Shenmue Dojo

Hello all,

I recently picked up a 4KTV and it is truly beautiful, but I've found a catch that I'm not sure applies to Shenmue yet but is something to consider.

I bought Rise of the Tomb Raider (PS4) at launch and my 9 year old daughter wanted to play. I told her no as the series has become far more violent than it was back in the day but that she could play the previous games in the series. With that, I got out my PS2 Slim and hooked up the AV cables into the Component input of my TV as there are no longer AV (RCA) inputs on modern TVs.

I put in the 20 year old PS1 Tomb Raider and it started up. After the PS1 logo, the game went to black and then showed a "No Signal" notification on screen. I tried a second PS1 game with the same result. Then I tried Tomb Raider Anniversary on PS2 and it loaded just fine.

Come to find out that games made around that time and before it had an output of less than standard definition (480i) and that due to that, most modern TV's (4KTVs) can't display such small resolutions on their screens.

While I didn't get around to testing out my Dreamcast on it yet, I thought that this may be a problem for some us if Dreamcast falls under the same issue when using the original AV cables instead of Component. Regardless, I know I still want to play my PS1 and Genesis games that I have even if my Dreamcast still works, so I purchased one of these:

AV to HDMI Converter


It was $35 on Amazon and I'll let you guys know how it works. At the very least it should help with clarity a little. There is a switch on it that allows the output go either to 720p or 1080p. I doubt it will fully upscale but should at least make the text look sharper and should allow the 4K display to actually display the game.

If any of you have a 4KTV, have any of you ran into any issues playing Dreamcast on your set?

Usually everyone and anyone these days will use a VGA cable and 4KTV owners use a VGA to HDMI converter box. If your 4KTV has a built in upscaler like some of the Sony's then you'll also get a beautiful upscaled 4K output.

When using VGA, the Dreamcast outputs 480p. However, even with an expensive upscaler, at 4K you're going to end up with an aliased mess. I don't recommend playing old consoles on anything higher than a 1920x1200 display.

i thought my TV didnt have AV either but turned out you just plug it where you would plug in your component cables. put yellow where green goes then the red and white audio. thats how my tv works anyways. see if it works for you. before you try it see if your tv has the composite/AV option first in the input list option. If it does just plug it in the component area

The components in this thread worked pretty well for me: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=49881

I wouldn't bother with 4K as the upscaler from the box is rubbish, the 4K TV upscaler does a better job when presented with a 1080p input.

Perfect_Chaos wrote: i thought my TV didnt have AV either but turned out you just plug it where you would plug in your component cables. put yellow where green goes then the red and white audio. thats how my tv works anyways. see if it works for you. before you try it see if your tv has the composite/AV option first in the input list option. If it does just plug it in the component area

Oh I know and that's how I had my PS2 plugged in. The PS2 games would display, the PS1 games played on the same system would not. Either starting with Dreamcast or with PS2/Xbox/GC is when they ended up at 480i (full SD resolution). Tomorrow when the AV to HDMI converter comes in the mail, I'm going to get all my classic systems out and test it.

Moved to General Gaming as it has really nothing to do with Shenmue itself.

Systems prior to the Dreamcast output signals in 240p wich is definately a problem for some TVs.
You already concluded that the Dreamcast does 480i and in most games also 480p. So there should be no point to have this converter for the Dreamcast and that's why it really doesn't matter for Shenmue.

I wouldn't touch the composite signal on the Dreamcast anyway. It has VGA and that's the way to go. The progressiv image is much better and neither the TV nor converters have to deinterlacing the picture. So no potential for errors or increased input lag there.

Just use a PC and emulate Shenmue at 4K instead of all this upscale crap.

I keep a CRT around for the sole reason of playing oldschool games. They look better on a CRT than a LCD anyway.