A Guide to get the most out of 2600's RF without a composite mod.

[sega fan]

Setting up my 2600 out of the box today after school, I noticed my 2600 came with an old early 80's radioshack adapter that takes the 2600 signal jack and converts the signal to RF or UHF. Long story short :

First, take a VCR and plug it into your TV using composite, a more recent VCR is preferable for a fresh visual output. Plug into "ANT. IN" or "RF IN". I have found out that my RF jacks on the back of my VCR are too big for the older 2600 RF jack to firmly grasp, so If you go to a hardware store, go and get another brand new up-to-date RF box and plug in the old RF box conneted to the 2600 to the new RF box connected to the VCR. If you are really passionate about getting a fresh, crisp picture out of your Atari, get a whole new RF box and a nice fat, insulated RF cable for your 2600, so now you've got 2 new RF boxes and a new cable. Sync all your channels, and you've got a nice clean picture without all the dinge and noise in the picture.

I've noticed that this is a better connection then the back of your TV ( New or Old, HD or Standard. ), because the RF is going through a new connection and then a composite connection. So now you don't have to buy/use a spare old TV to get a great Atari 2600 experience ( unless you want the classic noisy RF connection for nostalgia sake ).

[Tanegashima]

I still don't think, beyond ridding yourself of a little RF interference, there is really much to improve.

Besides, the RF interference is part of the charm...

[sega fan]

My point of this was that, you know games like Berzerk. robots shoot at you but the shot from the robot looks thin on some of my TV's and if your RF is really bad and if you have/had a small TV, you may not see the bullets coming at you. So while I do agree RF is part of the charm, RF can possibly be so bad on some TVs that some games are either impossible to play or harder then nessicary, and some people today are like blu-ray purists who have to have everything in hi-def with picture so clear that you can slice cheese on the pixels because the picture is so sharp.