I still remember Taran campaigning for adobe to add nearest neighbor scaling, and asking viewers to vote for that feature request in the adobe forums or something.
That was merely a tweet, not a request on an LMG channel. But, here's the request: adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/suggestions/37024072-nearest-neighbor-scaling-sampling-simple-and-v -Taran
I guess I'm in the minority here; I remember the old, bulky CRT's these games were meant for, and just how blurry those things could be (especially after decades of heavy use). Bi-cubic and higher do still blur the image too much, but I find that a simple bi-linear algorithm, paired with a basic scanline overlay for 240p, can provide a rather convincing effect. Those games weren't meant to be blurred into oblivion, but they weren't made for sharp digital displays. 480p (and even 480i) games, while not HD, were sharp enough to look decent with the default upscaling methods but still, ironically, look much sharper on blurry analog displays.
Not sure what you're trying to explain. The reason CRTs look sharper is because at low resolution, the electron gun literally skips lines when drawing frames, and that's known as "scan lines". When you draw an image with scan lines it creates the illusion that it was originally twice as sharp and then cut in half
well yeah wii are very old... only people still had it in tv shelf is old people who just want so swing in front of tv... which not that many... well swich can do the same thing but alot of people just do fit ring... sad...
@@frogger1555 yeah he was there, but how many videos were just him as the main host? in other vids it was just, hey its taran, he edits videos, and uses crazy shortcut and hotkeys to do it
Great video, but even if you have perfect pixel replication it won’t look like your memories. Why? Because TVs in the 90s couldn’t replicate perfect pixels. They could do native resolution, but you often had scan lines, comb filters, and other issues associated with CRTs that would cause a natural blur to the games. This made the art look smooth, which developers knew about when they designed the art. In essence, a bit of blur on the pixel art was expected. Don’t believe me? Play an SNES game on a good old fashioned CRT with S-video and then play a modern pixel art game.
I'd settle for modern retro gamers just accepting dithering as a way to extend a limited palette, and not something most of us ever saw. Also, it'd be great if they'd figure out how to display Capcom arcade titles in the correct 4:3 aspect ratio. Or if they'd realize that the warm glow of CRT scanlines doesn't make an image darker.
This has why it annoys me so much when I hear retro games complain about all the filters when playing pixel art games nowadays. Sure, I think some of these filters grossly overdo it (like in the mobile versions of Final Fantasy 4-6), but there absolutely WAS filtering when playing games back in the day. You did not see every individual pixel! Do people just not remember what it was like to play games on a CRT?
@@km_studios Yup, this exactly. Actually I think it's the opposite with early 3D games like N64, these look way better with modern enhancements like 60 fps and sharper resolution, and a modern screen. But it were the CRTs technical limitations that made pesudo-3D games like Donkey Kong Country look like magic.
Good call on the My Life in Gaming shoutout. Their RGB series is fantastic for anyone looking for the best picture with their retro systems, be it CRT or modern TVs
i still remember when i fell into the deep rabbit hole of purist retro gaming. its an expensive hobby and gets old fast when you arent nostalgic for most of the old games..
@@unlovableshinshin If you're in Europe using microcomputer (for the Amiga or MSX for example) screens with SCART input are just as good for normal use, and WAY cheaper and easier to use. PVM's and BVM's are overrated. Even a good Sony frame is great for normal use, and if you know what models you look for they can often be gotten for free. (again, if you live in europe, seeing as SCART is quite important)
Bicubic looks more like it did on those old TVs. Remember the old TVs were 480i, fuzzy, a degree of motion blur due to the fade time and the way the CRT scanned the image across the screen. Most the blurring functions of these TVs and emulators make it look like it did back then. We couldn't see the individual pixels on old fuzzy screens.
Motion blur is actually more of an issue with modern flat screen TVs. If you have a chance to do so, just compare a smooth and fast side scroller on both. On the CRT you can easily 'lock onto' details while they are scrolling, on the flat screen they become doubled/ghosting/blurry/smeary and hard to lock on to with your eyes.
@@Usabell I'm not talking about motion blur I'm talking about the fuzzy nature of the screen itself. The screen was energized by the electron stream and that actually takes a moment to fade. Motion was smoother on CRT than early LCDs for sure, I'm talking about a paused screen with Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog on it, you could not see the stair stepped spikey hair on the CRT TV, you could on the old computer monitors.
It's very interesting and informative, however for retro gaming specifically, it would have been prudent to mention that as a gamer you were almost certainly playing these retro titles for the first time on a CRT monitor. Those pixel sprites would never appear as crisp as the images ripped straight from the code you see displayed in the modern era. In fact, some artists for NES/SNES games accounted for this CRT phenomenon and used sub-pixeling to make better graphics. Playing with ultra crisp sprites is fine, but its only a preference, and should be understood to not really be the most authentic experience as to how the game would have been consumed on release.
The crisp sprites are what were hiding behind the shadow mask of a CRT all along. And yeah, it's a charming look. I considered talking about CRT scaling, but chose not to, as we have other videos about CRTs. With all the "backlash" in the comments, now I wish I'd at least mentioned it.
Totally agree 👍 I hate ultra sharp pixels, I aim to get it as close to a CRT as possible, as originally intended... But if your into sharp pixels, that's your decision 👍 all the power to ya🤙
@@TaranVH But no human ever saw that behind-the-shadow-mask version. The graphics of games designed for CRTs were designed to be viewed on CRTs with all the artifacts inherent in them. Super blocky pixel art is a fine aesthetic, but I disagree that it's a more authentic experience.
@@TaranVH But they were never intended to be seen that way. Sprites and models were made specifically under the idea that there were gaps that the CRT's blurriness would fill in. Ultra sharp pixels, whilst preferrable by some, are not at all the intended form even from the development standpoint. The crisp sprites, to the developers, were incomplete.
I was going to say exactly this. I really don't like the super sharp square-shaped pixels that are so razor-sharp it pierces my eyes. That's why I play retro games on a CRT monitor, as it looks and feels much smoother, responsive, rounded and still not as blurry or pixelated as modern TVs, emulators or other solutions make it look like.
jvalex18 plus everyone has moved over to the ossc, retrotink 2x and framemeister for retro console scaling because they are superior in EVERY way to ANY TV’s scaling, yes, even for vhs tapes! Framemeister makes an INCREDIBLE job with 480i content, it is low lag and the result is stunning for PS2 for example as well as VHS tapes! (OSSC is pretty trash on 480i, uses bob and bob isn’t, well, pretty?? and the difference is of a milisecond so why bother with ossc 480i? Retrotink’s 480i scaling is okay at best to me), but all three options offer less than 1 ms of lag for the scaling, and they support 240p, 480i, 288p, 576i, 480p, 576p etc.... (too many supported resolutions without problems!)
The comment about nearest neighbour giving you the sharpest pixels "which make pixel art look good" made me cringe. Games of that era were designed for CRTs where at least some blurring would naturally occur, and the art was often designed around it. I find pixel art tends to look its best on an actual CRT or through a decent CRT shader. The blur from modern TVs does look awful with older games, though!
I've seen this a lot lately, the idea that the "best image" for old console games like SNES is razor sharp pixel images. However, this isn't how we experienced these games when they came out. Practically everyone played these games on a CRT of some sort, and CRTs did not present these games with razor sharp pixel images like modern flat screens do today. There was some rounding and blurring of the image that caused the graphics to look, well, less pixelated. You see, back then it wasn't considered a good thing for games to look pixelated in appearance. It was better for them to look smooth and blended with some sharpness, but not too sharp to look pixelated. Nowadays, though, it seems that everyone into retro gaming thinks these games were made to be viewed in as sharp and pixelated a form as possible, but this wasn't generally possible or desirable back then. When I play an SNES game on an emulator on a flat screen with the game perfectly sharp and pixelated it's just not the same experience as it once was. I feel bad for kids growing up today who only know flat panels and pixelated art. They don't know what it was like back then, unless perhaps they watch some video or look at some game magazines from back then like EGM, Game Pro, Nintendo Power, etc.
Yep. The very reason why back in the day i prefer gba emulator than nogba. The blurry make it feel like blended image and more pleasant to watch. I think old crt each pixel light overlap each other so the dark line of dot become thinner. and bright line more visible.
