JPN Megadrive (Bars on my TV screen)

[MegaDrive20XX]

I dunno why, but every game I play on my Japanese Megadrive, I get these prison bars that appear on my TV screen when it's black or during gameplay.

What is causing this?

[Melf]

This goes in Tech Aid. :)

Hmm, what connection are you using?

[MegaDrive20XX]

AV Cables.
Sorry about that, this should have gone into Tech Aid :(

[Joe Redifer]

Are they colored bars? Like a moire pattern? Do they show up REALLY WELL in the "transparent" waterfalls on the first level of Sonic 1, for instance?

If so, it sounds like you have a Genesis 1. You can get rid of these by getting a 32X and all of its proper cables.

[MegaDrive20XX]

A bit, looks like black and a faded out green hint. They show up very well like a waterfall

This is a Japanese Megadrive actually.

My US Genesis 1 has no problems like this and runs smoothly

[Joe Redifer]

Well it is probably an early Mega Drive 1, just like an early Genesis 1. I'm pretty sure they fixed that later on. Is there any way you could take a picture or capture a screen of this?

[MegaDrive20XX]

most def, I'll get a pic up here later tonight

[MegaDrive20XX]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/Akumajo22/Bars.jpg

Okay it took me a while to get a good clean shot of it...but I circled a section of it.

[Joe Redifer]

My model 1 Genesis does that, too. It has since I bought it when the system was first released. I just got used to it. But then I got a 32X and I noticed something playing my old games.... the bars were gone! That's because the Genesis outputs its RGB to the 32X and the 32X does the encoding into composite. The 32X has a much better composite chip than the early Genesis 1s.

[gearguy]

Oddly enough, that problem seems to plague even some of the later models.
It's something to do with the way they set up the video encoder chip inside the console - there are mods that can get around it.

The effect isn't very noticable on RGB output of the MD, the MD2 had it pretty much removed but the RF Modulator that came with it actually added bars to the picture LOL.
(Not that you'd be playing with RF idf you really cared anyway)

[Joe Redifer]

The effect is gone with RGB completely. That's why adding a 32X gets rid of the effect, also completely.

[gearguy]

Even at that, the RGB output of the MD is not as "pure" as we'd all like to think.
If you compare the RGB of an MD on your TV with a emulated screen of the same game you'll notice a slight "striping" effect on some colours that's not supposed to be there. :p

[Joe Redifer]

Again, there's a big difference between RGB on a CRT screen and an emulator screen blown up by 2x or more. It has nothing to do with the output, but the screen itself. I explained all of this on my video article (which you will surely hate) here on the site. My screen shows no vertical striping artifacts whatsoever and I am a god damned anal prick.

[gearguy]

Again, there's a big difference between RGB on a CRT screen and an emulator screen blown up by 2x or more. It has nothing to do with the output, but the screen itself. I explained all of this on my video article (which you will surely hate) here on the site. My screen shows no vertical striping artifacts whatsoever and I am a god damned anal prick.

It must be my cable, because I get no striping artifacts from RGB on any other consoles.
My MD happens to show vertical brightness variations in stripe formation on RGB ouput on my TV.

Yet SNES, Dreamcast, Saturn, Xbox etc Do not.

My cable is at fault?

[Joe Redifer]

Who knows. Maybe your Mega Drive is at fault. They could have gotten shoddy with the RGB out during one of the generations of the machine like they did with the Neo Geo. The Neo Geo is all over the map when it comes to RGB, and it never lands on the "good" part of the map.