Hi, I've been lurking silently on these forums for a while, reading bits here and there and generally trying to absorb as much knowledge as I can.
What with the next Zelda game likely to be the Gamecube's swan song, I thought it was about time I paid attention to my video setup and give the console a good send-off by squeezing the best possible picture out. A search on these forums brings up a lot of hits for the Gamecube and the various ways you can extract a video signal out of it, a fair amount of which I have read. However, as a relative A/V novice, I'm still finding it hard to determine what the optimum setup is (within reason - no plasma or projection for me).
As expected from someone with little experience in this area, all I have is a PAL cube, PAL games (but I do have a couple of US ones and a copy of Freeloader), and SCART leads. The TV I typically use is a standard CRT affair, which I has treated me well so far. Recently we purchased a 30" Samsung LCD (the one people seem to be nuts about on avfourms.com). Normal TV on the LCD is great, but the picture coming out of the Gamecube over SCART was awful.
In an attempt to find out how I could improve the picture quality, I have been trying to learn about all the different cables, video formats, etc. Collating all this info from the net has been a little difficult for me, but I'm just about getting to grips with it. A lot of what I've read seems to point towards an NTSC console+game and component leads for the best possible picture, so I have been looking at said cables and an imported Gamecube.
Then I thought "is buying a console for the sake of one game taking fanboyism a step too far?" Further research seemed to indicate that I'd be able to achieve the same quality with my PAL cube running an NTSC game through Freeloader/modchipping, a component signal, and a TV set that supported progressive scan. I've checked my cube for the necessary digital out port, which it has, so I've been eyeing up component cables.
My real confusion is over the difference between a progressive scan image (480p?), and PAL 60. I'm not sure if I'm making a valid comparison here, but does an NTSC progressive scan at a lower resolution of 480 lines really look better than PAL's 576 lines at 60Hz? As it's fairly likely the UK release of Twilight Princess will support PAL60, do I even need to import? Mind you, if Nintendo plan on releasing it much earlier in the US, then of course I'm importing.
Of course, it's always possible that perhaps the Samsung isn't great at displaying anything that comes out of a Gamecube, so perhaps I should be looking back at my CRT? Finally, assuming I keep all my PAL gear, and buy a PAL copy of the game, would a component cable be a worthwhile investment? From what I've read on these forums, some seem to think so, but others disagree.
Thanks for reading, but in case it was all TL;DR ? How do I make Zelda look good?
What with the next Zelda game likely to be the Gamecube's swan song, I thought it was about time I paid attention to my video setup and give the console a good send-off by squeezing the best possible picture out. A search on these forums brings up a lot of hits for the Gamecube and the various ways you can extract a video signal out of it, a fair amount of which I have read. However, as a relative A/V novice, I'm still finding it hard to determine what the optimum setup is (within reason - no plasma or projection for me).
As expected from someone with little experience in this area, all I have is a PAL cube, PAL games (but I do have a couple of US ones and a copy of Freeloader), and SCART leads. The TV I typically use is a standard CRT affair, which I has treated me well so far. Recently we purchased a 30" Samsung LCD (the one people seem to be nuts about on avfourms.com). Normal TV on the LCD is great, but the picture coming out of the Gamecube over SCART was awful.
In an attempt to find out how I could improve the picture quality, I have been trying to learn about all the different cables, video formats, etc. Collating all this info from the net has been a little difficult for me, but I'm just about getting to grips with it. A lot of what I've read seems to point towards an NTSC console+game and component leads for the best possible picture, so I have been looking at said cables and an imported Gamecube.
Then I thought "is buying a console for the sake of one game taking fanboyism a step too far?" Further research seemed to indicate that I'd be able to achieve the same quality with my PAL cube running an NTSC game through Freeloader/modchipping, a component signal, and a TV set that supported progressive scan. I've checked my cube for the necessary digital out port, which it has, so I've been eyeing up component cables.
My real confusion is over the difference between a progressive scan image (480p?), and PAL 60. I'm not sure if I'm making a valid comparison here, but does an NTSC progressive scan at a lower resolution of 480 lines really look better than PAL's 576 lines at 60Hz? As it's fairly likely the UK release of Twilight Princess will support PAL60, do I even need to import? Mind you, if Nintendo plan on releasing it much earlier in the US, then of course I'm importing.
Of course, it's always possible that perhaps the Samsung isn't great at displaying anything that comes out of a Gamecube, so perhaps I should be looking back at my CRT? Finally, assuming I keep all my PAL gear, and buy a PAL copy of the game, would a component cable be a worthwhile investment? From what I've read on these forums, some seem to think so, but others disagree.
Thanks for reading, but in case it was all TL;DR ? How do I make Zelda look good?
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