Completely agreed. I felt like cringing when he said that the sharp pixels is what makes pixel art look good. Pixel art for home console games in the analogue video era was always expected to blur to at least a certain extent. Even with RGB SCART or component you still benefit from some softness, and details which otherwise look like discrete blocks on an LCD or OLED will end up blurring together to give a more natural image which implies more detail. There are arguments to be made among CRT enthusiasts as to whether you should chase after RGB/component output or composite, seeing as some effects like dithering patterns almost blur entirely away with composite and give a more subtle-looking image (and water effects look their best on composite or RF), but using an LCD or OLED without an appropriate shader is so far removed from how the developers expected the games to be displayed. Sharp pixels on a handheld device is fine thanks to the size, but when blown up on a 50 inch TV it just gets too much for me.
@@MrMediator24 Nope, that's light rays hitting multiple photoreceptor cells in the back of your eye instead of converging at a single point because your eye is misshaped.
@@BitcoinIsGoingToZero Yeah but it still isn't blurry or fuzzy so much as it is slightly tapered. Like the pixels bleed over the blank scanlines and each other's phosphers slightly based on intensity, they don't just blur together. They aren't supposed to be super sharp, but they aren't supposed to be blurry either. Soft is probably the best word for it. Nearest neighbor with a filter like HLSL properly configured is about the closest you'll get.
@@BitcoinIsGoingToZero I wouldn't interpret it as a misunderstanding on the grand scale. Digitally, that's how pixel art is supposed to be (crisp). But an inferior analog connection to a non fixed pixel display consumer CRT TV with low TVL count forces developers to work around that and so the pixel art of certain games would be optimized for the displays of CRT TVs (and so technically I would call it more specifically as "old TV art", or simply just 8-bit/16-bit art (which can technically also embrace 3D graphics that can theoretically benefit from certain non-nearest neighbor upscaling methods), rather than pixel art). Pixel art can be taken advantage of by LCD displays, such as that of handheld consoles, which in my opinion looks excellent, and can even give the CRT look a run for its money (e.g. Game Boy Advance, Neo Geo Pocket, WonderSwan Color). When ppl thought of home consoles, they didn't think of pixel perfect in the way ppl would've with handhelds due to using non fixed pixel displays with analog inputs back in the good ol' days. Now it's a different case since we're in the era of fixed-pixel displays and LED/OLED for everything. The problem is that the displays we use today are HD and UHD with very high pixel count rather than low pixel count, which means it's not exactly ideal for an authentic pixel art in the way we remember it to be, considering that fixed pixels on LED displays these days are barely visible to the naked eye especially with 4K displays, which makes upscaling almost mandatory. Running emulations of early 2000s handheld games on an LED display on PC still looks excellent as long as it's in the native pixel count, though games will look very tiny on an HD screen and barely visible on a 4K/UHD screen, sadly. I would assume that aesthetically, the black unoccupied scanlines isn't exactly ideal especially for an era of higher TVL count on large CRT TVs, but they chose to continue developing games that way until the sixth console generation because it was the only way to imitate progressive video on an interlaced SDTV. Pixel art in its most faithful form is, at least imo, on a fixed pixel display without using any upscaling (that means no nearest neighbor) while the display's fixed pixels are large enough to seen with the naked eye.
If you want to play tetrogames correctly on an LCD you need a scanline filter and a slight blur filter. Also, scanline..2s are different between PAL and NTSC screens, the NTSC ones are bigger. It's true that who babbles about "sharp pixels" gemerally has no idea about how retrogames should look. The slight bleeding of the phosphors and the almost halftone effect of the scanlines were taken into account by people that designed the sprites. Sharp pixels is NOT the correct way to look at retrogames. The best is of course a CRT with an RGB cable, my SNES never looked so good (especially because back in the days I used the RF cable).
I have been following the emulation scene from the very beginning, and over the years, thanks to increasingly advanced filters, we have now achieved really good results in the upscaling of old games. I still own old consoles with a crt tv, and trying side by side the same original games on CRT and their emulated counterpart on new screens, I can say that now the performance is better on the emulators, or at least I prefer it. As mentioned by others, in the 80s and 90s programmers created game graphics aware of the blurring that CRT screens applied to pixels. You did not see the naked and raw pixel on old TVs, there was no concept of pixel art that is in vogue today, on the contrary, I remember very well that the reviews of the time rewarded the graphics when it was not too pixelated, the visible grain was considered a defect . If you want to see an example of what can be achieved today with modern emulators, try watching this video (preferably at maximum quality and on a 4K screen). There are those who like to see pixels, but I prefer it like this: ruclips.net/video/9ipx2T8Jczc/видео.html&ab_channel=IlNiubblog
This Neo, Gen Z, pseudo retro, love of Pixels drives me nuts. I absolutely hate pixels. Only people who didn't grow up with the games think that's what they look like
Yeah I honest hate this video because it represents a gen that doesn't get the concept and with my ignored postings in the past really goes to say something about it. Pixel art is nothing but fan-boi works by folks who don't know low res. It's a shame @#$% like this is dominating re-releases to classic games on the digital markets. It's such a great way to destroy a hobby.
Thats one thing thats always bugged me about playing older games on high resolution displays is that some displays and/or graphics processors just dont provide nearest neighbor/integer scalling which seems like it'd be a simple thing to add, just mutiply the size the pixels to larger square blocks and you can keep the "pixelated" look of old games when upscaling them.
Well, yeah, that... plus you're talking about games that were written in an era of CRTs. To make them look right you don't want zero blur, you want the _right kind of blur_ that mimics screens from the era.
@@SolomonsProxy ACTUALY. a LOT of Games back in the day(especialy NES and SNES era) where designed with so called Color Bleeding in mind, where do to the way a CRT draws the picture colors "cells"(its not actualy pixels on an CRT) directly next to each otehr blended together, correctly used this could give Sprites more colors then they actualy had, and make them look more detailed
@@weberman173 I really miss CRTs... at one point, Toshiba and Canon had partnered to develop SED displays which would have an electron source for each pixel, allowing them to have screens similar in thickness to LCD displays but with all the benefits of a CRT, but then Toshiba jumped ship for oLED and the dream died :(
There are special HDMI adapters you can plug to your Wii to get a better image for more modern displays. That...or hunt down a second-hand Wii U. Getting component cables for it and switching to Progressive Scan might be the cheapest solution, however. Or you can watch My Life In Gaming for more info on the subject. You have a ton of options.
@@Ashton000 I have a Wii2HDMI adaptor and while it has some problems (occasional dithering) overall the picture is plenty sharp. It was totally worth the 8 bucks I paid. Component cables to a CRT are preferable of course, but if your monitor only has HDMI inputs like mine the adapter is plenty good.
@@flameshana9 I had one, and it ended up putting out red over black or something. cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/408366253611155456/714818722560475136/wii2hdmi_red.jpg
@@bwood2572 Yeah, that's kinda what I was saying... He's not a tech guy, just a gamer... He does get some things wrong for sure. I just appreciate his gamer oriented view on this subject...
jarod atkinson metal jesus doesn’t use great equipement at times and really doesn’t explain a lot about it, he mostly talks about color, design, functionality but not scaling, integers, lag and overall playing experience.. and he doesn’t really know how the things he buys perform most of the time, I’d rather avoid metal Jesus and reach over to retrorgb, MLiG and others.
Nearest neighbor is a form of 'zero order hold' filtering, which consists on just holding the received value (the color) unmodified until the next one arrives. There are many cases where zero order hold is visibly and even mathematically superior to very expensive and 'intelligent' filters, especially when those filters make assumptions (such as the continuity of the signal) which are not true in the source. Pixel art is just an example, Amiga music is another: when playing ancient MOD files using proper Paula emulation at the intended rate, ZOH produces a clearer sound and is closer to the original in comparison to the typical linear or cubic filters.
The other main problem here is most TVs also interpret 240p as 480i. This essentially means that the second 240p frame is interpreted as the first even field. Then that gets deinterlaced. Oh, and to suggest more series and channels that explain analog video, I suggest Technology Connections and his series about television in general, and Displaced Gamers and his many videos that go really in depth about the signal(s) that go to the TV, and more console-specific scaling problems.
you should have also mentioned how some older games relied on the older scanline bluriness to produce the image they wanted to see. There was an image i remember seeing a while back of an orc from an RPG that looked shite on any LCD regardless of how it was displayed, but on a CRT, because the color was displayed and blurred properly, looked really good.
