I can tell the difference between playing on my 27 inch Wega with a scart to component converter and playing pure rgb on a pvm. Picture is crisp, Colors aren't over saturated. The Picture looks perfect.
While there are cases where you're going to get lower quality component out of some sort of hardware than you are RGB, the difference between the two in this case is absolutely down to the calibration of the WEGA. On professional equipment, given that they're both configured properly, the differences between RGB and Component are extremely negligible. The same sort of idea would apply to a modded consumer set displaying RGB and the same set displaying Component, again assuming that the set is properly calibrated. Consumer sets, by default, are almost universally calibrated "badly" in that you're going to get way over-saturated colors, and garbage color balance. Essentially all of these can be fixed to get really amazing results.
Which makes absolutely zero sense to me. They're taking TV's like 2 series back (say ~1990-1995 instead of ones a full 10-15 years newer which have a much greater chance of having non-failing components), then spending all this time RGB modding them....when they could get a FREE much-more modern TV with Component inputs, tons more features, better clarity, newer parts, and all they need is a cheap RGB SCART to Component converter box. Done.
The reasons they're going for older sets are relatively simple, really.
- Considerably improving the picture quality of what at this point may be seen as a less desirable set, given that many people have and do prefer to find Component capable sets.
- Non-Flat tubes. Even with lots of work, many flat CRTs just have glaring geometry and linearity issues that people just can't live with, and older sets are less prone to them.
- Considerably less complicated. For many older sets, RGB modding is just a case of finding out the proper voltage levels and buffering/clamping required to feed the jungle IC, and to activate blanking. This is more in the argument of modding old versus new stuff, but the newer flat models (specifically Sony) tend to include more complicated micro controllers to handle various things, which can lead to trouble with modding in RGB or what have you.
- To continue on the above, less complicated bit; Yes, older sets may have parts wearing out and starting to go on them, but due to them being older and less complicated, these parts are liable to be capacitors and other relatively passive components that you can still find replacements for extremely easily. While newer sets aren't going to have as much wear on the components(which I'm sure some would argue are lower quality and more likely to actually going bad than the older ones) there are considerably more active components in them to go wrong. A good example is the power ICs that go bad in a lot of WEGA sets; You can still find replacement parts for them, but fakes are rampant making things much more difficult.
Both options should be considered, but I don't see why either camp should look down on the opposite. In they end, both groups are just trying to get the best picture quality out of their old games that they can muster, just using different methods.
Have access to a well setup component set? Grab a transcoder and go to town.
Have a composite/s-video set in really nice shape, but want to get a bit more out of it?
Mod that thing.
Have a well setup component set but still want to mess around with RGB?
Fuck it, mod that too!
And a few photos under the spoiler:
Sadly, this set has since broken down and I haven't been able to take any new shots once I got the focus and sharpness better under control.