So It Begins

And so I will document my purchases. I will start, conversely, not with the first item I received but instead with the last. I know, I'm a crazy bastard. I start here because it is a good point to jump on, I'll explain.

One of my latest purchases was an RGB SCART cable from ebay seller adapter_man. It cost just under a tenner including shipping which you may think is slightly steep for a SCART lead, but I can assure you that if you want the best out of your SNES, this is the way to get it. As far as I know (and I don't know very far) only PAL consoles are capable of outputting in RGB, so this lead is wasted money for a US or JAP console. Obviously, your TV also has to be capable of RGB.

There are also many fake RGB cables out there that only output the same as a regular AV cable would and using an old N64 / Gamecube RGB SCART might not be the answer either, as they may output at different brightnesses or use different wiring that is incompatible with the SNES. This can result in the image displaying for a moment before fading to black, which is useless! I did a bit of homework on this as you can tell, and after reading the item description adapter_man had written I was fully confident he knew his shit.

Here is said cable, in all its gold plated 20 pin connection glory.

Ok, not much to look at for normal people, so I'll show you what this thing does. Below is a few samples of the RGB cable in action, compared to the standard AV cable that comes with every SNES. These were shot using my Sony DSC-T20 with the exact same settings for each comparison shot. The LCD TV is my Samsung LE26R74BD. The top half of each image is the AV output and the bottom is the RGB.

The difference in colour vibrance is immediately clear, while the AV looks muddy the RGB is crisp and bright. There is also noticeably less banding in the RGB picture.

Again, the colours look so much better in RGB. The edges are more defined and the text is clearer as the blue, white and background colours are separated more cleanly.

This close-up of the text firmly illustrates the benefits of having a nice crisp RGB output compared to the smudged blur of standard AV cables.

In conclusion, if you've spent or are planning to spend tens to hundreds of pounds re-living those SNES retro dreams, do yourself a favour and get the right cable. It's only a tenner!