Well, I'm old enough that a "retro" game for me is Pong on a black-and-white, coin-operated table. That being said, I've kept many of my old consoles including an Atari 2600, NES, SNES, and even a Genesis happily pumping out those pixels without extra adapters by simply keeping my old, 2006-model Sony Trinitron CRT TV around just for the purpose. It's 21-inch screen was plenty big for the time and for the graphics that the games offered. It keeps my experience real. No upscaling, no worry about added hardware, no frustration. Meanwhile, my PS4 Pro is hooked up to my 48" 4K-Ultra TV.
The funny part is that these games were not meant to look sharp at all, the fact that crts sort of blend the light between pixels was what made these sprites look more detailed; most sharp sprites just look.. weird, as they weren't designed with that aesthetic in mind (modern pixel art games on the other hand, are meant to look sharp).
Just like the old statues weren't meant to be white. Imagine a Highlander-like Greek or Roman seeing this - "No guys, we painted them. It would have been crazy to leave them white."
They don't do nearest neighbor because composite doesn't allow you to do that. There's no resolution to go off, so it can't possibly do nearest neighbor scaling. It is literally impossible. Also, since it's not processed pixel-by-pixel unlike digital signals, and due to the inherent noise of composite, even if you could do nearest neighbor it wouldn't look any better than standard bilinear filtering on an LCD.
Old games were _not_ intended to be seen as pixel art. Techniques like dithering and banding counted on the natural blurring of the CRT to produce transparency effects, expand the color palette via blending colors, lighting effects, and more.
I hate sharp pixels on retro games displayed on modern monitors. The crt tvs from back in the day had natural scanlines that slightly smooth out the harsh pixel edges and stair step effects. When I play old school games on an emulator I always use filters to get it close to the old crt tvs as possible
You still get some. There is always going to be input lag, whether it be the slow transfer rate of copper cables, or the time it takes for the beam on the CRT to sweep back around, you always will get input lag. It may not be noticeable, and it may not affect anything, but it will always be there.
@@voxeltek6624 I'm guessing he meant "lowest possible" input lag. I see "no input lag" thrown around a lot and I always assume they actually mean "lowest possible" because a CRT will grant the lowest input lag experience. (Although some great alternatives have been made in recent years like the retrotink2x paired with a low lag monitor and what retroarch emulation is doing.)
Actually, the blurring of the pixels is how it's _meant_ to be seen, the graphics were actually designed with degradation of signal in mind, particularly for Composite video, and actually _created_ shading and transparency effects using the flaws of the CRT to their advantage, though techniques such as Dithering, with sometimes amazing results.
This is actually a very divisive topic, whether pixels should be sharp and visible or not. To me it seems that younger people, who likely played these games on emulators, prefer sharper pixels, likely due to the overhead required for better-than-nearest-neighbor scaling. That is, they're old enough to have emulated the game on a pentium ii or iii, but not old enough to have played initially and mainly in actual hardware. Older generations, those of us who went to arcades in the 80s and had ataris and played using the included rf switch for the nes on a black and white 10" screen actually prefer bilinear filtering. Trust me kiddos. We really couldn't see sharp pixels on crts back in the day.
Another reason not mentioned here is that most modern TVs misinterpret the 240p as 480i, so they try and deinterlace a progressive image. That’s why there are weird line gaps at 0:12
I disagree on the quest for sharpest nearest-neighbor pixels, is not at all how the games meant to look, but I like how you show a quick look at the RetroArch options, where the true quest for perfection begins
CRT softening is different than hardware/software softening on modern LCD displays. Thats why games look great on CRTS, but look crappy with "scanlines" and bilinear filtering turned on.
Yeah. This video makes me think that he's either only played these games on an emulator and thinks that's what the games looked like when they came out, or its just been too long since he's played on a CRT and forgotten.
Yeah softening on a CRT is unique. Genesis games on an emulator look razor sharp while CRTs round them out. Since I use RGB cables for the Genesis the picture is sharp, well-colored, and rounded. That's why N64 games look great on a CRT while not performing well on modern TVs, despite having tons of mods for that issue.
Many people are very accostumed to the emulator look like the vídeo shows, problem is that old games were never intended to be THAT sharp either, they used a lot of tricks to make the sprites look more natural than pixelated like a emulator. The biggest offender is Sonic's Green Hill Zone. The waterfalls were intended to show in a transparency look, using oversharpened filters like emulators do make the game reveal its tricks, you can see clearly the "chess" pattern which you were never supposed to see. Even though i kinda got used to pixelation on emulation to minimise visual processing and lag, i hate how many articles and stuff tell "how the game was supposed to look" with modern techniques like this when it is not true at all.
So we're going to ignore that old CRT TV's used to suffer/benefit from the pixels bleeding together slightly, thus blurring the image and colors? Allrighty then... smh
There's another BIG problem with TVs as well that is the part where the upscaler is not programmed to deal with 240p. The "tv standard" is that you send 240 lines, 60 times per second, and those lines are either ODD or EVEN, as in you send line 1, 3, 5, 7 then on the next frame its line 2,4,6,8... But old consoles don't do that, they send just the same field over and over, while keeping the other field black, and this works fine on CRTs as you get twice as bright lines etc.. So ideally, the televisions should detect when this is being done and either keep one of the fields as black lines or double the lines, but instead they try to force the picture to be 480i and you get awful artifacts like the combing you can see on this video.
Many people are very accostumed to the emulator look like the vídeo shows, problem is that old games were never intended to be THAT sharp either, they used a lot of tricks to make the sprites look more natural than pixelated like a emulator. The biggest offender is Sonic's Green Hill Zone. The waterfalls were intended to be transparent and using oversharpened filters like emulators do make the game reveal its tricks, you can see clearly the "chess" pattern which you were never supposed to see. Even though i kinda got used to pixelation on emulation to minimise visual processing and lag, i hate how many articles and stuff tell "how the game was supposed to look" with modern techniques like this when it is not true at all.
When I see a video with Taran I automatically like it. I’ve been watching Linus for so many years now and I feel like I watched Taran grown into a man from a gawky kid.
I bought a component cable and Gran Turismo 4 looks pretty good in 1080i on my 1080p screen. Resident Evil 4 also looks pretty good in 480p. You have to know the correct button combination to change the game's resolution right after the console's boot logo. Some of them include the options on settings.
@@cekan14 Unfortunately my old Samsung LCD TV broke and can't be fixed. It had Component input for DVDs and Gaming consoles. My new Philips LED TV doesn't have component. The only way I can connect my PS2 or any old console is with RCA. The irony is that my CRT TV bought in 2007 works perfectly, and the LCD TV Bought in 2010 broke in 2017. Looks like CRTs are build to last.
@Andy Young Space is a big concern that many don't want to talk about. I'm crazy so in my one bedroom apartment I got a 32" Trinitron. Now the apartment is moderately sized and I have no kids so it's fine. The issue is not everyone will be in my situation. Some might have studios and have no room whatsoever. Some might have a house but the kids' stuff take up everything. That's why I'm glad scalers like RetroTink exist.
if you want to play an old console, get an old TV, it's that simple. A CRT has tons of more charme because it also delivers the exact way you've seen and experienced your old consoles back in the days. You'll be shocked how much of a difference it makes. But don't open up the CRT or you'll get shocked differently. If you want to emulate, there are also many ways to do this on a CRT, like a Raspberry Pi via composite or with a PI2SCART board for RGB. (there are also many other brands like RetroTink etc.)
One time I went to a convention where one of the booths had a PS2 plugged into a plasma TV. They played a game I played like twice, Marvel vs. Capcom and the graphics sucked. I remember it looking a whole lot better on the CRT that I played it on back in the early 2000's.
The sharp pixels are not what you should want. Older games were designed for CRT TVs, which smoothed the pixels and made it look closer to bilinear or bicubic.
unless the crt is super old or low quality it'll look blurry, but in a way that still lets you tell apart of the pixels. i did see a video about how there's a transparency effect created on a waterfall that only works on crts, but i think it was more about the pixels moving really fast.
@@tokenslol I work with art, including pixel art. No, you are not supposed to see the raw pixels. They are supposed to be smoothed out by the TV. And some textures look hideous without a proper filter or a real CRT.
@@AzureSymbiote I mean maybe I've been looking at the wrong footage but bilinear and bicubic just aren't close enough to what the CRTs do for you to want to play with them.
Good video; for the wii I casually discovered a thing, at least on samsung and lg 4k tv, the upscaling process works far better from the hdmi cable than component cable so if you use a cheap wii to hdmi adapter (i bought a 7€ one from amazon to not carry with me that component cable) you get a better image without spending a lot of money.
