Professor E. Gadd
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2012
- Messages
- 172
- Karma
- 28
- Playing
- Wii U
There have been several discussions over the past decade or so about how older consoles don't look their best when played on HDTVs. I am now finally convinced those people were correct and am ready to jump the gun. I am looking to buy an EDTV (not HDTV) for hooking up my older consoles to it. It will be one of my dedicated gaming televisions, and I plan to have my Dreamcast, GameCube, Wii, Xbox 1, and PS2, hooked up to this TV.
While some standard-definition games look OK when output to a 1080p TV, some of them look truly awful. You would think that the more recent games would fare better on HDTV, but as I recently learned, that's not the case. As an example, Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword looks completely unplayable to me when viewed on a top-of-the-line Samsung LCD while it's totally gorgeous on an old Panasonic CRT. I don't know why games like Mario Kart Wii look pretty decent on HDTVs while Skyward Sword doesn't, but I suspect that because of the art-influenced graphic style, the Zelda developer team used various visual tricks that just didn't translate well to a high-def screen. Maybe they didn't test it with different TV types, or maybe they did and decided that they had to make sacrifices somewhere.
But in any scenario, Skyward Sword is the game that's pushing me to finally switch, so I am now committed to buying an EDTV for my basement to play older games on. The newer consoles like Wii U, PS4, and Xbox One will stay in the living room, as they were actually designed for HDTVs.
So if anyone has advice about which specific model I should get (more importantly, what TVs are in stock these days and at which stores), please post it here. For those unaware, an EDTV is a standard-definition TV that still outputs picture in progressive scan. Sometimes they are 4:3 and sometimes they're widescreen. I would probably prefer one that's widescreen, so it would have 852 × 480 resoluton. Again, recommendations are welcome.
P.S. As a bonus, it would be a great TV to watch old VHS tapes and DVDs.
While some standard-definition games look OK when output to a 1080p TV, some of them look truly awful. You would think that the more recent games would fare better on HDTV, but as I recently learned, that's not the case. As an example, Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword looks completely unplayable to me when viewed on a top-of-the-line Samsung LCD while it's totally gorgeous on an old Panasonic CRT. I don't know why games like Mario Kart Wii look pretty decent on HDTVs while Skyward Sword doesn't, but I suspect that because of the art-influenced graphic style, the Zelda developer team used various visual tricks that just didn't translate well to a high-def screen. Maybe they didn't test it with different TV types, or maybe they did and decided that they had to make sacrifices somewhere.
But in any scenario, Skyward Sword is the game that's pushing me to finally switch, so I am now committed to buying an EDTV for my basement to play older games on. The newer consoles like Wii U, PS4, and Xbox One will stay in the living room, as they were actually designed for HDTVs.
So if anyone has advice about which specific model I should get (more importantly, what TVs are in stock these days and at which stores), please post it here. For those unaware, an EDTV is a standard-definition TV that still outputs picture in progressive scan. Sometimes they are 4:3 and sometimes they're widescreen. I would probably prefer one that's widescreen, so it would have 852 × 480 resoluton. Again, recommendations are welcome.
P.S. As a bonus, it would be a great TV to watch old VHS tapes and DVDs.
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