Differences in console hardware vs. the quality of your display

Bit of a long post, but lately i've been finishing my collections for my older consoles : Wii, GC Xbox etc. and I wanted to pick up a smaller mid range tv for these games so I got a 40" 2018 vizio and... the size reduction did not help. The games look vastly better on my high end sammy, even though it's much larger.

Anyways I had the thought that the displays we game on matter far more than differences in hardware, even across different generations. I can easily say that 360 games look better than ps4 games when the latter are played on a cheap mid range screen. I would go as far to say that some wii, xbox and gamecube games look better if the gap in display quality is large enough.

Playing a horror game with atmospheric effects and very dark areas like Until dawn makes the choice of screen hugely important. On this as well, to me the difference in this game between a cheap screen and a high end one is also bigger than a generational leap.

Color accuracy, saturation, blur and black levels I think matter way more than differences in console hardware. I can adjust to lower pixel counts, but a shit tier screen now ruins my experience no matter the platform. Nothing is worse than a dull, dim grey and blurry TV. I am now eyeing that lg b8 oled for black friday :p

Does anyone else agree, and what kinds of displays do you game with?
 
Bit of a long post, but lately i've been finishing my collections for my older consoles : Wii, GC Xbox etc. and I wanted to pick up a smaller mid range tv for these games so I got a 40" 2018 vizio and... the size reduction did not help. The games look vastly better on my high end sammy, even though it's much larger.

Anyways I had the thought that the displays we game on matter far more than differences in hardware, even across different generations. I can easily say that 360 games look better than ps4 games when the latter are played on a cheap mid range screen. I would go as far to say that some wii, xbox and gamecube games look better if the gap in display quality is large enough.

Playing a horror game with atmospheric effects and very dark areas like Until dawn makes the choice of screen hugely important. On this as well, to me the difference in this game between a cheap screen and a high end one is also bigger than a generational leap.

Color accuracy, saturation, blur and black levels I think matter way more than differences in console hardware. I can adjust to lower pixel counts, but a shit tier screen now ruins my experience no matter the platform. Nothing is worse than a dull, dim grey and blurry TV. I am now eyeing that lg b8 oled for black friday :p

Does anyone else agree, and what kinds of displays do you game with?

for me its the opposite. Playing old games in new TV brings the quality down a ton. The older the game, the worse it is.

usually its related to scaling, aliasing, and blur that keeps getting more pronounced with newer, bigger, higher-resolution, TV.
 
Top end screens do matter a lot indeed especially considering the capability to output 10 bit color depth, very high nits count HDR, full array local dimming, high contrast ratio, clouding control or a high end Oled, for modern games that is. A ps4 game with HDR and wide color gamut running on a Z9D, Q9 or Oled would have richer color volume, more vibrant and more contrasty than a PC version of the game running on a Dell monitor. However really old SDR games don't benefit much at all because they are not designed to be shown on a high end display (HDR, WCG, high res textures, effects, dense pixel count) so in your case 360, wii games would look nowhere near a ps4 game even running on a 10,000 nits micro LED display:).
 
for me its the opposite. Playing old games in new TV brings the quality down a ton. The older the game, the worse it is.

usually its related to scaling, aliasing, and blur that keeps getting more pronounced with newer, bigger, higher-resolution, TV.

This could be true, if you're using composite cables for the older consoles. You'll see that glorious color mush much more on a current screen than on an lcd from a decade ago. But all my consoles use hdmi through various methods, and looking at today's tv's, upscaling chips and motion blur handling as well as everything previously mentioned have improved by an incredible degree in the last decade.

In theory smaller screens should have better pixel density and therefore less shimmering and a clearer image, but frankly anything below 49inch screens today do not use quality panels.

Once I had a 19 inch lcd and thought 360 games would look amazingly crisp due to the ppi, but the shimmering actually just got worse!
 
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Top end screens do matter a lot indeed especially considering the capability to output 10 bit color depth, very high nits count HDR, full array local dimming, high contrast ratio, clouding control or a high end Oled, for modern games that is. A ps4 game with HDR and wide color gamut running on a Z9D, Q9 or Oled would have richer color volume, more vibrant and more contrasty than a PC version of the game running on a Dell monitor. However really old SDR games don't benefit much at all because they are not designed to be shown on a high end display (HDR, WCG, high res textures, effects, dense pixel count) so in your case 360, wii games would look nowhere near a ps4 game even running on a 10,000 nits micro LED display:).

Older games benefit greatly with newer screens. I was using a Sammy from 2007 briefly with my ps4 when my tv bit the dust, and the games absolutely looked far worse than 360 and even Wii on my current setup. Just from a clarity and color standpoint, this isn't a console/tech wars thread. ;) Black level, color contrast and brightness matter a lot no matter the content.

360 games depending on the game actually still look pretty crisp on a good set. Hell lots of people are still playing them via Xbox one bc and most aren't 4k enhanced. Wii's *slightly* rough though.
 
