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I still use it because the Goldstar CRT TV in my bedroom only supports RF. I need to keep it so I can play light gun games. I have a smaller, RCA CRT TV at my old room at my grandparents' house. It supports composite, but only has the left audio channel.
I'm at my dorm now, and I use my LCD HDTV for gaming here and when I'm at home I tend to play on the living room HDTV more than my bedroom TV.
I only use RF if a system or console requires it. Some examples would be classic Atari, IntelliVision, ColecoVision, pong games, etc. It would be best to upgrade to at least composite and stereo sound if possible. Luckily, CRT TV's are very inexpensive to buy used.
Basically, you don't have to settle for RF.
They are however, quite expensive to sell, as one often has to pay the buyer to take the CRT.Quote:
Originally Posted by FuturePrimitive
Keep it to play Atari games on! That would be so cool
Negative....RF gives me the same headache that I had when I found a scrambled boob channel on my cable box back when I was a kid.
My Genesis is hooked up via RGB but I also plug the RF into it as well because that makes for more wires hooked to my console and more wires = better. I wish I had something to plug into the EXT port as well, even if I never used it.
haha classic Joe!
seriously, go at least composite. Though I always find very strange that people wants to buy the hardware, and CRTs, and whatnot to have "the real deal" but then nobody uses RF "because it's crap". AFAIK 95% of the consoles were wired via RF during the whole MD lifespan
That seems too high for me. Even the NES shipped with composite connectors, and most TVs and VCRs of the day had composite available.Quote:
Originally Posted by chilled
I think it's to low. I don't remember anyone running composite anything back then, at least anyone my age. It wasn't that common. Even if the TV had it 99% just ran RF. Not sure about model 2's but the model 1 didn't even come with the composite cable. That alone was a pain to track down. It wasn't till that they shoved composite down our throats during the next generation that people started using it and how many people used RF converter boxes even then?
Great responses everyone!
I have my Sears Telegames model of the Atari 2600 laying on the floor next to my Goldstar. I love the 2600, so many people seem to only want to go back as far as the NES nowadays. My first console was the Genesis, but most of the games I had for it that Christmas of 1997/98 (I was only like 4 or 5 then, so it's hard to remember the exact year) were ports of 2600-era arcade games like Missile Command.Quote:
Originally Posted by 16-bit
There's a modem that plugged into the Ext. port. It was only released in Japan and the servers are down (though if you know someone who has the modem and a copy of whatever modem enabled game you want to play, you can play against them Netlink-style. At least I think you can.)Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Redifer
After I read this post I started thinking and I realized that maybe I've been listening to Adam Koralik too much (he's on Youtube, he has a lot of interesting videos). He keeps advocating using SCART, so I think I became a little self-conscious about my AV setup. When I think about it, using RF would seem more authentic. The idea of hooking up a Genesis via SCART to an converter box which outputs to HDMI sounds artificial and weird the more I think about it.Quote:
Originally Posted by chilled
I still have an RF modulator (my mom bought it for me years ago so I could watch DVDs in my room). I agree with this post, I think it's safe to say that all of us (except for the really rich) who lived in North America used RF. Adam can say what he will about the format, but he was totally using it back in the day (no offense). Composite would've been a dream for most people back in the '90s, IMO.Quote:
Originally Posted by Iron Lizard
Oh I had composite for a bit. We had a very nice new expensive Philips TV, which was later moved to my parents room, grrrr and I was back to the little RF 19". I had to track down that stupid cable, errr cables so I could have stereo. Lots of phone calls and bus rides.
I remember my buddy got a 32x and thought it was broken because it wouldn't work with the model one RF switch. Ended up using using the VCR as an expensive RF switch instead of buy the model two job
I also would say early 90's not so much later.
Cables can be a pain sometimes. I recently had to replace my NES RF adapter because the pin in the center was so bent that it could no longer connect to my TV's RF port. RF cables are so cheap now (don't know how much they cost back in the day). I've found an official Sega model 2 RF cable for around $10 on ebay. I need one of those since my model 2 RF adapter has been giving me a snowy picture, so I guess it's dying. I've been using it since '97/'98 and it was ex-rental before that. I found a boxed Dreamcast RF cable for $3.99 on ebay too, I might get that if I decide to get a Dreamcast light gun. So far the NES is the only system I have that I have the light gun for. I definitely plan on getting the Saturn light gun at some point though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Iron Lizard