How to make retro consoles look great on a modern TV

You plug in your old console, the TV finds the signal, and the picture looks soft, smeared and a little delayed. You remember it looking much better than that.

That isn’t nostalgia playing tricks. Old consoles and new TVs really don’t speak the same language.

Why it looks bad

Most consoles from the NES through the PlayStation era output a low-resolution 240p picture. CRT televisions handled that natively. Modern TVs mostly don’t recognize 240p, so they treat it as 480i, an interlaced signal, and run it through their deinterlacing and scaling hardware.

That causes three problems:

• Blur and shimmer, because the TV is guessing at lines that aren’t really there.
• Input lag, because all that processing takes time. You’ll feel it in platformers and fighting games.
• Wrong shape, since everything gets stretched to widescreen unless you set the TV to 4:3.

Step 1: Use the best cable your console supports

From worst to best, the old analog connections go like this:

Connection	Picture quality
RF (antenna)	Fuzzy, with interference
Composite (yellow plug)	Soft, with color bleeding
S-Video	Noticeably sharper
Component or RGB	Sharp and clean

Some consoles can do RGB with just the right cable, such as the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis. Others, like the NES and the North American Nintendo 64, need an internal mod first.

Step 2: Put an upscaler in front of the TV

A dedicated retro upscaler takes the analog signal, understands 240p properly, and sends your TV a clean HDMI picture with very little lag. Popular choices include the RetroTINK line and the OSSC (Open Source Scan Converter).

Skip the cheap composite-to-HDMI boxes. The inexpensive adapters sold online often make the picture worse and add their own lag. They work as a last resort, but a proper upscaler is a very different experience.

Step 3: Consider an internal HDMI mod

For some consoles, you can go fully digital. There are internal HDMI kits for the Nintendo 64, and the GameCube’s digital video port can be converted to HDMI. These give the cleanest result with a single cable, and the console stays in its original shell when the install is done well.

When a CRT is still best

A good CRT television still has zero lag and handles 240p natively. It’s also the only option for light gun games. The NES Zapper in Duck Hunt relies on the timing of a CRT’s picture, so it won’t work on an LCD or OLED screen at all.

What we recommend

• Casual play on one console: the best cable it supports, plus setting your TV to its game mode and 4:3.
• A shelf of consoles: a quality upscaler with RGB or component cables.
• One console you play constantly: an internal HDMI or RGB mod.

Not sure what your console and TV need? Send us a question and we’ll point you in the right direction.