Nintendo 64 over S-video

Introduction

From the 1980s to early 2000s, most home entertainment devices used composite video signals and connectors. The Nintendo 64 game console followed this mainstream standard, and it came with a composite video cable by default. Unfortunately, composite video has the second-worst video quality out of all available standards, being only a step above RF modulation. Composite video suffered from dot crawl, low luminance resolution, and color bleeding.

S-video is a small but appreciable step above composite video. This standard separates the luminance and chrominance signals into their own wires, resulting in no dot crawl artifacts, better luminance resolution, and less color bleeding. (It still retains the 480i resolution of standard NTSC television however; component video is even better because it separates the two chrominance channels and allows higher resolutions like 1080p.)

I bought my N64 machine around the year 1999 and used the composite video cable unquestioningly, until a conversation in 2021 with a friend led me to do a bit of research about higher quality output options. With suitable modding (of wires and possibly extra chips), the N64 can output RGB video data, either taken before or after the onboard digital-to-analog converter. Without modding though, it seems the best output format from the N64 is just S-video. I decided to give this a try, and easily bought a 10-CAD cable that plugged into the Nintendo’s proprietary “multi out” port on one end and the S-video socket of my TV on the other end. The resulting improvement in picture quality was decent and within my expectations. I do regret not knowing about and buying this cheap cable earlier, which would’ve given me more years to enjoy better visuals when playing my N64 games.

Picture comparisons

Summary

My overall observations on how Nintendo 64 games look on S-video compared to composite video:

More horizontal resolution and fine detail, less blurring/halos/ringing
Sharper text, especially noticeable at smaller font sizes; this is the biggest benefit when using S-video
Horizontal pixelation more noticeable because most games choose to render at 320×240 whereas the NTSC format is capable of representing about 720×480; this is not S-video’s fault, and newer consoles like the Nintendo GameCube generally render at the full resolution
Diagonal lines noticeably more jagged; this is a minus point but just highlights existing flaws with the N64’s graphics
Dithering visible in some gradients; it seems the N64 uses 15-bit-color somewhere in its rendering data path; this is not S-video’s fault because analog video by definition does not quantize colors

