My classic games look like crap on my new TV.

I finially got a 39 inch westing house HDTv 1080p. I was so happy. I got a sweet deal on it. Only $250. I got it because I want a 360 and figured I need an HDTV first. I play orinal Xbox, PS2, and all kinds of old skool games on it. It looks better on a regular TV. You can see all the pixles and stuff making it look crappy. What should I do? Is there anything I can do to make the games look good on my new TV?

I finially got a 39 inch westing house HDTv 1080p. I was so happy. I got a sweet deal on it. Only $250. I got it because I want a 360 and figured I need an HDTV first. I play orinal Xbox, PS2, and all kinds of old skool games on it. It looks better on a regular TV. You can see all the pixles and stuff making it look crappy. What should I do? Is there anything I can do to make the games look good on my new TV?

cyberstalker1

Getting component cables helps a lot for PS2 and Xbox. Using composite connections on HDTVs tend to look bad.

yeah component cables do help alot, also you can pop your cds in your comp and they will look amazing if you have a good comp and vid card.

That's why I play old games on an SDTV.

Experienced the same thing- A few years ago I picked up a 42" 1080p to finally catch up with the times only to discover it was the nail in the coffin for my PS2. As others have stated, you can lessen the stretch-factor a bit by tweaking your aspect ratio and upgrading your connection cords but at the end of the day, consoles with higher output become the only real option to capitalizing on your new screen's capibilitties. I justified the upgrade to the PS3 on account of the fact that I planned to pick up a Blu-ray player as well.

However, since my PS3 (slim) isn't backward compatible, the old 27" CRT came back out in the basement so that the PS2 could live on. One step forward, two steps back around here :\

getting component (or s-video for the older consoles) will help , there is not much you can do really, not all HDTVs look bad with the older games, but alot do have upscalers that do a pretty crappy job.

Kinda obvious that 480i res or less will look bad when stretched/upscaled on a 1080p TV...

But like others have already said you can improve the picture quality with a better cable (RGB is prefered) and fixed aspect ratio (unless the game supports widescreen - I know some N64 games like Perfect Dark and World Driver support it).

I have a PS2, Gamecube, and an N64 all hooked up to a Samsung 43" Plasma HDTV, and even though the games looked pretty good enough with standard composite cables, I had component cables for both the Gamecube and PS2 (the component cables for the Gamecube were a whopping $117 as they are very rare), but unfortunately, there were NO component cables for the N64, so the N64 looks very muggy and fuzzy. Not unplayable, but vintage/retro systems are just not meant to be played on these new tv's. Thankfully I do have another standard SDTV where I can play these older games on.

The component cables help A LOT with the 2 systems. I recently started playing Beyond Good and Evil on the PS2, and with progressive mode set to on the thing looks beautiful! So I'm very happy :)

keep your old tube TV for the legacy platform games. true, using component cables might help on some of the newer consoles like the xbox or ps2, but most older consoles were designed for tube televisions. if you dont have room for a tube tv, you'll just have to deal with the games looking "like crap" on the new HDTV.

I finially got a 39 inch westing house HDTv 1080p. I was so happy. I got a sweet deal on it. Only $250. I got it because I want a 360 and figured I need an HDTV first. I play orinal Xbox, PS2, and all kinds of old skool games on it. It looks better on a regular TV. You can see all the pixles and stuff making it look crappy. What should I do? Is there anything I can do to make the games look good on my new TV?

cyberstalker1

Unfortunately in regards to old consoles there isnt much you can do to get the best image possible from an HDtv. The simple fact is that when you upscale an image from something so small as ps2 resolution (and other old consoles) to 1080p youre going to get a stretched image no matter what you do, because upscalling is essentially just stretching a picture to fit.

Some ps2 games support HD resolutions but these are very uncommon and you need component cables to use this. As with any console from that and previous generations your best bet is a small HDtv or a good old fashioned crt.

The alternative is to go to the "dark side" (read: emulation):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG9rN1zMNd0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxQzENl7quU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwBUTLjNVDs

http://filthypants.blogspot.com/2010/12/crt-pixel-shader-filter-for-snes.html

It renders consoles obsolete, basically.

You also get the option for online play.

The alternative is to go to the "dark side" (read: emulation):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG9rN1zMNd0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxQzENl7quU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwBUTLjNVDs

http://filthypants.blogspot.com/2010/12/crt-pixel-shader-filter-for-snes.html

It renders consoles obsolete, basically.

You also get the option for online play.

nameless12345