It's not easy. The original form of the console only supports RF, composite and SCART. More and more modern TVs are no longer compatible with the old video connection format, and only provide the option of using HDMI. This means that there is no simple solution for playing SNES on HDMI TV.
Fortunately, there are plenty of solutions for playing Super Nintendo on modern TVs at every price point. You can
Prices are as low as $15-20, or as high as $300-400. The cost of connecting your SNES to a modern TV depends on what you want from the experience.
In this article, we focus on the experience of playing genuine SNES cartridges. Therefore, we will only discuss solutions that allow you to play shopping carts on original hardware or cloned hardware.
If you just want to connect the SNES to the TV and don't care about response time or image quality, you can use a universal composite HDMI converter. These can be found in the $10-20 range on Amazon and do as they say. The converter receives the composite signal, which is the best signal that the cable that comes with the American SNES can provide, and converts it into a digital signal that the TV can decode through HDMI.
When using a video converter, you can get the rewards you need, so don't expect to use one of them to get an excellent SNES gaming experience. Since the signal source is a composite signal, the image quality will be relatively poor, and since these converters are not very fast, you may notice more than a little input lag. It can get the job done, and if you play SNES just for novelty, that might be enough. However, if you want to play SNES regularly, it is recommended that you do not use this cheap solution.
The Pound HD Link cable is an upgraded version of the composite to HDMI converter, and the price is only a little more expensive. However, this solution has a caveat. Since it is a signal that converts an RGB signal rather than a composite video from SNES to HDMI, it is not compatible with the stock SNES Jr. All original models of SNES can use this cable, but if you are using an older, smaller model, you can use this cable. , You must modify it.
Although it is a major improvement on HDMI synthesis, the Pound cable is not without its problems. It has problems with saturation and contrast, so you will have problems with the game being too dark and blowing red. It also only outputs video at 16:9, so if the TV cannot choose to shrink it to 4:3, it must process the stretched image.
If you don't want to spend a lot of money to play SNES in HDMI, I recommend using a pound cable. Adjusting the TV settings can make up for its shortcomings and output good quality images. Compared with cheap composite video converters, the input lag time of this solution is also shorter, which makes platform games and other twitch games less annoying.
This option is more suitable for users who do not already have SNES. As time goes by, the price of Super Nintendos is slowly rising. If you are just a casual fan who wants to play a few games, then clone console is a good choice.
If you want to play SNES often, only Analoges Super NT is worth buying a SNES clone. We are not talking about that yet. What we are talking about are the products that the Chinese have faithfully produced in the past two decades. These clones based on GF-6970 or TCT-970 are not the best clones. They include inexpensive HDMI scalers, which increase input delay and cannot provide the most realistic experience. However, they are an all-in-one package that allows you to play SNES games cheaply with HDMI.
The Old Skool Classiq 2 linked below is a typical example of these clones. It is compatible with NES and SNES cassettes and 720p HDMI output. It comes with inexpensive NES and SNES controllers, and you can choose to use any gamepad compatible with the original hardware. Again, these do not give you the best picture, they may have input lag, but for those who don't have SNES and want to do some casual games, they are cheap and a good choice.
Only a Super Nintendo clone console can be considered "high quality". Analogue Super NT uses FPGA to replace the clone of the original hardware, which gives it many advantages in the competition. With Super NT, no video conversion is required. Instead, the pictures are generated digitally from the beginning, eliminating the input lag problem of cheap clones.
Since Super NT's FPGA is much more powerful than the hardware in cheap clones, it provides many visualization options, such as scalers and scan lines. FPGAs also avoid the problems encountered by emulator-based solutions such as Retron 5 and allow Super NT to render games almost completely faithfully.
The biggest disadvantage of Super NT is the price. A game console priced at $200 (not including shipping) is expensive, and for those who just want to fire, it may not be the most cost-effective option.
Every time.
If you are looking for a completely authentic experience, then you will not be able to do better than the original hardware. However, this option is much more complicated and expensive than the previously listed options.
First, you need to obtain an SNES Jr., which has been modified to restore RGB video output. When using RGB, SNES Jr. has the clearest output, but Nintendo eliminated the RGB circuit on this model, so you need to correct it. You can use some options to achieve this goal:
You can add RGB to SNES Jr yourself in several ways:
Reverting RGB to SNES Jr. is actually a great first mod to try. I built my own amplifier and connected it, and it worked well. Using the pre-built THS7374 amplifier will get a better picture, but I think the THS7314 route still looks great.
You can also send SNES Jr. to professional installers and let them work hard. If you have never been in contact before and are not interested in learning, this is the easiest way. There are a lot of installation programs, some are good, some are not good. But you can't be wrong
, He is the backbone of the retro community, in addition to installing modules, he also designed modules.
One thing I want to remind is that I buy a pre-compiled SNES Jr. from eBay. There are some great modders selling on this site, but there are also many people doing sub-par work. You can save yourself some heartache by doing the work yourself or sending it to a trusted installer.
A year ago, I would say that Micomsoft Framemeister XRGB-Mini is the best high-end video converter for people who want to get great pictures with minimal trouble. However, XRGB-Mini is no longer produced, so its price has skyrocketed. If you find someone who doesn't want too many settings at the right price, I would still recommend XRGB-Mini. Framemeister can convert video and enlarge it to provide an excellent picture at 1080p resolution while only adding about one and a half frames of delay.
Since Framemeister is no longer being produced, we have left us with many options that I think are not ideal for most users. Among them, the open source scan converter (OSSC) is the most versatile solution. OSSC is not as high-end as Framemeister. This is a doubler. This means that it just takes the RGB video from your SNES, performs a simple Bob de-interlacing, and then multiplies the signal by 2-5 times the original size. Since there are no other image processing functions, OSSC can output zero-delay video, which is one of its main advantages over Framemeister.
However, unlike Framemeister, OSSC needs to be configured per system. This used to be a huge, confusing pain. Fortunately, members of the retro community have figured out the best settings for each platform.
, He also did an excellent job to Framemeister, he continued to provide and update OSSC configuration files that can be loaded from the SD card. Owning OSSC does not require a lot of hard work, although it still has some quirks, which makes it harder to use the solution than Framemeister.
You also need to make sure to choose a high-quality SCART cable for SNES. Unlike HDMI, which is a digital signal, RGB is an analog signal, which means it will be interfered. If the structure of the purchased cable is incorrect, the image quality will be reduced.
I use Insurrection Industries cables (if available). However, providing high-quality SCART cables for SNES and other consoles can sometimes be challenging. If you find that the cable linked below does not exist, it is recommended that you check the following site
And RetroRGB for the latest information on cable availability.
