[ThunderPX]

So quite a while ago, I modded my Mega Drive with region switches and bought an RGB cable so the 60Hz picture would be in colour. Worked flawlessly.

Then I bought myself a new TV, a Samsung UE40EH5300. Now, when I put the Mega Drive in 60Hz mode, the picture and sound keep flickering in and out. The "EXT" channel indication also stays on-screen, so the TV seems to be having trouble deciding whether there's a signal or not. The strange thing is, none of my other consoles have this problem, whether 50Hz or 60Hz, and even the Mega Drive works fine in 50Hz mode.

Google hasn't helped with this at all. Do any of you have any idea what the problem could be?

[GerbilSoft]

Does this problem go away in Sonic 2's 2P mode?

[Josh]

My TV is similar. In my case, I believe it's related to low or odd resolutions. Anything 32-bit and beyond displays, though it looks awful. I _believe_ the Genesis works. But the SNES won't display at all. I know it's working, because I can see it through my capture card, but the signal never comes in on the TV.

I don't have any experience dealing with 50hz vs. 60hz, but resolution differences may still be to blame. I'm sure someone more technically-minded will be able to offer more explanation.

[rata]

Are you trying to run under PAL mode? Some TVs don't support PAL anymore (they do support PAL N and PAL M). My TV does the same with my PSX Bios and with some PS2 PAL games. And sometimes my Genesis enters under SECAM mode that also flickers in and out but with distorted colours. If your case is how I think it is, it also shows in grayscale, right?

[ThunderPX]

GerbilSoft, on 17 April 2015 - 06:34 AM, said:

Does this problem go away in Sonic 2's 2P mode?

I don't know, I'll test that out as soon as I get my copy of Sonic 2 and my Mega Drive in the same place.

Quote

Are you trying to run under PAL mode? Some TVs don't support PAL anymore (they do support PAL N and PAL M). My TV does the same with my PSX Bios and with some PS2 PAL games. And sometimes my Genesis enters under SECAM mode that also flickers in and out but with distorted colours. If your case is how I think it is, it also shows in grayscale, right?

The problem happens in NTSC mode (60Hz.) I am European, so naturally my TV supports PAL. The image is in colour when it comes in. In fact, it looks perfectly fine apart from the fact that it keeps going away, which is what confuses me most.

[rata]

And you said that you don't have the same problems with other devices on 60Hz, but is that on NTSC or PAL-M? Because right now the only I can think about is on problems between your TV and NTSC format. If you still have the older TV, you might want to keep it for those cases when the new one doesn't work (if there's no space problem in your house, of course). My brother had to do something like that to play God of War in PAL version, since my new TV can't handle it and the old Sansei can.

Spoiler

I hope this were helpful in any way possible.

[Herm the Germ]

I'm pretty sure the issue is with the Mega Drive outputting NTSC. I just happen to work for Samsung customer support (AV in the past, now accessories) and what I picked up there is that NTSC support on TVs produced for central Europeanr regions is fickle at best.
Far as I can tell from the tech specs, your TV should theoretically support the following analogue input signal formats to some extent: PAL, SECAM, NTSC-4.43, NTSC-3.58, PAL60.

Now, I ain't an expert on what you can set to output how on the Mega Drive side of things, but there's little you can change on the TV side of things, I can tell you this much. Hope that helped a little.

[GerbilSoft]

I re-read your post and noticed the region-modding. I'm thinking that even with the RGB cable, the line frequency might be off just enough to confuse the TV.

A more thorough region mod would also replace the master oscillator with a ~53.691 MHz (15 * NTSC colorburst) oscillator when switched to 60 Hz mode. If you have the right tools, try doing this and see if it fixes it.

[ThunderPX]

Crap, I don't know the first thing about doing that. Would I still be able to run it in PAL mode if I replaced the oscillator? I have a fair amount of PAL games, so I'd like to be able to run both if possible.

[GerbilSoft]

You'd need a DPDT switch to control both the jumper and the oscillator at the same time.

You can have both the NTSC and PAL oscillators installed on a daughterboard, and switch them at the same time you switch video modes.

[Miles Prower]

Grab a French RVB cable, and mod it for 60Hz. That box in-between adds proper BLANK and VDD signals, and corrects the raw RGB signal of the Megadrive to fit actual TV standards.

This post has been edited by Miles Prower: 14 May 2015 - 03:31 PM

[Meat Miracle]

None of the fixes above will help you (other than replacing the master oscillator, thereby converting the machine entirely to a NTSC equivalent Genesis/Megadrive).

The problem is that a PAL Megadrive switched to 60hz will not output a proper NTSC standard 60Hz (well, 59.97Hz) signal. I don't have the exact number off the top of my head but it is some oddball sync frequency like 59.30Hz or so. CRTs can handle this fine, but the upscaling chips in digital TVs are not meant to tolerate anything but completely standard frequencies, so they will have unexpected behaviour when they encounter such a signal.

In the case for my Panasonic plasma, I get a picture that varies between stable, greatly off-centre, or randomly switching between those two (or, if I use c-sync in the rgb scart output, it will be off-centre but completely stable). Ant the XRGB Mini Framemeister is supposedly incompatible with PAL Megadrives converted to NTSC because of this odd frequency.

Your cheapest solution would be grabbing a NTSC Megadrive. You can get loose Japanese units pretty cheap on ebay from some Japanese sellers, and since those ones are very light, you won't have to pay absurd shipping fees either (a Genesis would weigh more since they put a lot of additional metal plates for EMI filtering in those).

[ashthedragon]

I have problems with my modern Tv too. I got a cheap new LCD tv a month ago, since my old CRT TV was already giving signals or an imminent death, and now I can't play retro consoles on it.

The TV is a 24' Blusens H324 , and it doesn't seem to understand RGB signal at all. It has a scart input but when I put consoles this happen:

- Megadrive and master System do not show any image at all with an RGB cable. I use a modded Pal Megadrive with switches to put it at 60hz. No difference with 50 or 60 hz. Master System is not modded ( and 50hz since it's pal) and it does exactly the same. TV says "no signal" with Mega Drive, but just a black screen with Master System. They worked fine with the old Tv. They work with RF and with AV ( although they cant run at 60 hz then, if you switch to 60hz then it goes black screen with sound that goes on and off. Sometimes you can see image for a flash second)

- Snes and Saturn show like this with RGB cable. Av runs fine.


- Dreamcast do not work at all with RGB. Haven't tried RF or Av.

- PSX/PS2/Gamecube and Xbox work fine with RGB.

AV show a red jailbar everytime, but at least you can play even if it looks badly.

I was looking for a new TV that works with old consoles, or some other way to connect them. I've heard about this thing, have someone used it and can confirm consoles will work?

http://www.amazon.es...t/dp/B0092IAA3I

This post has been edited by ashthedragon: 17 May 2015 - 02:33 PM

[Meat Miracle]

It's the TVs fault for sure, it can't process the incoming signal properly. The SNES/Saturn probably fails at the deinterlacing (try booting up Virtua Fighter 2 on it, it runs in hi-res mode), for the rest, no clue.