Nope, huge misconception. Pixel art was never meant to look sharp and pixelated. It was designed with the natural blur and scanlines of a CRT in mind. When your TV applies a blurry upscaling algorithm, it's actually closer on paper to the original look, but because the blur isn't the same as how it worked on a CRT and it doesn't have the scanlines or perfect blacks to make the details really pop again, it just looks like ass.
god, this is probably the best techquikie video, but you probably should've mentioned how 240p signals are seen as 480i by modern displays, which cause unnecessary de-interlacing and display lag
I'm old enough to remember playing those games on CRT when they were new. I actually hate the "perfect pixel" look because it does NOT look like the way graphics used to look. Those old TVs and consoles used interlaced graphics, so the look was more like bi linear than pixel perfect. Pixel perfect just makes the edges look way too jagged compared to the other methods. If jaggies were so desirable anti-aliasing wouldn't be used. The hope back in those days was to get rid of jaggies, not make them more apparent!
I really love it when Taran gets to host videos like this. You just know buying that component cable probably came after him going crazy for several days. Those 'My Life In Gaming' videos make you question every cable you can possibly consider 😅
@@gamecubeplayer I guess so, but in my case the problem is finding space for it. In my living room there's already a TV and in my desktop 2 monitors. And even though I love old games, many people like me don't want to look funny playing on those antiques. I rather buy a GOOD upscaler or even use emulators, they have pretty neat upscaling options.
Great video, very informative. Good thing you can make the upscaling happen as you wish before the tv comes into play, even without a PC. For some small extra cost.
This is great stuff. One option is to get a CRT for some games - you can even get a good PC monitor that has 100hz options for cheap. Issue is usually shipping lol. Theres subreddits with some great people for these topics.
The thing about sharp pixels as you would find in Nearest Neighbour scaling is, these games were designed to be played on CRTs wher fuzziness between the pixels was unavoidable. Sometimes this would be used deliberately as a hack for "transluscent" sprites or backgorunds. Shade every other pixel a visible colour and leave the rest background colour and on a CRT, you've got the illusion of one layer showing through another layer. On a modern TV in nearest neighbour, you can't miss the effect and the illusion cannot be seen. If anything, bilimear or lanczos actually gives the most period accurate rendering of retro games. They weren't perfect back in the day because our TVs were far from perfect.
a bigger issue than just the scaling algorithm is the deinterlacing. modern TVs will typically assume that any 15.7khz analog video signal is interlaced, even when they're not, and will thus take the progressive-scan low-definition signal from the console, interlace it, and then de-interlace it again, thus adding AT LEAST a frame of input lag (usually significantly more) and blending the frame with those before and after it, thus making the smudging significantly worse and adding lots of horizontal lines to it. a lot of those scan converters can clean up the image significantly simply by digitizing the signal so the TV doesn't try to interlace it, such as the passthrough mode on the retrotink
Old TVs weren't that crispy to begin with, they did get better over the years but even then they added a bit of a blur. Pity I had to get rid of my perfectly good awesome crt as I was made to give up the space. I haven't used my consoles much since. It's nice to have options but it's not the end of the world, in the end I prefer something in between as that's what I recall, crisp but not too crisp.
I still remember Taran campaigning for adobe to add nearest neighbor scaling, and asking viewers to vote for that feature request in the adobe forums or something.
And Adobe still hasn't FUCKING DONE IT!
That was merely a tweet, not a request on an LMG channel. But, here's the request: adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/suggestions/37024072-nearest-neighbor-scaling-sampling-simple-and-v
-Taran
@@techquickie God the answer adobe give is basically "we are too lazy, nice day bye bye"
@@StevenZephyc 😂😂
Steven Zephyc That’s common for Adobe
"Retro games"
Pulls out Wii...
Realizing the Wii came out almost 15 years ago...
How long do we need before calling Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 as retro?
Oh wait they are the same generation...
I also think of pre-PSX consoles and Amiga when "retro"-gaming is mentioned.
@@steffenstengardvilladsen3740 When I hear "retro games", I think of the 8- and 16-bit consoles.
Our school has a wii
what have i done with my life?
Taren should host more, he's gotten really good being on camera.
Isn't his name Taran?
@@K.R.X karen
Linus is good but I like seeing new faces occasionally too!!
yeah usually im indifferent about techquickie but this video was solid
Taran tech tips
I guess I'm in the minority here; I remember the old, bulky CRT's these games were meant for, and just how blurry those things could be (especially after decades of heavy use). Bi-cubic and higher do still blur the image too much, but I find that a simple bi-linear algorithm, paired with a basic scanline overlay for 240p, can provide a rather convincing effect. Those games weren't meant to be blurred into oblivion, but they weren't made for sharp digital displays. 480p (and even 480i) games, while not HD, were sharp enough to look decent with the default upscaling methods but still, ironically, look much sharper on blurry analog displays.
Not sure what you're trying to explain. The reason CRTs look sharper is because at low resolution, the electron gun literally skips lines when drawing frames, and that's known as "scan lines". When you draw an image with scan lines it creates the illusion that it was originally twice as sharp and then cut in half
Taran be like:
Director
Host
Editor
Writer
Art Director
*hippity hoppity you're now my property*
A Taran Van Hemert Production
TaranQuickie
The LMG takeover is coming along nicely
Taran Tech Tips.
You know when he hosts that the quality is gonna be the best because he does it all... the right way
"... find your old console."
Me: Ah yess... NES, SNES, Master System... wonderf--
*sees them pull out Wii*
Me: ... ...
Well, it âme out in 2006,that allready kind oc old for a console/hardware.
well yeah wii are very old... only people still had it in tv shelf is old people who just want so swing in front of tv... which not that many... well swich can do the same thing but alot of people just do fit ring... sad...
@@campkira Because it was a lame gimmick that barely worked.
@@BoydTheMilkmanX Being able to aim better than dualstick is definitely a "gimmick".
@@Sp1tFire92 it's old but at least it does psudo-16:9
i love how more and more LTT staff are getting airtime. the face is fresh and the quality is just as good
Taran's face has been with LMG before the LMG name XD
Taran has been around the LMG videos since.... eternity.
@@frogger1555 yeah he was there, but how many videos were just him as the main host? in other vids it was just, hey its taran, he edits videos, and uses crazy shortcut and hotkeys to do it
@@tdsora dude, stop. Nothing wrong with being new to the party. A new party guest is more exciting than an old party guest! Nothing wrong with it!
I didn't even realise this was ltt omg
Great video, but even if you have perfect pixel replication it won’t look like your memories. Why? Because TVs in the 90s couldn’t replicate perfect pixels. They could do native resolution, but you often had scan lines, comb filters, and other issues associated with CRTs that would cause a natural blur to the games. This made the art look smooth, which developers knew about when they designed the art. In essence, a bit of blur on the pixel art was expected. Don’t believe me? Play an SNES game on a good old fashioned CRT with S-video and then play a modern pixel art game.
This ^^^
I'd settle for modern retro gamers just accepting dithering as a way to extend a limited palette, and not something most of us ever saw.
Also, it'd be great if they'd figure out how to display Capcom arcade titles in the correct 4:3 aspect ratio.
Or if they'd realize that the warm glow of CRT scanlines doesn't make an image darker.
Anyone who doesn't believe you wouldn't be able to do that lol
This has why it annoys me so much when I hear retro games complain about all the filters when playing pixel art games nowadays. Sure, I think some of these filters grossly overdo it (like in the mobile versions of Final Fantasy 4-6), but there absolutely WAS filtering when playing games back in the day. You did not see every individual pixel! Do people just not remember what it was like to play games on a CRT?
@@km_studios Yup, this exactly. Actually I think it's the opposite with early 3D games like N64, these look way better with modern enhancements like 60 fps and sharper resolution, and a modern screen.
But it were the CRTs technical limitations that made pesudo-3D games like Donkey Kong Country look like magic.
Good call on the My Life in Gaming shoutout. Their RGB series is fantastic for anyone looking for the best picture with their retro systems, be it CRT or modern TVs
Yes their content is great. Extremely helpful for retro gamers.
i still remember when i fell into the deep rabbit hole of purist retro gaming. its an expensive hobby and gets old fast when you arent nostalgic for most of the old games..
DrecksBongert You ever get a PVM?
RGB Masterrace! Got a framemeister on my tv for all games, it's so great.
