Crazyace:
Just playing Shenmue 2 on DC through TV, and IQ is actually pretty dreadfull - with shimmering textures everywhere showing a lack of basic mipmapping, let alone Trilinear or anisotropic - swithing on Ridge Racer PS2 next to it, they both seem to have very similar IQ problems..
Similar in a way that a great many PS2 games have mip-mapping issues, I guess. I think there's a noticeable distinction here, though, in that Ridge Racer PS2 gets its unstable display as a result of being half-height rendered into a field and then outputted without good filtering while Shenmue 2 just suffers from noisy textures (but is at least rendered full and then downsampled to a TV screen.)
Having installed the DC in the childrens room, and moving about 150 games in with it - it's quite striking just how many games don't actually show superb IQ, definitely better than playstation one, but apart from a few superb titles, not really better than PS2...
Only a few? Almost every single DC game eliminates the scourge of interlace flicker and instability with progressive scan. They give you the option of native VGA (which can be converted to component proscan with the appropriate cables) clarity for HDTVs and monitors or a vertical FSAA output for regular TVs. They also protect against a lack of overscan coverage with the higher definition 480 vertical res, and not the lower res 448 seen many times in PS2 games.
It's really the limitations of our typical off-color, interlaced, slow-fade TVs that fail to show how good DC image quality actually is. Should we have complained that the Atari 2600 showed inadequate improvement over the first black-and-white consoles just because you could hook them both up to a black-and-white TV and not take advantage of what the Atari provided? Technically, it's the same deal when comparing DC on just an interlaced display since the machine is truly providing us more. And PAL territories should especially love DC's solution because, for once, they get access to a full library with a full-screen, full-speed, universally compatible 480p standard.
I'm quite curious about this game library you've mentioned before. What are all these games you've said that don't support VGA output at all? If it'd be helpful to you, here is a simple method for enabling native VGA from the majority of titles that don't automatically boot with it:
(Straight from Ubi Soft)
1. Remove the VMU from the controller and unplug the VGA from the Sega Dreamcast AV OUT port.
2. Power the Sega Dreamcast "ON" with the game disk inserted, wait exactly 5 seconds and insert the VGA cord into the Sega Dreamcast AV OUT port. Your monitor should be black for 10-15 seconds, after which the Sega Logo should appear.
3. Insert the VMU when prompted and continue play.
With a game catalogue the size of yours, I'm surprised you can say there are only a few standout titles with comparatively superb IQ. Not every game is as unpolished as Shenmue II. What about Ecco, Grandia 2, F355 Challenge, Sonic Adventure 2, Virtua Tennis, Craxy Taxi 2, Samba de Amigo, MDK2, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Dead or Alive 2, Jet Grind Radio, the dozens of SEGA Sports titles, the Phantasy Star Online games, Super Magnetic Neo, Rez, the Ready 2 Rumble games, Rayman 2, Le Mans, Soul Calibur, and on and on...
marconelly!:
If you want good picture quality you have to use component cables for PS2 and S-video for DC (if you want to play it on the regular TV).
There are cables that do the simple conversion from VGA to component (with proscan included too) for DC, so you could use component cables for DC as well on a regular TV.
A for example even has better IQ than anything I can think of on Dreamcast. It is also worth noting that you can attach PS2 to a TV using component cables, while for the DC, for the maximum picture quality you have to resort to PC monitors.