make a world of difference, even while emulating 8 or 16 bit games.

Its actually the best I have ever seen these games look, so question answered.

iirc component is basically same quality as HDMI, just analog instead of digital.
this could be a insert foot a into mouth b moment though haha

the reason old school games look like crap on modern TVs is due to the fact that old school tube tvs have something called scan lines. if u pay attention to the graphics on a tube tv, ull see these blk lines running across the TV, this is used to smooth out the pixels, think of it as an old school form of anti aliasing

take a look at this video that demonstrates the big difference scan lines made on old school graphics


i actually stumbled across this when playing FF8 on my computer where the graphics sucked donkey balls n found out there were software mods that added the scan lines to make the graphics look better. unfortunately since u r playing on a console, ur only solution would be some kind of hardware device like the one in the youtube video to add scan lines back in

Looking at the clarity between the SD AV cords or the Component cords played on an HD TV (only running 480 out of an original xbox) the difference is pretty obvious.

I'm sure I could get it better if i wanted to put more work into (adding scan lines?), but it looks good enough that I wont bother taking it further.

I'm not sure how much the emulator itself is helping (or not) in this case with the picture quality.

I'm looking into trying to build another original Xbox and emulate old consoles and coin ops with it, I might figure it out a bit better then. Not very tech savvy so its all a bit above my head, I'm just stumbling through.

EDIT
Watched some of that video, crazy how much definition that adds. Too much work for my purposes though I think. Trying to figure out how to softmod an Xbox and install XMBC and Emulators/roms will be enough of a challenge. As I said, not very tech Savvy lol.

from the video, u dont need to be any tech savvy to add those scan lines in, its purely a piece of hardware that connects between ur xbox and TV, looks to be plug and play + flip a switch to make it work. im sure modding ur xbox and trying to figure out the emulator is harder than adding the scan lines in. from the video, the scan line device is just a single device, all the other boxes seems to be just converters converting 1 king of plug into another, thats y it seems confusing to u