Interactive comparison

Table of examples

Game title	Scene	Observations
Cruis’n USA	Map menu	Center text “EARN FASTER CARS” is sharper on S-video Top-center map’s yellow line is sharper but more pixelated Bottom-left text “B FOR OPTIONS” is sharper Letter “E” in text “EASY”/“MEDIUM”/“HARD” has slight dot crawl on composite video
Cruis’n USA	United States road map	Bottom-right text is sharper on S-video Interstate logos have sharper number text and less blurring of the bottom diagonal white lines Red lines in the map are less saturated and have slight dot crawl on composite video
Cruis’n USA	Choose car	Main white text is somewhat sharper on S-video Bottom-left text “B FOR OPTIONS” is sharper
Cruis’n USA	Transmission select	Top text “CHOOSE TRANSMISSION” has more jagged diagonals on S-video Picture below “AUTOMATIC D CRUIS-O-MATIC” is sharper Bottom-left text “B FOR OPTIONS” is sharper Bottom text “PLAYER 2 PRESS START” has thinner vertical black lines due to improved horizontal resolution
Cruis’n USA	Race with HUD	Top text “50” is sharper on S-video Center orange lampposts are sharper Top-left text “00:20” has dot crawl on composite video
Cruis’n USA	Race sans HUD	Yellow dotted lines and faraway red car are slightly sharper on S-video Overall very subtle improvement in sharpness
GoldenEye 007	Select file	Yellow logos and text are sharper on S-video Red reticle looks sharper in person but doesn’t appear that way in photos
GoldenEye 007	Mission briefing	Main text is much sharper on S-video, especially letters like “e” and “a” Right-side text is much sharper Red reticle looks sharper in person but doesn’t appear that way in photos
GoldenEye 007	Control style	Left/right-side dark green text is sharper on S-video
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards	Title	Top “KIRBY” logo shows subtle dithering and more pixelation on S-video Top “KIRBY” logo’s bottom blue border has slight dot crawl on composite video
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards	Level select	Top crayon and red rings have more jagged diagonals on S-video Overall very subtle improvement in sharpness
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards	Stage	Bottom HUD has more jagged diagonals on S-video Overall very subtle improvement in sharpness
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards	Enemy info	Title “Enemy Info” has more jagged diagonals on S-video Enemy #40 has sharper claws Enemy #38 has slight dot crawl on composite video
Mario Kart 64	Title	Various objects have more jagged diagonals on S-video Top “MARIO KART” logo has subtle dithering of the gradient
Mario Kart 64	Map select	Top text “MAP SELECT” has more jagged diagonals on S-video Bottom-left mini-pictures are slightly sharper Right-side black rectangles have less ringing on their left edges
Mario Kart 64	Race	Right text “Luigi” is sharper on S-video Top “MARIO KART” banner’s black-and-white-checkerboard border has slight cyan/red color fringes (bad) on S-video
Mario Kart 64	Award	All text has more jagged diagonals on S-video Black edges have less horizontal ringing
Pokémon Puzzle League	Title	Various objects have sharper but more jagged diagonals on S-video Top-right text “®” is sharper Bottom copyright text is sharper
Pokémon Puzzle League	Puzzle Village	Bottom-center text “HOW TO PLAY” is sharper on S-video Pokémon Center’s horizontal cyan band has dot crawl on composite video
Pokémon Puzzle League	3D mode	Top-right text is sharper on S-video Speech bubble’s bottom diagonal lines are sharper and more pixelated Professor Oak’s black outline is sharper and more pixelated
Pokémon Puzzle League	Options	Nurse Joy and Chansey have sharper but more jagged diagonals on S-video For the interlace-like effect in the center region of the picture, my TV decided to blend most adjacent lines together on composite video (bad) but not on S-video (good); but there should be no reason to blend lines because composite video has the same vertical resolution as S-video
Pokémon Stadium	Title	Various objects have more jagged diagonals on S-video Blue Blastoise and other objects have subtle dithering
Pokémon Stadium	Game Pak check	Small text “Game Pak None” is much sharper on S-video Top-left text “Game Pak Check” is sharper Left controller diagram has sharper black lines and less color bleeding Bottom-left text is sharper, especially letters “NIN” Bottom text is sharper, especially letter “m”
Pokémon Stadium	Main menu	All text is sharper on S-video
Pokémon Stadium	Submenu	Bottom text is much sharper on S-video Top-right cloud’s black border has more jagged edges
Pokémon Stadium	Stadium menu	Bottom text is sharper on S-video Trophies are sharper The 4 small pictures are slightly sharper
Pokémon Stadium	Stadium rules	All text is sharper on S-video, especially letter “m”
Pokémon Stadium	Qualifying Pokémon	All text is much sharper on S-video Pokémon pictures are slightly sharper
Pokémon Stadium	Examine registered Pokémon	All text is much sharper on S-video This scene seems to degrade on composite video much worse than all other known scenes
Pokémon Stadium	Gym Leader Castle	Main small text is much sharper on S-video, e.g. “SABRINA”, “ERIKA” Bottom-right text is sharper, especially letters “W”, “M”
Pokémon Stadium	Kids Club menu	Top text “MAGIKARP'S SPLASH” is slightly sharper on S-video Overall very subtle improvement in sharpness
Super Smash Bros.	Title	Bottom copyright text is sharper on S-video Center logo has more jagged diagonals
Super Smash Bros.	Player select	Bottom text is sharper on S-video Various character pictures and the 5 Kirby dots have more pixelated and jagged diagonals Yoshi and other character pictures have subtle dithering Text “Ready to Fight” has slight dot crawl on composite video
Super Smash Bros.	Stage clear	All text is sharper on S-video, especially letter “s” Top text “STAGE CLEAR” has subtle dithering All text has slight dot crawl on composite video

Methodology

The fairest comparison would involve hooking up the device under test to a dedicated video capture device. Because I don’t have a capture device and this article isn’t important enough, I took a lazier approach of just manually photographing a TV screen. Arguably this has a slight benefit of illustrating what sort of picture quality you can expect to see a real TV, but a major pitfall is that that the TV’s RGB grid can interact with the camera’s RGB grid to produce terrible moiré patterns.

After some trial and error, I locked down all the picture tuning settings on the TV (especially disabling dynamic contrast and backlighting) and the shot settings on the digital camera (especially exposure and white balance). I didn’t lock the focus on the camera because I was worried about potential focus breathing from temperature changes. In retrospect, refocusing on every photo was a mistake because the captured images seem to have inconsistent intensities of moiré patterns, making comparisons somewhat harder.

I noticed several flaws with my old, not-top-of-the-line LCD HDTV set. The deinterlacer had random occasional juddering artifacts and what seems to be frame reordering. Delivering the same picture over composite video versus S-video resulted in slightly different horizontal and vertical positioning. And it seems the image on composite video was slightly darker, as well has having tiny hue/saturation shifts. In post-production photo editing, I corrected the position offset and brightness because they are not relevant to the comparison between the two kinds of video signals.

Because I couldn’t capture gameplay footage from composite video and S-video at the same time, I had to resort to choosing scenes that were mostly reproducible, and then I manually invoked each scene twice. Because many scenes have dynamic elements (flashing, translation, rotation, etc.), the photos of composite vs. S-video don’t have perfect correspondence of every object.

Project Nayuki