@@unlovableshinshin If you're in Europe using microcomputer (for the Amiga or MSX for example) screens with SCART input are just as good for normal use, and WAY cheaper and easier to use. PVM's and BVM's are overrated. Even a good Sony frame is great for normal use, and if you know what models you look for they can often be gotten for free. (again, if you live in europe, seeing as SCART is quite important)
Bicubic looks more like it did on those old TVs.
Remember the old TVs were 480i, fuzzy, a degree of motion blur due to the fade time and the way the CRT scanned the image across the screen.
Most the blurring functions of these TVs and emulators make it look like it did back then. We couldn't see the individual pixels on old fuzzy screens.
Motion blur is actually more of an issue with modern flat screen TVs. If you have a chance to do so, just compare a smooth and fast side scroller on both. On the CRT you can easily 'lock onto' details while they are scrolling, on the flat screen they become doubled/ghosting/blurry/smeary and hard to lock on to with your eyes.
@@Usabell I'm not talking about motion blur I'm talking about the fuzzy nature of the screen itself. The screen was energized by the electron stream and that actually takes a moment to fade.
Motion was smoother on CRT than early LCDs for sure, I'm talking about a paused screen with Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog on it, you could not see the stair stepped spikey hair on the CRT TV, you could on the old computer monitors.
Damn, Taran has been practicing his speech skills. Trying to resolve this version and the old "artist in a dungeon" appearances.
It's very interesting and informative, however for retro gaming specifically, it would have been prudent to mention that as a gamer you were almost certainly playing these retro titles for the first time on a CRT monitor. Those pixel sprites would never appear as crisp as the images ripped straight from the code you see displayed in the modern era. In fact, some artists for NES/SNES games accounted for this CRT phenomenon and used sub-pixeling to make better graphics. Playing with ultra crisp sprites is fine, but its only a preference, and should be understood to not really be the most authentic experience as to how the game would have been consumed on release.
The crisp sprites are what were hiding behind the shadow mask of a CRT all along. And yeah, it's a charming look. I considered talking about CRT scaling, but chose not to, as we have other videos about CRTs. With all the "backlash" in the comments, now I wish I'd at least mentioned it.
Totally agree 👍 I hate ultra sharp pixels, I aim to get it as close to a CRT as possible, as originally intended... But if your into sharp pixels, that's your decision 👍 all the power to ya🤙
@@TaranVH But no human ever saw that behind-the-shadow-mask version. The graphics of games designed for CRTs were designed to be viewed on CRTs with all the artifacts inherent in them. Super blocky pixel art is a fine aesthetic, but I disagree that it's a more authentic experience.
@@TaranVH But they were never intended to be seen that way. Sprites and models were made specifically under the idea that there were gaps that the CRT's blurriness would fill in. Ultra sharp pixels, whilst preferrable by some, are not at all the intended form even from the development standpoint. The crisp sprites, to the developers, were incomplete.
I was going to say exactly this. I really don't like the super sharp square-shaped pixels that are so razor-sharp it pierces my eyes. That's why I play retro games on a CRT monitor, as it looks and feels much smoother, responsive, rounded and still not as blurry or pixelated as modern TVs, emulators or other solutions make it look like.
Me: hmm i should do my homework
Also me: ah *Why Old Games Look So BAD* interesting, interesting...
Same
do*
@@cscscscss Maybe he creates his homework before he works on it :D
nah, drop that homework, drop out of school, and just become a youtuber and make millions! its THAT easy!
@@musek5048 good luck
Manufacturers: We care about improoving our scaling methods to be more precise and efficient.
Taran: And how about nearest neig-
Manufacturers: *N O*
jvalex18 plus everyone has moved over to the ossc, retrotink 2x and framemeister for retro console scaling because they are superior in EVERY way to ANY TV’s scaling, yes, even for vhs tapes! Framemeister makes an INCREDIBLE job with 480i content, it is low lag and the result is stunning for PS2 for example as well as VHS tapes! (OSSC is pretty trash on 480i, uses bob and bob isn’t, well, pretty?? and the difference is of a milisecond so why bother with ossc 480i? Retrotink’s 480i scaling is okay at best to me), but all three options offer less than 1 ms of lag for the scaling, and they support 240p, 480i, 288p, 576i, 480p, 576p etc.... (too many supported resolutions without problems!)
him: "why do retro games look blurry"
me (with my CRT): what is he talking about?
No mention of CRT or interlacing vs progressive, aspect ratio, etc...
The comment about nearest neighbour giving you the sharpest pixels "which make pixel art look good" made me cringe. Games of that era were designed for CRTs where at least some blurring would naturally occur, and the art was often designed around it. I find pixel art tends to look its best on an actual CRT or through a decent CRT shader. The blur from modern TVs does look awful with older games, though!
I've seen this a lot lately, the idea that the "best image" for old console games like SNES is razor sharp pixel images. However, this isn't how we experienced these games when they came out. Practically everyone played these games on a CRT of some sort, and CRTs did not present these games with razor sharp pixel images like modern flat screens do today. There was some rounding and blurring of the image that caused the graphics to look, well, less pixelated. You see, back then it wasn't considered a good thing for games to look pixelated in appearance. It was better for them to look smooth and blended with some sharpness, but not too sharp to look pixelated. Nowadays, though, it seems that everyone into retro gaming thinks these games were made to be viewed in as sharp and pixelated a form as possible, but this wasn't generally possible or desirable back then. When I play an SNES game on an emulator on a flat screen with the game perfectly sharp and pixelated it's just not the same experience as it once was. I feel bad for kids growing up today who only know flat panels and pixelated art. They don't know what it was like back then, unless perhaps they watch some video or look at some game magazines from back then like EGM, Game Pro, Nintendo Power, etc.
Yep. The very reason why back in the day i prefer gba emulator than nogba. The blurry make it feel like blended image and more pleasant to watch.
I think old crt each pixel light overlap each other so the dark line of dot become thinner. and bright line more visible.
Completely agreed. I felt like cringing when he said that the sharp pixels is what makes pixel art look good. Pixel art for home console games in the analogue video era was always expected to blur to at least a certain extent. Even with RGB SCART or component you still benefit from some softness, and details which otherwise look like discrete blocks on an LCD or OLED will end up blurring together to give a more natural image which implies more detail.
There are arguments to be made among CRT enthusiasts as to whether you should chase after RGB/component output or composite, seeing as some effects like dithering patterns almost blur entirely away with composite and give a more subtle-looking image (and water effects look their best on composite or RF), but using an LCD or OLED without an appropriate shader is so far removed from how the developers expected the games to be displayed. Sharp pixels on a handheld device is fine thanks to the size, but when blown up on a 50 inch TV it just gets too much for me.
2:42 casual burn in the top right corner.
like my hair
Taran: "The real world is not pixelated'
Crap.....I can't afford a new pair of glasses
That's just bad upscaling
@@MrMediator24 Nope, that's light rays hitting multiple photoreceptor cells in the back of your eye instead of converging at a single point because your eye is misshaped.
@@gamechannel1271 no, its just bad upscaling
If you're being serious about the glasses, check out glassesusa.com. get a pair for like $20
Nah I’m just turning down my graphics so I can see more fps.
I remember seeing one of my teachers playing the SNES Tetris on a TV, and it bothered me so much that it was stretched and blurry lol
You should have gone all aspect ratio police on your teacher. It will totally give you street cred at school parties.
@@Knightmessenger and then the Super Nintendo started clapping
I'm still playing Castlevania 3 to this day! 😁
AcidGlow why
@@HeenaPatel253 because he likes the game?
Syfa is broken against bosses
271k subs
This is why I love my old CRT
Guaranteed the crt looks closer to bicubic than it does nearest neighbor. Crisp pixel art is a misunderstanding of the media.
@@BitcoinIsGoingToZero Yeah but it still isn't blurry or fuzzy so much as it is slightly tapered. Like the pixels bleed over the blank scanlines and each other's phosphers slightly based on intensity, they don't just blur together. They aren't supposed to be super sharp, but they aren't supposed to be blurry either. Soft is probably the best word for it.
Nearest neighbor with a filter like HLSL properly configured is about the closest you'll get.
@@BitcoinIsGoingToZero I wouldn't interpret it as a misunderstanding on the grand scale. Digitally, that's how pixel art is supposed to be (crisp). But an inferior analog connection to a non fixed pixel display consumer CRT TV with low TVL count forces developers to work around that and so the pixel art of certain games would be optimized for the displays of CRT TVs (and so technically I would call it more specifically as "old TV art", or simply just 8-bit/16-bit art (which can technically also embrace 3D graphics that can theoretically benefit from certain non-nearest neighbor upscaling methods), rather than pixel art).
