Welcome to the Audio/Video Supply section. While most of us remember hooking up our old game systems with an RF Box back in the day, to do so now is doing a great dis-service to the TV and your System. Even though many of the old game systems cant go any higher than RCA / composite cables (Red, White & Yellow) it provides a much better picture. Lets review, shall we?

First, lets cover the basics of video connections.

SEGA RF BOX

MK-1632 Shown

(connects to the TV Cable/Antenna: see diagram below)

Almost every game system you purchased before the mid 90’s came with one of these bad boy connections. You simply unscrewed your Cable TV from the back of your Television, screw this in, and then hook your Cable TV onto the RF box. Then just sit back and watch the worst picture you can get on your awesome game system.

RF is the worst connection you can use. Only use it if you have no other input available. If you have an RCA (Red, Yellow & White) Input, by all means, use that instead. The main reason these RF displays a crappy picture is that all the audio and video signals are squeezed into one cable, interfere with each other, and are then broken back apart again at your TV.

S-Video or Super Video or Y/C cable

(connects to the S-Video In: see diagram below)

Ahh the S-video cable. One of my favorite connections for the older systems. S-video (created by JVC) improves the picture quality of the yellow composite cable by breaking lumen (luminance) and chroma (color) into their own wires, reducing interference and providing a cleaner signal to the TV.

Now, many people may think the the picture looks “jaggy”, while other describe it as “sharper”. The reason for this is that game systems have a resolution (320 x 224 for the Genesis) that is basically little squares or pixels. So the Genesis is 320 little squares across by 224 squares down (71,680 squares total). The newer the system the better the resolution, the better the picture.

Well when you use an RF or RCA cable. the interference makes the picture a little blurry. So where two squares or pixels sit side by side, their edges are fuzzy and blurred together, which “softens” the look. Well when you start using S-video or better cables, you start to see the edges of each pixel/square better. Now on newer systems, DVDs and such the picture just looks better. On the older (lower resolution) systems, it may be considered “blockier”, but you are beginning to see exactly what the designer of the game was working with.

SCART or CSYNC RBG SCART

This bad boy cable isn’t as well know in the States, but is commonly used in Europe. This cable basically takes the straight RGB feed from your system and will give you the absolute cleanest picture you can get from almost all classic consoles. As U.S. TV’s don’t have SCART inputs you have to add a converter box, which will then covert the RGB signal to either Component or even HDMI. This cable set-up will make your system look near pixle perfect and is a must for the video/image snob (like myself).

*NOTE: Any links to buy this cable will take you to our affiliate site RGC.

HDMI

It was bound to happen sometime! That’s right, you can now connect many of your classic/retro systems to modern HDTVs directly with a HDMI cable. With retro game systems not designed to output super high resolutions like 720p, 1080p and 4K, these cables have been designed to upscale smaller resolutions (320×244 for instance on the SEGA Genesis) to 720p (1280×720) and above! This will give you a very sharp picture on your latest flat-screen TVs.

Gametrog is proud to offer these cables now! Visit our store!

Standard TV AV Connections

While there are better video connections available (HDMI and such), you can almost forget about them when your talking about “Classic Game Systems”. Your goal should be to get every system you have to either RCA or S-Video and you’ll be in good shape.