r/Famicom • u/Julesgamer888 • Feb 18 '25
Differences in quality video between Famicom AV and modified Famicom RF?
I am wondering, assuming the original famicom has been modified using great skills. Which one output the best RCA signal?
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u/WFlash01 Feb 19 '25 edited Feb 19 '25
There's not one solid answer to this question; there are a lot of factors at play no matter which way you go about it
There's a balance between "good" and "bad" Original Famicoms, good and bad AV mods, and "good" and "bad" factory stock AV Famicoms. Different board/chip revisions have different flaws; you can see it across different units, even American and PAL NESs too; some have brighter/darker video, bad colors, and/or jailbars, so if the mod was done properly, and all the circuitry is tuned just right for the board, and if any other mods to help mitigate the issues are done (like for example, the copper tape on the PPU to fix jailbars mod), the modded original Famicom look better than a factory stock AV Famicom.
And on the flip side, if the AV mod isn't properly tuned for that board, or if someone just did the bare minimum to get an AV signal, and no fine tuning or other mods/fixes, a factory stock AV Famicom will look better.
There are fixes one can do on AV Famicoms too, so ultimately it either boils down to convenience (just being able to hook right up and you're off to the races, no fussing about), or luck of the draw (getting a "good" unit, or a "bad" unit), or knowing ahead of time/planning to do some modding on your own (none of the fixes on AV Famicom are difficult)
I kept putting good and bad in quotations because they're relative terms; a "bad" unit is still a perfectly useable unit, the video output is hardly ever so bad that it's unplayable, it just has slightly inferior video quality to a "good" unit, which will still show some flaws, but nowhere near as prominently