Pixel art can be taken advantage of by LCD displays, such as that of handheld consoles, which in my opinion looks excellent, and can even give the CRT look a run for its money (e.g. Game Boy Advance, Neo Geo Pocket, WonderSwan Color).
When ppl thought of home consoles, they didn't think of pixel perfect in the way ppl would've with handhelds due to using non fixed pixel displays with analog inputs back in the good ol' days. Now it's a different case since we're in the era of fixed-pixel displays and LED/OLED for everything. The problem is that the displays we use today are HD and UHD with very high pixel count rather than low pixel count, which means it's not exactly ideal for an authentic pixel art in the way we remember it to be, considering that fixed pixels on LED displays these days are barely visible to the naked eye especially with 4K displays, which makes upscaling almost mandatory. Running emulations of early 2000s handheld games on an LED display on PC still looks excellent as long as it's in the native pixel count, though games will look very tiny on an HD screen and barely visible on a 4K/UHD screen, sadly.
I would assume that aesthetically, the black unoccupied scanlines isn't exactly ideal especially for an era of higher TVL count on large CRT TVs, but they chose to continue developing games that way until the sixth console generation because it was the only way to imitate progressive video on an interlaced SDTV.
Pixel art in its most faithful form is, at least imo, on a fixed pixel display without using any upscaling (that means no nearest neighbor) while the display's fixed pixels are large enough to seen with the naked eye.
CRT looks better because it doesn't need to upscale at all. It can actually change the resolution. That is something that LCD's and OLEDS cannot do.
If you want to play tetrogames correctly on an LCD you need a scanline filter and a slight blur filter. Also, scanline..2s are different between PAL and NTSC screens, the NTSC ones are bigger.
It's true that who babbles about "sharp pixels" gemerally has no idea about how retrogames should look. The slight bleeding of the phosphors and the almost halftone effect of the scanlines were taken into account by people that designed the sprites.
Sharp pixels is NOT the correct way to look at retrogames. The best is of course a CRT with an RGB cable, my SNES never looked so good (especially because back in the days I used the RF cable).
I am a simple man. I see Taran on a thumbnail, I click.
He is great isn't he
I thought the title said why do old “GAMERS” look so bad. I was about to go off on yer ass.
Hey, old gamers do look bad. At least some of them do. I know... i have a mirror :-D
Well if you still look good mate respect the rest of us.....................Durp
I have been following the emulation scene from the very beginning, and over the years, thanks to increasingly advanced filters, we have now achieved really good results in the upscaling of old games. I still own old consoles with a crt tv, and trying side by side the same original games on CRT and their emulated counterpart on new screens, I can say that now the performance is better on the emulators, or at least I prefer it. As mentioned by others, in the 80s and 90s programmers created game graphics aware of the blurring that CRT screens applied to pixels. You did not see the naked and raw pixel on old TVs, there was no concept of pixel art that is in vogue today, on the contrary, I remember very well that the reviews of the time rewarded the graphics when it was not too pixelated, the visible grain was considered a defect . If you want to see an example of what can be achieved today with modern emulators, try watching this video (preferably at maximum quality and on a 4K screen). There are those who like to see pixels, but I prefer it like this: ruclips.net/video/9ipx2T8Jczc/видео.html&ab_channel=IlNiubblog
This Neo, Gen Z, pseudo retro, love of Pixels drives me nuts. I absolutely hate pixels.
Only people who didn't grow up with the games think that's what they look like
Yeah I honest hate this video because it represents a gen that doesn't get the concept and with my ignored postings in the past really goes to say something about it. Pixel art is nothing but fan-boi works by folks who don't know low res. It's a shame @#$% like this is dominating re-releases to classic games on the digital markets. It's such a great way to destroy a hobby.
Thats one thing thats always bugged me about playing older games on high resolution displays is that some displays and/or graphics processors just dont provide nearest neighbor/integer scalling which seems like it'd be a simple thing to add, just mutiply the size the pixels to larger square blocks and you can keep the "pixelated" look of old games when upscaling them.
Well, yeah, that... plus you're talking about games that were written in an era of CRTs. To make them look right you don't want zero blur, you want the _right kind of blur_ that mimics screens from the era.
If you want it to look worse for nostalgia that’s kinda weird.
@@SolomonsProxy ACTUALY. a LOT of Games back in the day(especialy NES and SNES era) where designed with so called Color Bleeding in mind, where do to the way a CRT draws the picture colors "cells"(its not actualy pixels on an CRT) directly next to each otehr blended together, correctly used this could give Sprites more colors then they actualy had, and make them look more detailed
@@weberman173 I really miss CRTs... at one point, Toshiba and Canon had partnered to develop SED displays which would have an electron source for each pixel, allowing them to have screens similar in thickness to LCD displays but with all the benefits of a CRT, but then Toshiba jumped ship for oLED and the dream died :(
When I first got my Wii I still had a CRT and while my PS4 looks amazing on my new 4K TV, the poor Wii... oh dear...
There are special HDMI adapters you can plug to your Wii to get a better image for more modern displays. That...or hunt down a second-hand Wii U. Getting component cables for it and switching to Progressive Scan might be the cheapest solution, however.
Or you can watch My Life In Gaming for more info on the subject. You have a ton of options.
@@SiGeTVee Those Wii2HDMIs are awful, they just send composite through HDMI AFAIK. Component cables are the better choice if your TV has them.
@@Ashton000 I have a Wii2HDMI adaptor and while it has some problems (occasional dithering) overall the picture is plenty sharp. It was totally worth the 8 bucks I paid.
Component cables to a CRT are preferable of course, but if your monitor only has HDMI inputs like mine the adapter is plenty good.
@@flameshana9 I had one, and it ended up putting out red over black or something. cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/408366253611155456/714818722560475136/wii2hdmi_red.jpg
After 6 years of using After Effects, i finally know what's that button for... LOL
You can really tell who edited this with all the quality and details! Nice job man!
FYI, the name "Lánczos" is pronounced "lantsosh". Source: I'm Hungarian.
Ah, I thought it was Polish, where cz is pronounced like that
@@hetakusoda2977 same
@@cscscscss @HetakuSoda Polish 'sz' is pronounced same as Hungarian 's' and Hungarian 'sz' i pronounced like Polish 's'
@@hetakusoda2977 Lanczos doesnt sound polish
Szia ! And greets from Germany
My Life In Gaming and RetroRGB are great for old consoles in new tv's these guys deserve way more credit give them a sub :) there content is great too
"Metal Jesus Rocks" does awesome work on this subject as well... More real world view rather than tech based.... Definitely worth a watch...
@@jarodatkinson5306 Metal Jesus gives a lot of bad info.
Agreed. They're producing pretty high quality documentations and put quite a lot of research into them.
@@bwood2572 Yeah, that's kinda what I was saying... He's not a tech guy, just a gamer... He does get some things wrong for sure. I just appreciate his gamer oriented view on this subject...
jarod atkinson metal jesus doesn’t use great equipement at times and really doesn’t explain a lot about it, he mostly talks about color, design, functionality but not scaling, integers, lag and overall playing experience.. and he doesn’t really know how the things he buys perform most of the time, I’d rather avoid metal Jesus and reach over to retrorgb, MLiG and others.
Nearest neighbor is a form of 'zero order hold' filtering, which consists on just holding the received value (the color) unmodified until the next one arrives. There are many cases where zero order hold is visibly and even mathematically superior to very expensive and 'intelligent' filters, especially when those filters make assumptions (such as the continuity of the signal) which are not true in the source. Pixel art is just an example, Amiga music is another: when playing ancient MOD files using proper Paula emulation at the intended rate, ZOH produces a clearer sound and is closer to the original in comparison to the typical linear or cubic filters.
The other main problem here is most TVs also interpret 240p as 480i. This essentially means that the second 240p frame is interpreted as the first even field. Then that gets deinterlaced. Oh, and to suggest more series and channels that explain analog video, I suggest Technology Connections and his series about television in general, and Displaced Gamers and his many videos that go really in depth about the signal(s) that go to the TV, and more console-specific scaling problems.
you should have also mentioned how some older games relied on the older scanline bluriness to produce the image they wanted to see. There was an image i remember seeing a while back of an orc from an RPG that looked shite on any LCD regardless of how it was displayed, but on a CRT, because the color was displayed and blurred properly, looked really good.
