S-Video
S-Video
S-Video sits between blurry composite and pristine RGB, offering a meaningful picture upgrade with zero modification. The Super Nintendo outputs an S-Video signal natively through its multi-out connector, so all you need is the right cable and a display that accepts it.
Why it looks better
Composite squeezes brightness and color information into one signal, which the TV must separate again, introducing dot crawl and fuzziness. S-Video keeps brightness and color on separate wires, so the display does less guesswork and the image stays cleaner, with sharper edges and reduced color bleed. S-Video no mod
What you need
- An S-Video cable made for the SNES multi-out.
- A CRT or display with an S-Video input.
- No internal modification of any kind.
Great middle ground
If your TV lacks RGB input or you would rather not open the console, S-Video is the easiest worthwhile upgrade. It works on every SNES revision, including the SNES Jr that cannot do RGB without a mod, making it the universal plug and play improvement.
For many players on a CRT, the jump from composite to S-Video is the single most noticeable picture improvement they can make. If you later decide to pursue RGB, the S-Video cable still makes a handy fallback for displays that only accept that format.