The Sega Saturn NetLink League

title says it. It's really blurry, for example, in gta 3, all the hud is blurry, I can't read my money correctly, and it isnt in widescreen -_-

Very few games for the PS2 or Saturn supported widescreen as very few people had widescreen displays when they came out. Why did you expect that they suddenly would display in widescreen now? As for the blurriness - the systems were designed for a CRT, not a flat panel LCD (at least I'm assuming you're not using an LED or a plasma display). They looked fine on older, blurrier displays, but on a crisper display, you see the lack of display accuracy that never would have been obvious before. Having better analog-to-digital circuitry in your setup might help with the blurriness, but probably not by much. I'm also assuming that you're using composite video cables. If you really care, you might want to look into upgrading to component video or some other superior connection if your system and games support it. Some people go as far as to mod their systems to take advantage of better-quality connections never offered by an unmodified system. However good the improvements, though, you'll never see the quality that you'll see on a system designed to output a better-quality signal.

I've not yet tried it, but the Dreamcast was designed to be able to output video via a VGA connector. Supposedly the games that support it look much nicer than they do via the standard composite connectors, and I believe it. VGA still transmits an analog signal, but it's far more accurate and clear than composite video.

Thanks for the info Warp. My systems all take up the entire screen on my crt tv thats why. I was just really wondering why it looked so bad. when I got my playstation 2 and my sega saturn they both came with composite output. The only reason I hooked up my saturn to my lcd is cuz i was going to play netlink with my friend so instead of running my phone line all the way into my room I just used the black phone line the netlink provides you with and set it up in the living room because the phone line is only about twelve feet away from the living room. When I have my netlink set up in my room i need the netlink phone line you get, and 1 really long extension phone line. As for the ps2, my brother was playing final fantasy on it and left it in the living room after stealing it from my room. thats when I noticed the picture looked like complete garbage. I am planning on getting s video for both systems soon though It's just the s video cord for saturn is 18 bucks on ebay -_- kind of really expensive just for a cord I could chop up and make from home

On an LCD TV with S Video it might look just as bad, on mine it does. I bought S Video for Saturn, and the picture is almost the same.

S Video isn't a huge improvement, but it is an improvement under the right circumstances. An LCD may not be one of those circumstances. A VGA mod, however, would likely help a lot.

Yeah. These consoles were designed with CRT in mind.
It's kind of 90% chances of complaining about how bad it looks... and no lightgun at all!
One could always upgrade to CRT for gaming, you know. ;D

The vast majority of my systems are hooked up to my LCD HDTV for convenience but some games are unplayable that way. So I have a secondary TV with some of my double consoles hooked up. For example Wing Commander for the Sega CD is unplayable on an HD TV. The text in the cockpit is unreadable and if you're playing for the first time and can't use the radio you won't be able to play the game.

Outside of that specific example I've never really had a problem playing my older systems on my HDTV.

I should experimentally hook up my Genesis and SNES to the family's LCD... I can connect to my own computer monitor, but only through some weird, low-quality adapters I've acquired through the years.

Depends very much on the quality of your TV, that's not to say it has to be expensive, but the hardware needs to be good.

If your in the US (as I assume you are) your best way is to get a European RGB SCART lead and a SCART to Component transcoder to convert RGB to Component for your HDTV.

I use a CRT for most things, but my 5 year old Panasonic Plasma does a pretty nice job, even when stretching into widescreen:

Saturn:





32X:



Mega Drive:

Except for the lack of lightgun support, I find Plasma screens totally acceptable.

LCD is the display to avoid. Too bad is the most popular...

You people with your SCART. I don't have the money to do the modifications right now, and I much prefer to leave my systems unmodified, anyway. *sigh*.

LCDs just happen to be cheaper (in many cases), less power hungry (in many cases), and quite plentiful due to competition. There are reasons they're the most popular.

I like LCDs. My only complaint is that standard definition consoles suffer from lag on any kind of HD television because of the upscaling. I use a 22" PC LCD that has an HDMI port. Since PC monitors tend to be cheaper, they can be a great alternative. However, they generally lack the ability to display 480i and below- meaning that users must find an upscaling solution. I bought an HD Box Pro, which is a VGA box, but it was defective- the image is too green.

I bought a super-cheap VGA box once... Plugged it in, and it smelled like burning electronics. I unplugged it pretty fast and got Amazon to take the return as defective. I've since bought another, but it's really bad quality. That, and the device itself is ugly as sin.

How much was that VGA box? Mine was about 50-60. I contacted the manufacturer numerous times for a replacement but they failed to respond. I didn't expect an answer. A lot of the cheaper boxes are produced in Hong Kong.

I don't remember. It was several years ago at this point.