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Does anyone here have experience with using N64 on an HDTV?

11K views 6 replies 4 participants last post by  avsnewbie23 
#1 ·
I have a Vizio M55-C2. My n64 was stolen along with a lot of other older systems from my storage unit years ago and I really miss my N64. I was planning on finding one off of craigslist but I know the N64 is fussy with HDTV's. What rca/S-video to HDMI convertors are you using and how does it look on your HDTV's?
 
#4 · (Edited)
Shouldn't a simple HDMI converter work nearly the same?

No, sorry. You need to understand that composite video is a garbage signal to begin with. Sending it through an upscaler, even one as fancy as the Framemeister won't look that great. Also, the cheap scalers are cheap for a reason. At their best, they wouldn't look any better than if you used a HDTV that still had the composite port directly on it. There's also issues with aspect ratio. those cheap scalers are going to stretch your N64 image out to 16:9, so you're going to be dependent on your tv having a 4:3 option if you care about that sort of thing. The framemeister and Ultra HDMI have the ability to send out a properly sized 4:3 image inside the 16:9 signal the TV is getting over HDMI.

Another issue with a lot of those cheap scalers is they see a 240P image (most N64 games) as 480i. So instead of simply upscaling an image that's progressive already, they're going to deinterlace it. This adds combing artifacts and moving stuff is going to lose detail. Something like the Framemeister or the HDMI mod treat the progressive image as progressive and upscale it properly. But on the other hand, something like the n64 that is blurry already this probably isn't going to be that big of a deal compared to something like the genesis or snes.

However, as you stated those options are quite expensive. If you can live with the 16:9 stretch (hopefully your tv has a zoom mode to fix this) and possibility of interlacing artifacts, at the very least start with a S-Video cable and grab a scaler that supports it. https://www.amazon.com/E-More®-Quality-Composite-S-VIDEO-Converter/dp/B00N8SCKPE/
 
#5 ·
Okay so after I buy an N64 on CL, I then have to find S-video cables for it and then I need to purchase the converter you linked me to? There are 2 other TVs in the house not as new as mine so maybe it's just easier to see if they work on those ones first before I got spending extra money.
 
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