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my xbox 360 on my 4K 49inch LG TV looks worse than when i run in on 24inch 1440x900 benq monitor.

PSP games I played on Vita also looks ugly.

although when i played 3D PS1 games or Wii games via emulator to 4k 49inch TV, it does look great. sharp, no aliasing. The low-res textures become jarring tho. Luckily many nintendo games have "cartoon look" that have no problem with texture looking low-res. Heck, it even look superb in 4K (e.g. zelda skyward sword)
 
my xbox 360 on my 4K 49inch LG TV looks worse than when i run in on 24inch 1440x900 benq monitor.

PSP games I played on Vita also looks ugly.

although when i played 3D PS1 games or Wii games via emulator to 4k 49inch TV, it does look great. sharp, no aliasing. The low-res textures become jarring tho. Luckily many nintendo games have "cartoon look" that have no problem with texture looking low-res. Heck, it even look superb in 4K (e.g. zelda skyward sword)
I guess your emulation uses hardware acceleration for improved filtering and resolution. I don't think playing the games the exact way they ran back in the day would look great :p
 
PS2 on a 65'' 4k HDR tv isnt pretty using RGB/480i cables, should get components :p Strange thing is that some games fare much better then others, the first SSX looks terrible, so does san andreas, but Tricky does somewhat better, what is the real common PS2 resolution?
 
PS2 on a 65'' 4k HDR tv isnt pretty using RGB/480i cables, should get components :p Strange thing is that some games fare much better then others, the first SSX looks terrible, so does san andreas, but Tricky does somewhat better, what is the real common PS2 resolution?

448i I think is a common ps2 resolution for some reason. I think some burnout 3 dev described ps2's output as broken, something about the back buffer not combining well with the front. Baldurs gate dark alliance for some reason though has insanely good image quality for that generation using super sampling. Then some games like ICO run far below 480 resolution, at 512 by 224 o_O So yeah, pretty wide variation there.

What ps2 model do you have? Basically the older your unit, the better it handles component video it seems. Some of the later slims show vertical line artifacts when using component. The OG fat boys seem to handle it best.

I mentioned before there's line doublers (deinterlacer) such as the retro tink 2, I use with N64. But given that it doesn't accept 480p signals (which some ps2 games support) you may want to consider the open source scan converter like I use for my Wii that I feed via component and it outputs straight lagless 480p, then your TV would handle the upscale. The quality would depend on your TV's upscaling chip though.

It isn't cheap though it's nearly $200 with shipping :p
 
What ps2 model do you have?

Have many PS2's, the oldest models are 30004 EU launch units (oct 2000). As said, the older the TV the better it looks for the PS2, or maybe its the screen size doing it, the bigger the worse for PS2. Had components before, cant find them but seeing how cheap they are its worth a try.
Just now i have an RGB cable, which is much better then the standard composite, like day and night. The OG Xbox fares much better but im using component there, the dash and some games are in native 1080i, Amped 2 in 720p. Most xbox games support DD5.1 too, should get the advanced HD pack to try it. OG Xbox really was a console semi future proof with its DD5.1 and 480p standard.

Got a Wii and GC aswell, both with composites.
Btw, with freemcboot/openps2loader one can force progressive on allmost all PS2 games using GSM, as i understood all PS2 games are progressive in some backbuffer, just needing a switch somewhere in software that enables the progressive mode. Anyone here have experience with that? Seems strange as to why devs didnt enable that from the beginning.
 
There's a few xbox games that don't support 480p, but most do. Same on gamecube. I've only played one game (not including retro compilations like kirby or mario) on Wii which didn't run in progressive that being madworld which frankly looks like a ps2 or dreamcast game anyways lol
 
I kinda agree.

I have an old Samsung 1080p TN panel and PS4 games on it look obviously worse compared to an old LG 1080p IPS panel.

The 1080p TN panel doesn't even have much calibration settings.

The colors have a large enough factor in my enjoyment of games. Heck even in watching in general.
 
I kinda agree.

I have an old Samsung 1080p TN panel and PS4 games on it look obviously worse compared to an old LG 1080p IPS panel.

The 1080p TN panel doesn't even have much calibration settings.

The colors have a large enough factor in my enjoyment of games. Heck even in watching in general.
Definitely, color accuracy and brightness matter to me infinitely more than something like jaggies. If the image comes through great, great. If it looks inaccurate and dim, doesn't matter if it's ps4 or dreamcast lol.

Right now the only panels i've found good enough are high end samsung lcd, (their current qleds have nasty post processing though) sony fald and oled.
 
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Btw, with freemcboot/openps2loader one can force progressive on allmost all PS2 games using GSM, as i understood all PS2 games are progressive in some backbuffer, just needing a switch somewhere in software that enables the progressive mode. Anyone here have experience with that? Seems strange as to why devs didnt enable that from the beginning.
So you make a copy with some special mod that forces progressive? Is that what you are saying?
 
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