Please share a link to that image if you have one. Would be interesting to see.
His hair looks like he was recently using his brain waves controller headset
69 likes lmao
Well, I'm old enough that a "retro" game for me is Pong on a black-and-white, coin-operated table. That being said, I've kept many of my old consoles including an Atari 2600, NES, SNES, and even a Genesis happily pumping out those pixels without extra adapters by simply keeping my old, 2006-model Sony Trinitron CRT TV around just for the purpose. It's 21-inch screen was plenty big for the time and for the graphics that the games offered. It keeps my experience real. No upscaling, no worry about added hardware, no frustration. Meanwhile, my PS4 Pro is hooked up to my 48" 4K-Ultra TV.
The funny part is that these games were not meant to look sharp at all, the fact that crts sort of blend the light between pixels was what made these sprites look more detailed; most sharp sprites just look.. weird, as they weren't designed with that aesthetic in mind (modern pixel art games on the other hand, are meant to look sharp).
Just like the old statues weren't meant to be white. Imagine a Highlander-like Greek or Roman seeing this - "No guys, we painted them. It would have been crazy to leave them white."
@@TV-ge3uj perfect analogy!!
They don't do nearest neighbor because composite doesn't allow you to do that. There's no resolution to go off, so it can't possibly do nearest neighbor scaling. It is literally impossible.
Also, since it's not processed pixel-by-pixel unlike digital signals, and due to the inherent noise of composite, even if you could do nearest neighbor it wouldn't look any better than standard bilinear filtering on an LCD.
Glad to see the shout out to my life in gaming, their channel is excellent.
Old games were _not_ intended to be seen as pixel art. Techniques like dithering and banding counted on the natural blurring of the CRT to produce transparency effects, expand the color palette via blending colors, lighting effects, and more.
Thank you for mentioning the folks at My Life In Gaming! They know their thing when it comes to old retro hardware output and signals.
I hate sharp pixels on retro games displayed on modern monitors. The crt tvs from back in the day had natural scanlines that slightly smooth out the harsh pixel edges and stair step effects. When I play old school games on an emulator I always use filters to get it close to the old crt tvs as possible
Retro games always look fine to me because I play them on the CRTs they were designed to run on.
As a bonus, I get no input lag.
You still get some. There is always going to be input lag, whether it be the slow transfer rate of copper cables, or the time it takes for the beam on the CRT to sweep back around, you always will get input lag. It may not be noticeable, and it may not affect anything, but it will always be there.
@@voxeltek6624 I'm guessing he meant "lowest possible" input lag. I see "no input lag" thrown around a lot and I always assume they actually mean "lowest possible" because a CRT will grant the lowest input lag experience. (Although some great alternatives have been made in recent years like the retrotink2x paired with a low lag monitor and what retroarch emulation is doing.)
Usually I thought the blurry pixels looked higher quality than sharp pixels when I used Super Mario Advance 2 with the GameCube GBA adapter
Interesting learn new things every day love this channel dope tech
Actually, the blurring of the pixels is how it's _meant_ to be seen, the graphics were actually designed with degradation of signal in mind, particularly for Composite video, and actually _created_ shading and transparency effects using the flaws of the CRT to their advantage, though techniques such as Dithering, with sometimes amazing results.
It's pronounced "lantsosh", not "lantchos"
This is the last name of one Hungarian mathematician.
This is actually a very divisive topic, whether pixels should be sharp and visible or not. To me it seems that younger people, who likely played these games on emulators, prefer sharper pixels, likely due to the overhead required for better-than-nearest-neighbor scaling. That is, they're old enough to have emulated the game on a pentium ii or iii, but not old enough to have played initially and mainly in actual hardware. Older generations, those of us who went to arcades in the 80s and had ataris and played using the included rf switch for the nes on a black and white 10" screen actually prefer bilinear filtering. Trust me kiddos. We really couldn't see sharp pixels on crts back in the day.
This video was REALLY impressive. Well-researched, written, delivered, and edited. I'll be keeping an eye out for any future Taran TQ's
Another reason not mentioned here is that most modern TVs misinterpret the 240p as 480i, so they try and deinterlace a progressive image. That’s why there are weird line gaps at 0:12
Yeah I see as I think 480i was more common
The real world is not pixelated? Laughs in Planck Meter
Space and time are not quantized, and you cannot prove to me otherwise!
@@misimik Can you prove that it isn't? I'd say it's best to not make any claims at the moment.
Length, not meter
Just 150 iq things bruh
just used tv that still had rgb since it would softer the picture...
I disagree on the quest for sharpest nearest-neighbor pixels, is not at all how the games meant to look, but I like how you show a quick look at the RetroArch options, where the true quest for perfection begins
Yeah, but retro games were never sharp. CRTs softened everything back then.
CRT softening is different than hardware/software softening on modern LCD displays. Thats why games look great on CRTS, but look crappy with "scanlines" and bilinear filtering turned on.
Yeah. This video makes me think that he's either only played these games on an emulator and thinks that's what the games looked like when they came out, or its just been too long since he's played on a CRT and forgotten.
Yeah softening on a CRT is unique. Genesis games on an emulator look razor sharp while CRTs round them out. Since I use RGB cables for the Genesis the picture is sharp, well-colored, and rounded. That's why N64 games look great on a CRT while not performing well on modern TVs, despite having tons of mods for that issue.
Many people are very accostumed to the emulator look like the vídeo shows, problem is that old games were never intended to be THAT sharp either, they used a lot of tricks to make the sprites look more natural than pixelated like a emulator. The biggest offender is Sonic's Green Hill Zone. The waterfalls were intended to show in a transparency look, using oversharpened filters like emulators do make the game reveal its tricks, you can see clearly the "chess" pattern which you were never supposed to see. Even though i kinda got used to pixelation on emulation to minimise visual processing and lag, i hate how many articles and stuff tell "how the game was supposed to look" with modern techniques like this when it is not true at all.
She probably never heard of a CRT, or aspect ratio
So we're going to ignore that old CRT TV's used to suffer/benefit from the pixels bleeding together slightly, thus blurring the image and colors? Allrighty then... smh
There's another BIG problem with TVs as well that is the part where the upscaler is not programmed to deal with 240p.
The "tv standard" is that you send 240 lines, 60 times per second, and those lines are either ODD or EVEN, as in you send line 1, 3, 5, 7 then on the next frame its line 2,4,6,8...
But old consoles don't do that, they send just the same field over and over, while keeping the other field black, and this works fine on CRTs as you get twice as bright lines etc..
So ideally, the televisions should detect when this is being done and either keep one of the fields as black lines or double the lines, but instead they try to force the picture to be 480i and you get awful artifacts like the combing you can see on this video.
Wait... I thought that what you just described as 240 PROGRESSIVE scan is actually interlaced
Many people are very accostumed to the emulator look like the vídeo shows, problem is that old games were never intended to be THAT sharp either, they used a lot of tricks to make the sprites look more natural than pixelated like a emulator. The biggest offender is Sonic's Green Hill Zone. The waterfalls were intended to be transparent and using oversharpened filters like emulators do make the game reveal its tricks, you can see clearly the "chess" pattern which you were never supposed to see. Even though i kinda got used to pixelation on emulation to minimise visual processing and lag, i hate how many articles and stuff tell "how the game was supposed to look" with modern techniques like this when it is not true at all.
LOL “classic console” picks up the wii
It's 14 years old. It's old enough to go to high school lol
The Wii is a non HD system. So he's right.
The Wii was a low resolution console even when it came out, so yeah it fits.
You guys are too vintage I guess
@@FranciscoJV0 I mean... it looks good on my Samsung Smart TV.
Good to see more attention for this subject and the My life in gaming channel
When I see a video with Taran I automatically like it. I’ve been watching Linus for so many years now and I feel like I watched Taran grown into a man from a gawky kid.
Wow, great video explaining everything and also with a great presentation, editing, production values, the works. Taran nailed it. More Taran please.
And this is why I still have my old CRT, PlayStation 2 still looks amazing.
I bought a component cable for my PS2 and looks pretty good on modern screens, if you ever wanna try it
I bought a component cable and Gran Turismo 4 looks pretty good in 1080i on my 1080p screen. Resident Evil 4 also looks pretty good in 480p. You have to know the correct button combination to change the game's resolution right after the console's boot logo. Some of them include the options on settings.
