my new AES has a bad picture. can anyone help?

hi.

i recently purchased an AES system (which i've never owned before) and it seems to function fine, but behind the game images on the screen is a glowing light source which varies in intensity and is very distracting around white text. and it seems to be present with any game that i play, and is especially annoying around the life meters in fighting games. i have tested the unit on two different TVs and with different sets of connector cables and the problem persists. Can someone help me?! Did I buy a bad unit, or can I clean the contact area in the machine? I am new to NEO-GEO and I'm totally clueless. Thanks very much.

Hello FDR,

What is the serial number of your console?

Hi. Thanks for responding.
The serial number is 011287.

the unit is defective...no aes does that..

and its not uncommon for an aes game to look like a sega genesis game either..

Are you sure you're not just looking at the notorious crappy video of the AES system? Are you using the composite or RF cables?

If you need the system repaired, I offer free evaluations. If it's poor picture quality that you're concerned with, I also offer a complete line of system mods.

Feel free to drop me an email at jmkurtz@columbus.rr.com. If you can include a picture of what you're seeing, that would also help.

Jeff

JMKurtz said:

Are you sure you're not just looking at the notorious crappy video of the AES system?

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That's what I'm guessing;

FDR said:

and is very distracting around white text.

and is especially annoying around the life meters in fighting games. .

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FDR said:

Hi. Thanks for responding.
The serial number is 011287.

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Ahh ok. Despite what you read about yours being defective, this doesn't seem to be true based on what you've said. I have two AES systems; serials 15662 and 12032.

My main system with the 15K serial number has a great picture (I assume you're using RF, so i'll speak in terms of RF output), however, the other system tends to have a little more color bleeding especially with white and red colors.

Once I opened both systems, I noticed they had the same motherboard, but the 15K serial # system had a daughterboard that connected to the video encoder and a few other video-relative components. It seems SNK saw an issue with this and installing these daughterboards was a quick and easy fix.

My advice to you is to check with JMKurtz to see what he can do since it's just how those super early AES systems are unfortunately. Hope that helps!

..I didn't realize that the early AES systems have notoriously crappy video. I'm surprised that any serious gamer would tolerate the kind of color bleeding that I'm seeing.

Many thanks to those who helped. I guess I'll look into the options for a modification.

Thanks.

FDR said:

..I didn't realize that the early AES systems have notoriously crappy video. I'm surprised that any serious gamer would tolerate the kind of color bleeding that I'm seeing.

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No one really knew any better in 1990 and the really hardcore people were using RGB anyway.

I still find it retarded that RGB was only common in Japan and somewhat in Europe. What in the hell was the point in even doing component video when all the US had to use was the RGB thats been around for ..... oh lets see, 25 years or so. Which reminds me I may just break down and get and RGB to component convertor that is worth a damn for my other systems.

Anywho, thanks again JKurtz for a great solution for my Neo Geo.

Lots of reasons why component supplanted RGB. I was going to go into them, but it takes a couple of boring paragraphs to do so. Zzz.

I'll just sum it up and say that it had a lot to do with DVDs and HDTV, and carrying those signals without problems.

A much smaller, cheaper DVI, HDMI or component cable does the job of carrying HDTV and high-resolutions better. Hence... no more RGB, except in legacy applications.

While we're talking Neo-Geo...

I've had my eye on the video quality of the AES a long time. Not as long as Mr. Kurtz, but quite a while. There's just not a lot you can do with the sweet-ol' antiquated guts of the AES. Component mod at 480i is as good (and useful) as it gets.

However, MVS with a component converter probably looks a little better, although it would sure be cool to have a 480p component/HDMI board for JAMMA, for progressive displays (i.e. HDTV). Probably expensive to make. Could neobitz or jrok get their hands on EDTV encoders? Could they get arcade "standard resolution" to convert properly? Could anyone?

Ohoho, I wonder...

RGB is still there were it always was, i.e. on Euro TVs. HDTVs here still have analog RGB inputs through the scart socket. The point is that it will never look as good as the RGB of a standard scart TV, in fact I never hook up any old school console/arcade hardware to my HDTV so who cares if they have RGB or not. You want to get the best (i.e. with no compromises) out of old stuff? HDTV is not the way to go...

Never say never... we have processing power nowadays to do incredible scaling, if you want to spend the money.

Someone with mad skills could get something really impressive out of an HD system. I'd like to play Neo on a giant projection movie screen, with HD upscaling, rather than play on a dinky 32" RGB monitor for the rest of my days. The native RGB looks nice, yes, but you're stuck on a cathode-ray tube. I'm tired of CRTs.

I wouldn't write off HDTVs and newer displays as "totally useless" for Neo yet, you know? TECHNOLOGY IS COMING TO GET YOU!