American saturn on pal TV

[bruce lee]

I tried it on my friends TV and it seems to come out full color, his TV has an option that when pressed displays (NTSC 358).

Damn I'm so envious, shining force 3 looks damn good at full screen and in color.

Looks like I'm going to have to wait longer to get my saturn working in color, as I don't really feel like running out and buying a new expensive TV 🙁

 

[lordofduct]

Ummm, Cybie... im afraid to tell you this cause you know quite a bit about this stuff. But no, YIQ hasn't been used for a long time. It was originally used back in like 1953 for color but has become obsolete long before I was even born. NTSC now uses YUV (i.e. s-video is YUV, component also combines the chromium into the red and blue and puts out the third luminance which when R+B are deleted from said luminance it gives the blue.)

from what i have been researching it seems that there is encoding differences that can cause the problem though. Just not YIQ. NTSC and PAL are encoded the same except in the 50/60hz and that the chroma frequencies are different. (PAL=4.43, NTSC=3.58)

I wonder if there is a way to switch this on the sega saturn itself like you do with the 50/60. It has a chroma out (for S-video).

 

[lordofduct]

bruce lee: can you do me a favor. Take a look at the plug that plugs into the saturn itself. The saturn is a 9pin mini din. Check if all nine pins get used. If not please tell me which pins do get used.

Also where did you buy your SCART lead? On the internet?

 

[ExCyber]

YIQ hasn't been used for a long time. It was originally used back in like 1953 for color but has become obsolete long before I was even born. NTSC now uses YUV

I've heard that too, but can't confirm it, and AFAIK the standard still specifies YIQ; that's why I said "nominally". I was going to mention YIQ's reported obsolesence, but it got lost in a rewrite of that section (that post was going to be a lot longer initially).

from what i have been researching it seems that there is encoding differences that can cause the problem though. Just not YIQ.

I wasn't trying to say that that's what would cause loss of color, and I agree that it wouldn't; YIQ vs. YUV is only a color space difference, swapping them should only result in distorted color, not loss of color. I only meant to mention them by way of saying that PAL and NTSC do not use the RGB color space, but I can see that I kind of worded it badly.

NTSC and PAL are encoded the same except in the 50/60hz and that the chroma frequencies are different. (PAL=4.43, NTSC=3.58)

This is commonly true, but I'm pretty sure that the defining difference between PAL and NTSC is the phase inversion in the chroma transmission. Otherwise, PAL-M would just be another name for NTSC...

 

[bruce lee]

My scart cable was off a european saturn, which works perfectly on a european saturn.

Which is the same one I used for my american saturn, which gave me the black and white.

The connectors on the end of the scart cable is 9 pin yes, none of them are missing because I have two scart cables and when compared they both look the same.

 

[lordofduct]

this is certainly getting fun on my end... no conclusion for you. I would love to find a PAL tv to play with! Im learning so much.

Oh and thanks Cybie for your imput, you always hand off great info to me.

 

[RitualOfTheTrout]

So do most US saturns work on Pal TVs? Assuming the TV is NTSC compatible and you are using either Scart, Svideo, or component connections?

 

[ExCyber]

There are several things getting mixed up here:

The use of SCART does not imply a specific signal type. A given SCART cable or socket can support composite, S-Video, RGB, composite and RGB, or composite and S-Video. The details of these configurations can vary with your set and cables you are using, although I've been told that it's "normal" for the first socket to support RGB+Composite and the second socket to support S-Video+composite, with one of the pins being used to indicate which type of signal is being sent.

That being said, the problem signal formats are composite, S-Video (which is composite with the brightness component split out), and RF (which is composite riding on a carrier). RGB is fine as long as the TV supports 60Hz because there's no color modulation/encoding scheme to undo. If the set fully supports NTSC (as opposed to just 60Hz PAL), then an RF, composite, or S-Video connection should work too.

 

[RitualOfTheTrout]

Ok, so its basically TV specific then. If the TV fully supports NTSC 60hz then any sort of connection should work.