@@cekan14 Unfortunately my old Samsung LCD TV broke and can't be fixed. It had Component input for DVDs and Gaming consoles. My new Philips LED TV doesn't have component. The only way I can connect my PS2 or any old console is with RCA. The irony is that my CRT TV bought in 2007 works perfectly, and the LCD TV Bought in 2010 broke in 2017. Looks like CRTs are build to last.
@Andy Young Space is a big concern that many don't want to talk about. I'm crazy so in my one bedroom apartment I got a 32" Trinitron. Now the apartment is moderately sized and I have no kids so it's fine. The issue is not everyone will be in my situation. Some might have studios and have no room whatsoever. Some might have a house but the kids' stuff take up everything. That's why I'm glad scalers like RetroTink exist.
My ps2 games looks great on a 4k LCD with the kaico hdmi cabel, same for my classic xbox and GameCube.
if you want to play an old console, get an old TV, it's that simple. A CRT has tons of more charme because it also delivers the exact way you've seen and experienced your old consoles back in the days. You'll be shocked how much of a difference it makes. But don't open up the CRT or you'll get shocked differently. If you want to emulate, there are also many ways to do this on a CRT, like a Raspberry Pi via composite or with a PI2SCART board for RGB. (there are also many other brands like RetroTink etc.)
Dope video!
You call this an old game. You've never owned an Atari 2600. Now that was old...
I love how any video about retro gaming just says "go watch my life in gaming"
They're stuff is full of content that isn't a slog to learn about. It's fun.
2:41 "like my hair" lol me too, quarantining just like Taran :D
Loving your hair style, Taran!
One time I went to a convention where one of the booths had a PS2 plugged into a plasma TV. They played a game I played like twice, Marvel vs. Capcom and the graphics sucked. I remember it looking a whole lot better on the CRT that I played it on back in the early 2000's.
I still thinking it's really pretty
Ok but did I ask?
Taran woke up from his bed and stood in front of the can and started talking!
I love this guy! 👏👏
SNES: 60 FPS
*27 years later*
Nintendo Switch: *30 Take it or leave it*
I feel like they wake Taren up at 3am and say HURRY YOU'RE HOSTING A VIDEO IN 5 MINUTES
The sharp pixels are not what you should want. Older games were designed for CRT TVs, which smoothed the pixels and made it look closer to bilinear or bicubic.
unless the crt is super old or low quality it'll look blurry, but in a way that still lets you tell apart of the pixels. i did see a video about how there's a transparency effect created on a waterfall that only works on crts, but i think it was more about the pixels moving really fast.
@@tokenslol I work with art, including pixel art. No, you are not supposed to see the raw pixels. They are supposed to be smoothed out by the TV. And some textures look hideous without a proper filter or a real CRT.
@@AzureSymbiote I mean maybe I've been looking at the wrong footage but bilinear and bicubic just aren't close enough to what the CRTs do for you to want to play with them.
@@tokenslol Indeed. But nothing else on a regular, modern television comes close. Some emulators have good filters, however.
@@tokenslol Scanline filters are the key. The difference in picture quality to raw pixels is insane. I don't understand people who like raw pixels.
Good video; for the wii I casually discovered a thing, at least on samsung and lg 4k tv, the upscaling process works far better from the hdmi cable than component cable so if you use a cheap wii to hdmi adapter (i bought a 7€ one from amazon to not carry with me that component cable) you get a better image without spending a lot of money.
Hey, everyone; we've passed EVGA and taken 3rd place in Folding@home! Great work!
I wish you'd gone into the whole thing about how the SNES and other retro consoles didn't typically use 1x1 square pixels.
Thank you for this information. I love my PlayStation 2 but it doesn’t look great on modern TV’s
Have a look at GSM that lets you force different output resolutions, also depends on the quality of your video cables.
One thing you can try (if that's an option), is to just hook it up to an old CRT TV
can get some good component cables for like $25
Gollot yeah but it doesn’t change the internal rendering resolution
Nope, huge misconception. Pixel art was never meant to look sharp and pixelated. It was designed with the natural blur and scanlines of a CRT in mind. When your TV applies a blurry upscaling algorithm, it's actually closer on paper to the original look, but because the blur isn't the same as how it worked on a CRT and it doesn't have the scanlines or perfect blacks to make the details really pop again, it just looks like ass.
Retroarch isn't an emulator, it's a front-end for a collection of emulator cores....
god, this is probably the best techquikie video, but you probably should've mentioned how 240p signals are seen as 480i by modern displays, which cause unnecessary de-interlacing and display lag
I'm old enough to remember playing those games on CRT when they were new. I actually hate the "perfect pixel" look because it does NOT look like the way graphics used to look. Those old TVs and consoles used interlaced graphics, so the look was more like bi linear than pixel perfect. Pixel perfect just makes the edges look way too jagged compared to the other methods. If jaggies were so desirable anti-aliasing wouldn't be used. The hope back in those days was to get rid of jaggies, not make them more apparent!
Nearest neighbor is way too sharp, they were meant to be played on crt tv
Great editing, great presentation!
Maybe you need to be on more videos?.
I really love it when Taran gets to host videos like this. You just know buying that component cable probably came after him going crazy for several days.
Those 'My Life In Gaming' videos make you question every cable you can possibly consider 😅
90% of the comments: "ive never been this early in my life"
This is a really well put together video.
Took a topic I thought I understood, made me realise I didn't, left me feeling like I understood it.
Also bonus for using a pic of Dennis.
More Dennis.
Give him a channel.
This is like Taran's channel but with less complex stuff. Still love it!
What's his channels name?
MLiG is a fantastic channel!! Glad they got a shoutout for their RGB Master Class series.
or just use an crt how it's meant to be played
15khz sdtv crt to be specific
a consideration of impracticality
"just [do something]" is when the solution proposed is simpler than the one that is being discussed
@@ag4640 if you can find a cheap 15khz sdtv crt then it's better than a cheap upscaler
@@gamecubeplayer I guess so, but in my case the problem is finding space for it. In my living room there's already a TV and in my desktop 2 monitors. And even though I love old games, many people like me don't want to look funny playing on those antiques. I rather buy a GOOD upscaler or even use emulators, they have pretty neat upscaling options.
>retro games
>doesn't even touch on CRT TV's.
God, I love this guy
Great video, very informative.
Good thing you can make the upscaling happen as you wish before the tv comes into play, even without a PC. For some small extra cost.
Very glad to see support for My Life In Gaming. Great channel with criminally low subscriber count. Give them a watch!
This is great stuff. One option is to get a CRT for some games - you can even get a good PC monitor that has 100hz options for cheap. Issue is usually shipping lol. Theres subreddits with some great people for these topics.
The thing about sharp pixels as you would find in Nearest Neighbour scaling is, these games were designed to be played on CRTs wher fuzziness between the pixels was unavoidable. Sometimes this would be used deliberately as a hack for "transluscent" sprites or backgorunds.
Shade every other pixel a visible colour and leave the rest background colour and on a CRT, you've got the illusion of one layer showing through another layer. On a modern TV in nearest neighbour, you can't miss the effect and the illusion cannot be seen.
If anything, bilimear or lanczos actually gives the most period accurate rendering of retro games. They weren't perfect back in the day because our TVs were far from perfect.
a bigger issue than just the scaling algorithm is the deinterlacing. modern TVs will typically assume that any 15.7khz analog video signal is interlaced, even when they're not, and will thus take the progressive-scan low-definition signal from the console, interlace it, and then de-interlace it again, thus adding AT LEAST a frame of input lag (usually significantly more) and blending the frame with those before and after it, thus making the smudging significantly worse and adding lots of horizontal lines to it.
a lot of those scan converters can clean up the image significantly simply by digitizing the signal so the TV doesn't try to interlace it, such as the passthrough mode on the retrotink
Old CRT displays weren't sharp though. In this video, Bilinear looks much closer to how the games originally looked than NN does.
Thanks for giving a shoutout to MLIG, their content desperately needs more viewing for the quality that it has.
Old TVs weren't that crispy to begin with, they did get better over the years but even then they added a bit of a blur. Pity I had to get rid of my perfectly good awesome crt as I was made to give up the space. I haven't used my consoles much since. It's nice to have options but it's not the end of the world, in the end I prefer something in between as that's what I recall, crisp but not too crisp.
I love how the noise when it expands to fill all the pixels to make 4:3 is happy then it goes all distorted when it stretches to 16:9 lmao.